Category: airliner
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Douglas C-47 – Part Four – The Romantic Gooney Bird
Do not adjust your set or your eyes. The green is supposed to look like that. VH – CGQ or ” Honeymoon Express ” was a lot dirtier in her flying days than she appears in the museum. Not a scrap of shine on her in the three photos that appear on the net. I…
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Douglas C-47 – Part Three – One Day
Well, it was a temperate and pleasant summer day and no-one needed me, so I just popped the top on the Italeri kit, washed the sprue trees, and got on with it. The component parts you see here laid out ready for temporary or permanent assembly were the result of about 5 hours of cutting,…
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Douglas C-47 – Part Two – Honeymoon Express
The plane I’m building has a real history – apart from being a special scheme on a set of aftermarket decals. ” Honeymoon Express ” was the lead ship on a paratroop assault on Nadzab in New Guinea in 1943 in conjunction with an assault on Lae. It is a good point of interest as…
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Douglas C-47 – Part One – The Gooney Bird Again
I built a Canadian Gooney Bird a last year as part of my Air World collection – a Burma Biscuit Bomber that has been preserved in the Canadian museums as a flying tribute. That should have finished my fascination with the Dakota/C-47/Skytrain/ Gooney bird for some time. Not a bit of it. I had collected…
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I Now Know…
I now know my least favourite scale modelling task: making up propellers from separate blades and hubs. I have just completed the gluing on two propellers for the Lockheed Electra Junior and am waiting for them to set. The maker decided to do the hubs in resin and the blades in styrene – so I…
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Burbank
I appear to have started an aircraft factory. This was not my intention when I began my retirement modelling – I was just looking for one or two kits to while away spare time. Nostalgia. A mere bagatelle. Well, the Mere Aircraft Company’s Bagatelle Mk III turns out to have been a hell of an…
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Savoia Marchetti S.79 Sparviero – Part Seven – Under New Management
A notable milestone; my first Lebanese aircraft. All courtesy of a colour photo taken sometime during 1949 of an S.79 taxiing out to a runway past a pair of contemporary piston-engined fighter planes of the Lebanese Air Force. That, and a couple more found lurking on the net of similar aircraft in the middle East.…
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Savoia Marchetti S.79 Sparviero – Part Six – It’s All A Whitewash
And all the better for it. Never mind whitewash in politics or on your back fence. When you whitewash a model it is a sign that you are getting somewhere. In this case it is Mr Base White 1000 diluted and blown on with a single-action airbrush. The white 1000 is about as good as…
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Savoia Marchetti S.79 Sparviero – Part Five – Deep In The Heart Of…
Not Texas. Deep in the heart of Northern Italy. At the Savoia Marchetti factory cementing together the S.79 bomber and being alternately impressed and horrified at the way it is going. Impressed? Look at the detail of the shock absorber on the tail wheel. Not really terribly visible from the outside, but sturdy enough to…
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Savoia Marchetti S.79 Sparviero – Part Four – The Green Of A Service Station
A service station on the Autostrada. At 4:35 PM on August 7th. With the door open and the smell of pasta sauce in the air. Not that watery sort of sauce – the real thick stuff. Well, you need to know what you want to do before you do it, or you’ll never know whether…
The Little World 