Category: American aircraft
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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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Bell P-39 – Part Three – Weight A Minute
Or forever sit on your tail. I applaud the tricycle landing gear for aircraft – in the case of civilian airliners it allows a steady takeoff and landing – I would not want to spill my champagne. On military planes it probably allows the pilot a lot better view of the field or carrier deck…
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Rain, Rain, Went Away
And the humidity dropped and the sun came out. Shows you that sacrificing virgins really works, eh?* Having secured the Mandate Of Heaven…or at least the mandate of the Meteorological Department, I mixed up 50% Supercheap clear acrylic lacquer and 50% Mr. Color Levelling Thinner and started spraying. The mixing was done in a large…
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Rain, Rain, Go Away
Come again after I have sprayed the clear lacquer. I have been glaring at the sky all day for the temerity it has shown in clouding over and raining. This is not convenient, and I demand that it stop. If not, there will be trouble. Actually, I have been avoiding trouble all day. The seven…
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Batch Processing*
I have spent the last three days batch processing US Army fighters, attack planes, and bombers. It started as a whim, became an experiment, and is looking to be a darned good technique for the future. It started with an idea – in my case these may be vast ideas or half-vast ideas, but you…
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The Return Of The Chinese Junk
When I was a kid in the 50’s there were dime stores that sold goods cheaply. In some cases they were cheap goods – particularly if they were plastic toys from Hong Kong. There was a particularly brittle form of plastic that was used in toy factories that was moulded into all sorts of workable…
The Little World 