Category: American aircraft
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part Five – A Political Panther
Well, political in the sense that everything military in South America is political. From the smallest rubber truncheon to the GENERAL BELGRANO, every weapon is eventually turned against the local citizens, the neighbours, or the other armed forces. It is a tradition that probably started in the Inca and Aztec days, got noisier with the…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part Four – The Simoom
Or is that sirocco? Whichever, it is the hot dry wind that blows nobody any good, and it blew into my workshop the other day. Had I been smart, I would have closed the flaming door… The day was hot, but not the spectacular heat that drives people into air conditioning and makes the newspaper…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part Three – You Only Forget Once
Putting together a model of a jet airplane is pretty straightforward in comparison to a biplane or a WWII bomber. Fewer parts, no propellors, and usually a much sturdier undercarriage. But there is one thing that most modern jets have in common – tricycle landing gear and a tendency to sit on their tails. The…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part Two – Tubby Little Devil
The cockpit assembly of the Panther has just been completed and I must say it’s pretty nice for a $ 20 model. 5-piece, and some fine moulding on the sidewalls and instrument panel. And for a change the panel decal actually fit the piece. Micro-Sol doesn’t hurt either. The interior of the fuselage is…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part One – The Cheap Cat
I have long admitted a weakness for bargain model kits. You have only to show me a shelf full of the expensive ones with a cheap runt at the end and you know which one I’ll take. In the case of the Hobby Boss F9F-2 Panther it was sitting next to a similar kit in…
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Grumman F6F Hellcats – Part Three – The Flying Bomb
I wonder if the bright spark who numbered the US Navy drones used in the Korean War deliberately ran them on from V1 to V8? I’ve seen two authentic pictures of V6 being launched off USS BOXER from one of the catapults and it has the V number clearly painted on either cheek of the…
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Grumman F6F Hellcats – Part One – The Cheap Twins
There is no box art to show you with this build; there was no box. The kits that comprise it were left on the table at our modeller’s club with a ” Free to a good home ” sign. I live in a good home… They appear to be part of a three-plane set from…
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Tail Feathers
I have always been curious about anything connected to the decoration of aircraft. Look out your picture book of WWII aircraft and turn to the RAF section. Note the insignia applied to the average fighter or bomber: a. Two upper wing roundels in red and blue – in some cases quite dark but quite large.…
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Boeing B17 – Part Five- The Fat Lady From Wenatchee
Well, it has been a week. The Fat Lady From Wenatchee is finished and I am delighted – so much so that I will now deliberately seek out other aircraft that can be made into civilian service aircraft. There were severe forest fires in Washington State and British Columbia in the 1970’s and a number…
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Boeing B-17 – Part Four – Bombing A Different Enemy
As soon as I asked Google to show me B-17’s in Canada I got all the old RCAF pictures I had already seen, plus lots of USAAF shots. And then down at the bottom of a long search something new started to pop up. The civilian B-17. A few had been converted to private planes…
The Little World 