Category: Canadian aircraft
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Scale Model Kit Building Is Craft Beer In Styrene
Here’s two parallel experiences; buying a plastic model kit in a hobby shop and buying a six-pack of craft beer at the local Dan Murphy’s. In both cases you are basically paying out for a pig in a poke. The externals are generally confusing…the plastic model kit has either great box art or horrible writing,…
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Shaky Legs, Don’t Just Stand There…
And bite that trembling lip. A good idea has just surfaced. Model airplane kit builders can access any number of specialized kits and parts these days. If you find something crude in the box, you just keep shopping until you find a Czech firm that have made a better replacement part for it. Of course…
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Fairchild Flying Boxcar – Part Five – All That Gleams
The C-119 Flying Boxcar is ready for deployment. Ol’ 102 she is, and a finer example of the type couldn’t be found. At least not locally. The decision to paint it in 1949 livery was prompted by the fact that there were no stub fins under the vertical stabilizer. That meant no side lightning stripes,…
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Fairchild Flying Boxcar – Part Four – A Little Dodgy
Actually a little Dodge truck. The box says it is a ” WC-51 Light Truck “. The Italeri moulding is fine – with too much detail for convenient building and a high-boy aspect to it that cannot be right. But as it is cargo for the C-119, it will do nicely. Halfway up the ramp…
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Fairchild Flying Boxcar – Part Three – The Smear Campaign
My efforts to obtain 1:72 decals from Canada for the C-119 Fairchild Flying Boxcar came to nought – the sets that were made are long out of production. In the event, this is just as well, because they would have necessitated a major reconstruction of the aircraft’s tail to be authentic. I was thrown back…
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Fairchild Flying Boxcar – Part Two – The Silver Carcase
The Fairchild Flying Boxcar model is proceeding apace, but the pace is slow. This is a deliberate decision as I am using it as my weekly Men’s Shed project. This means I do most of the work on it in the Tuesday 9:00 to 12:30 time slot when I can attend the modelling club. So…
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Fairchild Flying Boxcar – Part One – The Gift Horse
I am either the best father in the world or the worst one. The decision will not be mine, though I would like to be told so that I can dress appropriately. The chance to be best came when my daughter was an airplane enthusiast a few years back ( she still is…) and took…
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Standin’ On The Tarmac – Part Five – The Light ‘O The Sun
Remember when I said I got it wrong with my tabletop picture – by using more than one light source? Well, so I did, but that is not completely accurate. I got it wrong by using two equal light sources. I was that close to the proper thing, if only I had realised it. Go outside. Look…
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Standin’ On The Tarmac – Part One – The Wrong Stuff
Watchin’ all the birds roll by…dum de dum dum. Should put that to music – might make a good pop song. Standin’ on a scale model tarmac, runway, racetrack, street, or hardstand is the subject of this series of essays. If you are repulsed by mathematics, just look at the pretty pictures. The Little Studio…
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The Play Set
I just figured out why I like my model airfields so much. They are the best play set I’ve ever had. The Louis Marx company play sets that appeared in so many North American Christmas catalogues in the 50’s were wonderful things. You could get Fort Apache, The Alamo, The Army Camp, Cape Canaveral, Cops and…
The Little World 