Category: Collecting
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The Joy Of Cheap Modelling
I often write paeans to frugality, now that I’m retired. No big stream of money coming in means you must cut your coat according to cheaper cloth – and use smaller bolts of it. Fortunately I am skinny so a little covers a lot. The plastic model hobby is also a field for care. I…
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How To Swim The Shopping Channel
If you have been awake during the last 20 years you will have noticed a new channel on television; the Shopping Channel. It is a modern day version of the old pentagram and candles that invites demons into your home. You don’t give them your soul – you give them your money. In the case…
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A Lesson Learned
The smart people learn by reading, the less smart learn by listening, and the least smart end up pissing on the electric fence themselves. The recent club renovations and the destruction that could be wrought on plastic models by repeated moving set me thinking; the reading, listening and pissing came later. There are a number…
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Cheap and Cheerful
One of my friends has posted a picture on Facebook of an Airfix De Havilland Tiger Moth kit he’s building. He’s selected the RAF version in A/B camouflage and from the picture it looks delightful. He noted that it cost him $ 11 – and mentioned me as a cheap and cheerful modeller. Oh, if…
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Vickers Delta Mk III – Part Four – Tall Tails From The Canadian Woods
I mentioned the fact that I had secured two copies of the Special Hobby Vickers Delta Mk III kit from Metro Hobbies by post. They languished for some time before I felt the urge to build, but now that MX-B has come out so well, I’ve decided to keep up the momentum and start on…
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When Your Little World Blossoms
The Little World is blossoming. More and more models – in this case 1:72 scale – are coming onto exhibition and more and more kits are being discovered. There are three themes current and they can all expand for a number of years. This is all to the good. It’s sad to say, but sometimes…
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Breaker, Breaker. We Have A Breaker.
Have you ever noticed that some model kits are never destined to stay together? There are certain models that have been made to such fine – or such crude – standards that they can be assembled with however much care one can muster…but will fragment continuously ever after. They are destined to fall apart repeatedly.…
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Burbank
I appear to have started an aircraft factory. This was not my intention when I began my retirement modelling – I was just looking for one or two kits to while away spare time. Nostalgia. A mere bagatelle. Well, the Mere Aircraft Company’s Bagatelle Mk III turns out to have been a hell of an…
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Nothing Succeeds Like Excess
And isn’t that the motto of the times… Carrying on from yesterday, in the face of bad weather and with the desire to sit inside in the warm…I looked out all my old leftover cans of paint and texture material – the spare fences leftover from doll hoses and railway layouts – and the fake…
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The Shelf Life
I have a miniature air museum of model airplanes. And a motor museum of model cars. And an air field. And an airport. And very little space to actually live in – I need to move a Tupolev sideways to sit on the toilet. Reform is needed. I thought that this was possible with IKEA.…
The Little World 