Category: American aircraft
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Six – Any Colour You Want
As long as it’s black. Henry Ford woulda been proud… The Northrop night fighter is ready to roam the dark skies. I have a feeling that it was just good luck on the part of the Japanese and Germans that it was so late in development. Had the Northrop designers not footled about with that…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Four – The Black
If you want to be nervous, spray an undercoat of grey or white on your model kit. Then you’ll see just how good you were at spotting gaps and crevices. Of course then you’ll get a chance to correct them with putty or paint and you can get set to get nervous a second time.…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Three – Under Tension
Remember I mentioned that the disparate parts of the P-61 Black Widow fit well together? Well that was before I tried to mate the belly pan to the rest of the fuselage. The basic fit is fine, but tight. The makers have exercised computer machines to measure where the parts slide over each other –…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Two – The Parts Are Greater Than The Whole
I am often overwhelmed when I open a new kit and see the dozens of sprues that they pack in the box. Well, make that several, rather than dozens, but you get the idea. Seeing the bits laid out on the runners makes the whole project seem more formidable, mysterious, and complex than it often…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part One – My Second Widow
Ninth grade – Christmas in Calgary, Alberta. The tree held a number of real surprises…a Guillows SE5A and and Aurora 1:48 Northrop Black WIdow amongst others. It was the first time I had ever seen the aircraft and I was astounded. The Aurora kits were fun for their time but their time was a long…
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Douglas Dauntless – Part Three – Perhaps It IS A Dountless…
Maybe they know something I don’t. In my relentless pursuit of knowledge – also known as surfing the net – I discovered that there were quite a few RNZAF Douglas SBD-4 and SBD-5 aircraft used in the South Pacific. There are a number of period photos of them in flight and on the ground in…
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Douglas Dauntless – Part Two – The Hissy Fit
Well, that’s not accurate – this is not a hissy fit – this kit has excellent fit. Whoever really moulded it, they have done a good job. The basic idea of the wing is Douglas all the way – see the general shape of the RCAF Nomad target tug I built earlier. Look at the…
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Douglas Dauntless – Part One – The Core Aircraft
In all my model building career I have never built a Douglas SBD – the Dauntless – not even as a kid when there were Aurora and Monogram kits. For some reason I have held off doing so now. But a visit to Hobby Mania – a smaller retailer here in Perth – ended the…
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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,…
The Little World 