Category: American aircraft
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Douglas Devastator – Part Three – Did I Get My Money’s Worth?
That’s always a pertinent question as far as my hobbies go. Indeed it also applies to clothing purchases, dinners at restaurants, and holiday trips. Sometimes the answer is no – for instance when they bring a tiny dinner out on a vast white plate and then hover like a Sikorski asking whether it is to…
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Douglas Devastator – Part Two – Crates
” My God, Carruthers! They’re sending boys up in crates like those…” Well, don’t write off the Douglas Devastator TBD so soon. Admittedly they did not have sterling success as fighting machines in the battles they fought…but they did get some torpedo strikes. If the US Navy had addressed the problems of the Mk XIII…
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Douglas Devastator – Part One – I Was Devastated
Well, not actually devastated…which apparently means ruined with overwhelming shock and grief. More like surprised and delighted, in a geeky way. Someone was selling old dead plastic model kits for tiny prices. It was not even the swap-meet portion of the Victorian plastic model show – just a few table-holders who decided to get in…
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Vought Vindicator – Part Four – The Movie Star
I gotta find it – I gotta find the 1941 Fred McMurray/Errol Flynn movie ” Dive Bomber”. If only to see the real thing in ( fake ) action. Now that the Vought Vindicator is complete and the Yellow Wing Navy is well and truly started I need all the entertainment I can get. Well,…
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Vought Vindicator – Part Three – The Yellow Arrives
I am starting to formulate a style in my model building – in fact a number of styles, depending upon the scale and type of model under construction: a. Large model buildings are done from sketches and photographs with a fair degree of leeway in the design. I stick to simple lines and art deco…
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Vought Vindicator – Part Two – The Czech To Progress
I have written before about Eastern European short-run kits and their peculiarities. The first experience was bad, then good, then bad, then gradually better and better. It is very much a mixed bag of sweet and sours when you build Czech, Pole, or Ukrainian. The Vought Vindicator is actually quite on the sweet side. To…
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Vought Vindicator – Part One – The Yellow Spreads
I’m not going to use the title ” Yellow Peril ” because that opens a whole new can of nematodes – but the Yellow Wing Disease has definitely taken hold in the Little Workshop. The start of it was the free Airfix Brewster Buffalo scored at the plastic modelling club that made up to such…
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Eleven Shades Of Grey
Or is it gray? I can never be sure, and I’m sure I don’t care…but I do care about getting the right shade when I start to paint an aircraft. The colour I want right now is the paint that they sprayed on the underside of USAAF planes. The famous Neutral Grey. Creos GSI list it…
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The Rack And The Gallows
If you are expecting Torquemada I must disappoint you – I reserve those sentiments for my ” Here All Week ” column. See below. The rack I refer to is my new Little Workshop plane jig. It is made by Scrap Bin Pty Ltd and has three adjustable plane rests as supplied. You can get…
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Bell P 39 Airacobra – Part Four – The Northwest Staging Route
You might wonder a bit at the presence of a Bell P-39 Airacobra with red stars in a white circle appearing at an Alberta RCAF station in the 1940’s. The explanation is simple – the Northwest Staging Route flowed right through RCAF WET DOG as soon as Lend-lease was established and there were enough aircraft…
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