Category: American aircraft
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Revell SPAD XIII – Part Two – Grinning And Bearing It
Well, it is a vintage kit… The Revell SPAD XIII is going to look good, I tell myself. The large dollop of Mr. White Putty cut with levelling thinner is only to be expected. Also the superglue run into the tail gaps and the Vallejo squirt putty elsewhere. I have not reached for a tin…
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Revell SPAD XIII – Part One – A NZ Mystery
They don’t generally do impenetrable mysteries in New Zealand. Most of the country is pretty straightforward. Which means I have no idea why the instruction sheet from this unopened example of a New Zealand Revell baggie should have a corner bit out of it. Was there some secret there? Some corporate message that we were…
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Curtiss SBC-4 – Part Two – In Praise Of Heller
It is unfashionable in the British Commonwealth to speak well of the French. The old prejudices born of war and ambition stretch back as far as William the Conqueror and have been topped up and re-aligned every century since then. It goes the other way, of course – the French despise the English nearly as…
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Curtiss SBC-4 – Part One – The Old Photo In The National Geographic
I used to pore over wartime copies of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. I found a trove of them in a school library in the 1960’s and read all I could. I wasn’t after pictures of native girls with bare chests – I wanted colour photos of fighter planes. NG had access to the US Navy and Kodachrome…
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F-15 Eagle – Part One – The Gift Bird
If you are reading this I have conquered. Weeks have passed while I tried to post a simple blog about this Academy kit, but every time I tried it the WordPress system made something go missing. If I were a suspicious man I would think of censorship. The kit was the gift of a club…
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Legendary Scale Modelling
The dictionary says a legend is someone or something that has been written about*. It doesn’t specify that there has been any truth, or proof, or goodness involved the deal – just that it’s been recorded. That being the case I think we can look at legendary scale modelling… a. The kit that was just…
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North American F-100 – Part Three – Dry Fit For The Win
I have taken to adding a new stage to my regular builds – I try to get a mock-up of the basic flying aircraft fitted dry before I reach for the cement bottle. This means taping parts together or even using the Micro Scale temporary adhesive. The benefit of doing it is I catch incipient…
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North American F-100 – Part Two – Even The Little Bits Are Nice
The long slog of a kit build always seems to start with a cockpit. And some are slower starters than others. I particularly dread the PE and resin confections that the Czech small run makers mould up. They sometimes look good when completed but nearly always are an indefinite Tinker Toy as you try to…
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North American F-100 – Part One – The Start Of A Project
I heard a suggestion a few weeks ago and took it on board – a good idea for the Big Local Plastic Model Show. I hope we are granted the blessing of it and are here to participate – in anticipation of which I have started a project to fill two display tables. It’ll be…
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No Apologies Kingfisher
This post is somewhat different from my normal practise…You get to see it built without seeing it a’building. This is because it is very nearly the same as the wheeled version made by the same maker – AZ. I built one last year in that configuration with a full report. Refer to it if you…
The Little World 