Category: airliner
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Cessna Crane – Part Two – It’s Not A Trainer
At least, I don’t think it is. I think it’s a small transport aircraft that can be disguised as a trainer. The Cessna Crane that I speculated about in the first post appears in bright yellow RCAF trainer livery in every historic shot I can find of it. Nowhere so far does it appear in…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Five – Et Voila
There is a lesson to be learned with this Airfix model of a DC-3 in Aéronavale colours – and I must compel myself to learn it. It is a lesson of humility. At the start I thought this a marginal model – the sort of ugly cousin kit from an old company that had been…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Four – Keeping The Faith
If you have shares in 3M or in the Ustar manufacturing company in Taiwan, take heart – your yearly dividend is assured. I have been masking the Douglas DC 3 and it has taken slightly more tape than would have been required for the full-sized aircraft. You need to have a vision as you do…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Three – The Airfix Channel
Well, I’d watch it if they started broadcasting, and so would you. But this is not about the television – it’s about the Airfix channel that they put between the fuslage and inner wing panel of the DC3. It is so far the widest gap this side of Darien. Not on both sides of the…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Two – It Fits Where it Touches
I am trying not to be discouraged by the Airfix DC3/C47 kit. I have chosen wisely to make it into a closed kit – the door fitting on the port side is truly appalling. Or perhaps I am looking at it from the wrong perspective – in the original form it has three mini-guns and…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part One – The C-47
‘Well, duh. Of course it’s a C-47, because it is a Douglas DC-3. And It’s a DC-3 because it’s a C-47. And it’s a Vietnam-era gunship in this Airfix kit courtesy of four Air Force figures and a cargo floor that sports a number of mini-Gatling guns on stands. I’m afraid it holds little place…
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Lockheed Electra Junior – Part Four – RCAF 1941
My model building hobby is a focused thing, but it is soft focus…I love to build nearly any kind of 1:72 airplane…but I have a special preference for planes flown by the RCAF. Whenever I’m cruising the aisles of the hobby shops I am measuring up prospective purchases on the basis of whether they ever…
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Lockheed Electra Junior – Part Three – The Bare Torso
The two colours of plastic in the Lockheed kit were startling on the sprue trees but have become less so when assembled together. As they will shortly disappear under an undercoat and then silver they are of no consequence. Of greater import is the splendid fit of the structure. Making up the twin-rudder tail separately…
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Lockheed Electra Junior – Part Two – A Surprising Amount Of Fit
Experience with Czech short-run kits can be mixed. Fit issues, over-complex construction, and unclear instructions all loom every time you pop the box top or open the side door. However, the first stages of the Electra Junior have been pleasant. The cockpit is a resin casting. though nowhere near as complex as it might have…
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Lockheed Electra Junior – Part One – Dutch Surprise
The third purchase on a happy visit to a distant hobby shop was a Special Hobby kit. These are always more expensive than the big maker’s offerings but can be had for subjects that would never be kitted otherwise. I am always surprised at the things I see in this class of model. Measuring the…
The Little World 