Category: American aircraft
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Republic Thunderflash – Part One – The Flying Photographer
Without realising it I completed a couple of builds that could start a new shelf in the Air Museum – and now I have No. 3 and No. 4 in the stash; a Republic RF84F Thunderflash and A Lockheed RT33. Together with the P-38 PRU and Spitfire PRXIX they are the eyes in the sky…
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Lockheed Starfire – Part Three – We Win Through In The End
You’ll have seen my post about backtracking with the Beagle Boys a little while ago; September 20, 2020. It detailed my wilful errors in painting that were corrected late at night. Since then I have played the soft pedal for this build and have been rewarded in the end with a delightful result. The clear…
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Lockheed Starfire – Part Two – Dry Fit Respect
I have a great deal of respect for whoever Emhar models really are. In my encounters with their products I have found them to fit together excellently. In the case of the featured image, the cockpit tub is cemented together and the fuselage sealed…but everything else is just a dry fit for confirmation purposes. This…
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Lockheed Starfire – Part One – My First Airplane
If the first plastic model kit I remember building was a Revell 5-ship set in the mid-1950’s, the first plastic airplane kit I remember seeing was a Lockheed F-94 Starfire. It was being built By Mike Baker – a kid across the street. He was also engaged in building a wooden model of a B-50,…
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Boeing Kaydet – Part Three – The Hills Are Alive – With the Sound Of Cursing
How so many biplanes and triplanes are sold as model kits astounds me. Every time I encounter one I have ” a time “. All goes well until the step where you cement the struts on and add the top wing. There are rarely any mechanical aids or structures that help the biplane builder get…
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Boeing Kaydet – Part Two – A Hole Lotta Filling Goin’ On
I mentioned the sink holes and ejector post depressions last column. I didn’t realise then how many of them there were going to be. The ones in the tyres were particularly galling. No-one else has this problem. Well, after some Perfect Plastic Putty, neither did I. To their credit, Revell gave me two seats that…
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Boeing Kaydet – Part One – Older Than The Hills
I pulled the Revell baggie of the Boeing N2S-5 Kaydet out of the stash with mixed feelings. On one hand it was a pretty good looking silver airplane and on the other it was so old as to be listed by the National Trust – was I going to build it or desecrate it? The…
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Douglas Skyhawk – Part One – The Experimental Craft
Never mind your Bell X-1 – your Douglas Skyrocket, X-3, or X-15. I’ve got a real experimental airplane. One on which I intend to try out new things, hell, Hay, or bust. The canopy of the A-4D was missing from the kit. I needed to make a new canopy shape so that I could weather…
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Ryan Spirit of St. Louis – Part Three – In Soviet Union…
Decals put you on. On the spot, on the griddle, on the booze. I’m going to give the Novo factory a pass on this one – and for all I know they are long gone. They may have done their best at the time. Unfortunately the time was the 1970’s and 80’s and this is…
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Ryan Spirit Of St. Louis – Part Two – Lonely
Well, he is lonely. But to give FROG/Novo their due, he is a pretty good representation of Lindberg dressed in period flying gear. He gets three slightly foggy windows to peer out of and a hard plastic seat, but then the real aircraft has a wicker seat in it that doesn’t look much better. The…
The Little World 