Category: American aircraft
-
Boeing KB29A – Part Five – The Sausage

The sausage is just about to close up. The day has been spent in fettling the compartments into the fuselage and securing them with cement and PVA. The former is to get the initial location and the latter to make sure that this is maintained when the second half goes on. My aim is not…
-
Boeing KB29A – Part Four – Interesting Times

And we’re livin’ in them alright. I hope we keep on livin’ The KB29A was my Mens Shed model club project and I vowed to only do it when I was at the clubrooms. The bastard Wuhan Plague put a stop to that. But I decided to keep my vow…virtually – I would model in…
-
Boeing KB29A – Part Three – The Guts

The Academy kit for this KB-29A has just the right mixture of detail and space for a good 1:72 build. Any less would be sketchy and any more superfluous. The cockpit, fighting compartment, and tail gunner’s position have been mostly completed in one modelling week – spread out over two club mornings. I’ve decided to…
-
Boeing KB-29A – Part Two – The Decision Taken…

The agonising decision of which version of the ’29 to build, I started to gather decals and to paint parts on the sprue trees. Of course I didn’t take the easy option. I mean, this is me, after all. The idiot without a village. I chose to do the KB-29A version with the extra parts…
-
Boeing B-29A – Part One – The New Kit On The Block

Or the shelf, as it happened. I made a safari through the 1:72 jungle at my local hobby shop and this Academy B-29 was lurking at the bottom of the new pile. I am wise enough to know when a model will be popular and not hang round – so I grabbed it with glee…
-
Vought Kingfisher – Part Four – Neutrality Patrol

And armed with a couple of 100 pound bombs to enforce it. I cannot decide whether the Kingfisher as a land plane is gainly or ungainly compared to the floatplane version. The gear is not too spindly but difficult enough to assemble. It must have been quite a drag for the plane – otherwise quite…
-
Vought Kingfisher – Part Three – Clean

My friend Warren and I have often remarked to each other that an airplane that looks good, flies good. That isn’t to say that the rule cannot be violated. The Brewster Buccaneer/Bemuda looked well but was so underpowered as to be a menace. Ditto a number of Italian aircraft. The same might be true of…
-
Vought Kingfisher – Part Two – The Inside Job

Well, if you’re gonna be inside for weeks, you might as well do airplane interiors. In the case of some of the short-run Czech kits, just a few hours can seem like weeks. But sometimes you can be fooled. When I saw this Kingfisher’s insides I could see all the Czech troubles beginning again; no…
-
Vought Kingfisher – Part One – Amos And Andy

An’ if you don’t keep on reading , you gonna get a nasty letter from de Kingfish…an a phone call too. Those of you old enough to know what that was all about will smile. The younger readers will not. But some of them never smile anyway. Movin’ right along, the AZ model of the…
-
Vega PV-2 Harpoon – Part Four – The Carioca Killer

Admire the pictures, Children – they are made with the new focus-stacking technique learned from YouTube. Nearly every part of the 1:72 aircraft in perfect focus . The technique is so simple as to be laughable. I secure the model under constant lighting ( 2 IKEA desk lamps ) and focus upon the closest part.…
