Category: 1:72 scale
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De Havilland DH2 – Part Three – Wing Day

Well there is no point in putting it off and just sitting in the club rooms drinking coffee. Glue the bastard together or go home. 12 struts – reasonably formed for all that. 4 cabanes and 8 inter-plane ones. Socket dimples in fuselage and wings, but everything’s separate. The only saving grace is that all…
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De Havilland DH2 – Part Two – Shit Muckeldy Dun

You rarely see that shade on paint racks these days. There are plenty of colours that qualify, but they tend to have kinder names. The Spanish make a small fortune in tiny squeeze bottles of them. They invent names that suggest you need them for your model – in reality you just need olive green…
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De Havilland DH2 – Part One – Another Revellation

This little guy was sitting forlornly in the legacy sale box – along with the Fokker Eindekker and the Nieuport 28. Well, if you are in for a penny… The idea of making a 1:72 scale model of something this spindly is pretty desperate – as much on my part as on that of Revell…
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Courage, Mon Brave!

When it is right – defend it. When it is wrong – admit it. And when it looks like hell, strip it off and start again. There are times when our reach exceeds our grasp. I have just printed a set of decals with the inkjet that would cover most of an air tanker. They…
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Bass Ackward

The sequence in which we do things is critical – I learned that when shooting muzzle loading rifles. Only one way of loading really works. The same question applies when we are trying to get a soft edge to camouflage painting on an aircraft. The time-honoured method of the Blu-tac worm and masking tape does…
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Northrop Gamma – Part Three – Texaco Sky Chief

From the layout of the wing and tail – the position of the cockpit – and the size of the engine, this must have been a hot, sweet, ship to fly. And the same specs must have made it right pig to land. I was thrilled with the appearance of the model as it was…
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Northrop Gamma – Part Two – A Silver Ghost

The instructions to paint an aircraft ” silver ” or “aluminium ” are often all you get from a maker in their colour call-out. I did not expect much more from the Williams company for this kit. But which silver – and which aluminium? I count four different Mr Hobby, 7 different Mr. Color, and…
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Northrop Gamma – Part One – Inter-war Special

Newcastle Song Day. And I didn’t let the chance go by. This was the first time I had seen a Williams kit – though I had read about them in Scalemetes. The impression I got was that they were rather garage-kit like. This vanished when I opened the box at the club’s stash sale and…
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If You Were Asked To Pick…

Your favourite airplane, or ship, or car, or tank…you would spend hours going over the possibilities. Then you could spend more drinking time debating it with other modellers. What a great idea! Now suppose the discussion turned to the favourite model making company… and here the discussion was serious. Exacto knives would be drawn and…
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The Things I Never Knew…

Are probably only half the things that I don’t know yet. This has never been the case so much as in scale modelling, and particularly in the adhesives. Until I started adult modelling I had no idea of the possibilities for success or failure of PVA glue when I tried to use it on a…
