Category: British aircraft
-
Hawker Demon – Part One – VC Airfix

That’s ” vintage classic ” as it says on the box, but the VC connotation is not at all inappropriate for many of the re-issued Airfix kits. They can really be prize winners. This was a kit that nagged the eye in the shop for a number of months until I had completed the Airfix…
-
Gloster Meteor – Part One – Old Airfix

From the stash of an old modeller – with a few surprises along the way. This kit was in the legacy stash of an old club mate. I purchased it with several others to build in tribute to him, but did not have a fixed project in mind. He had apparently intended it to become…
-
The Curse of the Were-Decal

A modeller’s Halloween horror story… I had just gotten to the decal stage for a new model – a tiny little Academy 1:72 Sopwith camel. Lovely model, with interplane and cabane struts that just fell into place. And a simple colour scheme for mine – the RAF museum plane at Hendon; khaki and linen. The…
-
Sopwith Camel – Part Five – Hendon’s Prize

On some occasions I will have all I need to decorate a model but miss out on one thing. In this case it is a set of small decals for the airframe number. There is one on the Academy decal sheet, but it’s wrong for the Hendon camel. I adopt a sensible attitude to these…
-
Sopwith Camel – Part Four – Marking The Territory

And the next time I do, it will be with an incontinent dog. The colour scheme chosen for the Academy Sopwith Camel is the closest I could come to the preserved example in the RAF museum at Hendon. Working on the assumption that if any knew what a Camel would look like it would be…
-
Sopwith Camel – Part Three – Decision Time

Decision time comes at many stages of a build – Shop, Shelf, Box, and Bench. For the desperadoes amongst us we can add the Screen. a. Shop. Which one to go to? The closest one? The one with the biggest range? The one who gets the newest kits in? The one with the best prices?…
-
Sopwith Camel – Part Two – The Bagatelle Trap

How many times have you dismissed something as too minor to much concern yourself with? And how many times have you been proved wrong? The casual builder of this little Academy kit may well miss some of the joys of the universe if they take a flippant attitude. Admittedly, the cockpit is nothing at all.…
-
Sopwith Camel – Part One – A Kind Gift

A gift camel. I feel like a middle eastern potentate. Actually a second gift Camel. One came from my friend Paul and one from my friend Warren. This latter one is the Academy kit, and as I’ve just completed a Revell WW1 fighter, I thought I would have a change and do the Academy. It…
-
Bristol Bulldog – Part Six – Pip Pip Reggie

The Lockdown Bulldog was finished – and a day before time. Shows what you can do when you are doing what you can do… Someone – I cannot think who it was – gave the big horse laugh at US Navy and US Army aircraft of the 1930’s for being too colourful. He saw the…
-
Bristol Bulldog – Part Four – Partial Masking

I cannot say that I look forward to masking all that much. But I recognise that it is an in-escapable part of aircraft painting in small scales. There are things you just cannot freehand with enough precision. This is hilarious considering some of the pictures I’ve seen of ground crew respraying aircraft in wartime with…
