Category: Canadian aircraft
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part Three – Seams We Need To Fill Something

If you paid more to read these posts, the jokes would be better. The fuselage on the Dora Wings is a model…of course it’s a model…of sturdiness. Once the sides and top come together with some liquid cement and dry for a night the whole is greater than the parts. But there is a discrepancy…
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part Two – Windows Of The Soul

If this were an Academy kit it would be windows of the Seoul. Thank you, thank you. Here all week. Try the veal. The missing windows ( a puzzle in philosophy – if windows are missing portions of the fuselage but they are not missing, are they missing? Answers third tub left in the Agora.…
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part One – Or Is It?

I have become suspicious about this Dora Wings model of a Bellanca CH-300 now that the box is open and I can see the instructions. They refer to it as a ” Peacemaker “. Was I meant to have a B-36 in the box? Never mind – I’ll build what I found. And what I…
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Who Decided My Childhood?

No, I don’t mean my parents or the school teachers or the rock and roll industry – I mean who decided which prototypes to make into the plastic models that I built? Bear in mind it was a childhood in a part of North America that was under both American and British influence. Airfix, FROG,…
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Is Out Of The Box Too Humble For You?

Go to a fancy restaurant. Order an expensive meal – prepared by a Michelin-starred chef. Ask for tomato sauce; see what happens… To their great credit and lasting fame, the people who organise our Big Local Scale Model Exhibition always leave a section of the entry form for people who wish to build their model…
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The Rise Of The Decal

Once upon a 1950’s time, when all good boys deserved models, there were large airplanes with small sheets of decals. Then times changed and the proportions reversed. As a 1:72 builder I am dealing with the small end of the market…small as to individual size but large as an overall genre. It is ideal for…
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Lockheed Vega Model 5 – Part Three – The Wild Goose

The decals are not quite what they might be on the side of the fuselage, but the wing markings have come out well. I am particularly pleased with the Loose Goose. The Vega is ready to fly. There are so few inter-war airliners and light planes readily available that this is a quite a catch…
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Lockheed Vega Model 5 – Part Two – Sleek And Simple

The mental picture of the 1930’s airliner can sometimes be very complex. One thinks of some of the French or British airlines that operated out of Hendon or Le Bourget and sees large biplanes or sesquiplanes with dangling nacelles, spatted wheels, and flying wires everywhere. Yet here is a 30’s ship that is the epitome…
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Lockheed Vega Model 5 – Part One – Legacy Stash

John Evans bought this model from Stanbridge’s model shop may years ago. Unfortunately neither John, Jack, nor the shop still exist. But that doesn’t stop us from remembering them fondly. My part in this will be to build up the MPM model of the Lockheed Vega Model 5. I suspect that John planned it to…
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Bristol Beaufort Mk I – Part Six – OTU Queen

The receipt of Mk I Beauforts by the RCAF in the early 40’s must have been a sort of a mixed blessing. They had been used on North Sea and Norwegian strikes, and then later in the Mediterranean by specially-trained squadrons of the RAF…often with Canadian crew members aboard. They had their share of successes…
