Category: Box Art
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Polikarpov I-16 – Part One – What Animal Is That?
Is it a mule, a fly, or an ant? All three nicknames have been used for this small Soviet fighter plane from the 1930’s. It was a somewhat revolutionary craft at a turning point in aviation that went from biplanes to monoplanes. One might have expected the Soviets to follow their standard Russian pattern of…
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Fairey Barracuda Mk II – Part One – The Ugly Duckling
I’m being unfair. I should have written in the plural. Because the British Fleet Air Arm for a long time seems to have been somewhat of a duck farm. Flocks of ’em; Fairey Fulmar and Barracuda, Blackburn Skua and Roc. The Swordfish and Walrus and Stranraer. All were perfectly flyable and in some cases quite…
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Mitsubishi A6M – Part One – Baggie
Look at the yellow price tag on the Revell baggie kit. 50¢. A very important number when you were 13 years old as it was the amount of your weekly allowance. A salary-by-another-name paid by your parents in exchange for making your own bed and doing the dishes. As a valid salary there were no…
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Curtiss Hawk Model 75 – Part One – Good Fortune
I am blessed with good fortune; a loving family, a comfortable retirement, a mind that still feels enthusiasm. I am also blessed in friendships. One of these friends read my post about trading scale model cars to make space for scale model airplanes and stepped in to make the situation ever so much worse… In…
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Focke Wulf 190A – Part One – Spoiled For Choice
Wobbling through Google the other day I discovered a colour scheme for the Focke Wulf 190 fighter plane that looked quite interesting. It has little to do with any boxed kit, but I can get other decals and paints readily. All you need is reference material and the inspiration. But what kit to get? There…
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Mitsubishi Peggy – Part One – Buddy Holly
At the risk of alienating my readers, I would like to recall them to the 1957 song by Buddy Holly: ” Peggy Sue ” and let it play in their minds. It will do so all day, I assure you… The Mitsubishi ” Hiryu ” bomber is a Hasegawa kit that came up in the…
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Messerschmitt Me 109E – Part One – The Internet Delivers Again
If you have nothing to do for the next few hours, start Googling. Tear yourself away from the porn, conspiracy theories, and on-line shopping and research something arcane. I just did and now I can have a week of fun with it. I don’t build aircraft with certain markings – which is somewhat of a…
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A Modest Proposal
Kit makers are always trying for another use of a previous model. The tricks of new decal sheet and box art plus a hike in price mean that even if you have not invested any money in a new cash cow, you can milk the old one again. The problem is there are only so…
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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…
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Target Tug Cat – Part Three – Friday Lunchtime
And it was hot. Hot enough to dry solvent paint on the way from the nozzle of the airbrush to the surface of the model. Time for a thinner paint mix with more retarder and a lower air pressure. All you need to do is be prepared for what the weather throws at you. Fortunately…
The Little World 