Category: Chinese models
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Grumman Wildcat – Part Four – Neutrality Patrol
This colour scheme on the Grumman F4F Wildcat is apparently real – it was seen in 1941 in the Atlantic aboard the USS RANGER conducting something called a Neutrality Patrol. It’s the standard US Navy Yellow Wing scheme adapted to the eastern seaboard. Neutrality? Was the USA expecting attack from the British or Germans or…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part Two – Four-Part Harmony
In each of the two pictures on this post there are four plastic parts. They’re glued up and setting overnight. The time taken to get to this point, including the washing of the parts, was about one hour. I’ve spent longer in the barbers. This would be a terrible thing for some modellers to contemplate.…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part One – Hello Yellow
My friend Warren once pulled up a Hobby Boss kit of the F4F Wildcat in early colours and it set me investigating. This plane turned up in one of the profiles out of a modelling magazine – I can’t tell you if the kit makers made theirs from the illustration or if the illustrator drew…
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Dewoitine D.520 – Part Three – C’est Fini
And fini’d very well, I might add. The usual number of minor errors and hidden mistakes, but then that is par for the course. The D.520 paint job is not perfect – I was trying the freehand spray technique with the pressure on the airbrush turned down to 8 psi and a very thin mixture.…
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Dewoitine D.520 – Part Two – C’est l’Avalanche
One cannot do a Hobby Boss kit slowly – the very nature of the simple moulding does not lend itself to the dawdler. You either do it in normal speed and accept that you will progress rapidly or lapse into ennui. That is my philosophical explanation for the Dewoitine on a stick that you see…
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Dewoitine D.520 – Part One – Allo, Allo…
I have passed the Hobby Boss Dewoitine D-520 kit on the hobby shop shelves for a couple of years now with no regrets. I’d built a Morane Saulnier and a Caudron and the prospect of an diminutive French plane was no urgent call. But I’ve recently borrowed one of those profile books of WW2 fighters…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part Two – Tubby Little Devil
The cockpit assembly of the Panther has just been completed and I must say it’s pretty nice for a $ 20 model. 5-piece, and some fine moulding on the sidewalls and instrument panel. And for a change the panel decal actually fit the piece. Micro-Sol doesn’t hurt either. The interior of the fuselage is…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part One – The Cheap Cat
I have long admitted a weakness for bargain model kits. You have only to show me a shelf full of the expensive ones with a cheap runt at the end and you know which one I’ll take. In the case of the Hobby Boss F9F-2 Panther it was sitting next to a similar kit in…
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Gloster Meteor F.1 – Part One – V-1 Vs F.1
When I saw the Dragon model of the Gloster Meteor on the shelf of the little local model specialty shop, I leapt at it. I have a set of decals for an Israeli jet and I thought my luck was in. As it happens, the IAF Meteors were a noticeably later model, with distinctive nacelles…
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Hawker Sea Hawk – Part One – Memories of the 60’s
A casual post on the internet alerted me that my favourite go-to model company had released a 1:72 version of one of my favourite models of the 1960’s: the Hawker Sea Hawk. And this one from Hobby Boss was reported to be more than just a quick-build kid’s kit. Be that as it may, I…
The Little World 