Category: Canadian aircraft
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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 B-17 – Part Three – A Slight Detour

My projected mail plane needs to lose the upper and ball turret. The Academy people have not supplied blanking plates for these two gun positions so I need to occlude them with some scratch building. However, I started out with the basic cockpit and bomb bay assembly. The interior is supposedly chromate green according to…
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Boeing B-17 – Part One – Why Do I Buy Famous Airplanes?

Why indeed, if I don’t intend to build the famous version? Because the famous versions are what sell to other people and that’s what the kit makers manufacture. The best I can do is look at the basic structure of the thing and see if it conforms to my plans …or can be modified enough.…
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Good Morning, Staff.

Good morning. You may be wondering why I have called you here today. The first thing was to trial the ability of Photoshop to make focus stacking images automatically – a task which it has performed admirably. There are a few errors in the image taken of you but they can be largely overlooked. The…
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De Havilland DH.100 Vampire – Part Four – Whooooosh

Flying a Vampire must have been an exhilarating experience for pilots who had trained on propeller-driven aircraft. Or perhaps I should say propeller-pulled aircraft…as there were very few pusher planes past the WW1 era. Of course pilots who had flown with twin-engine bombers and other multi-craft would be used to a clear field in front…
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De Havilland DH.100 Vampire – Part Three – Tell Me The Truth, Doc

Don’t sugar coat the pill. Give it to me straight. I can take it. Is the Amodel kit going to go fit together or am I just going to end up sobbing in the corner? Well, actually, the news from Kiev is good. The basic pod of the Vampire goes together exceedingly well. If you…
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De Havilland DH.100 Vampire – Part Two – Czech Out The Cockpit – It’s Got Steppes…

Note: There are going to be a lot of Vampire posts in this column. If you are chiropterphobic look away now. As another modeller noted in his daily build column, the quality of fit on a small-run cockpit can be a variable matter. I approach all cockpit tubs, floors, or structures with trepidation these days…with…
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De Havilland DH.100 Vampire – Part One – Going A Little Batty…

I’m told I was scared by the De Havilland Vampire at an early age – my folks took me to the Calgary Stampede one year when I was about 3 and my dad had me perched on his shoulders when a flight of these new acquisitions to the RCAF flew low over the crowd. Apparently…
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When The Only 1:72 Game In Town…

Is: Reputed to be bad. Long sold out. Never seen locally. Not supplied by anyone else… …you are entitled to scuff your feet and make growling noises. I have been reviewing the chances of getting a 1:72 model of the Avro CF 100 Canuck interceptor and it would appear that this aircraft in model kit…
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North American Sabre – Part Five – NATO Defenders

The RCAF maintained a presence in Europe all during the Cold War, contributing fighter and reconnaissance units to continental defence. Whether the Sabres would have been all that effective in later years is debatable but by then there were CF 104 Starfighters as well. The basic colour scheme was that of the British units of…
