Category: Colour Schemes
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Three – Suspicions…

I am not a naturally suspicious man, as anyone who has seen me in the police lineups will attest. I am ready to take anyone at face value…as long as I can pronounce them guilty. This benign attitude even extends to looking at pictures of fighter planes and trying to figure out their colour schemes.…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part One – Never Let A Chance Go By…

I am indebted to a friend, Paul, for that bit of philosophy. He’s another modeller/collector/builder type and makes regular visits to hobby shops and toy stores wherever he goes. And he has the modeller’s eye that sees viable scale building materials in completely unlikely products. In my case it was a visit to a store…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Five – The Newfie

Those of you from the Dominion of Canada will know I speak with affection about Newfoundland – The place where this Hawker Hurricane was based. Specifically at Torbay in 1943 when German U boats were feared. They had successfully sunk ships nearby in the previous year and the RCAF needed to have a quick-response answer.…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Four – The Next Grievous Error

Well, I added one today. The next foolish error. The one that separates the men from the boys. And I know which side I’m on… I had masked the new Hawker Hurricane Mk II very well and I was ready to shoot the upper works. As it was a cold day. I selected lacquer thinner…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Three – The Beauty Salon

It was cold tonight. Rainy. I adjourned into the computer room with a portable modelling tray to proceed with the Hurricane in some comfort – the Little Workshop was just too miserable to work in, even with the heater on. The task was masking the pattern illustrated in the Avia publication on Canadian warplanes. I…
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The Aisle Of The Darned

Never mind the Isle Of The Damned or the Isle Of The Doomed – they are just comic book fiction. We have a real Aisle Of The Darned at my local hobby shop. From the start of it to the end, it is shelf after shelf of paint. No-one I know has ever successfully traversed…
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Bristol Benheim Mk I – Part Four – The Museum Aircraft

So why does a Bristol Blenheim Mk I bomber – a quintessentially early war RAF light bomber – show up in the Bomber Command hall of Stein’s Air World? I mean apart from the fact that there was a kit on the shelf at Stanbridge’s Hobby Shop and I had money in my pocket… If…
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Bristol Blenheim Mk I – Part One – The Cigarette Card Plane

When I was a child in Canada in the 5th grade, I was friends with a little English kid who had migrated with his parents to our mining town. I can’t remember much about him but I have one picture fixed firmly in my mind – he had a magnificent collection of English cigarette cards.…
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Douglas Dakota – Part Four – X

I think this was the best introduction I could have had to the Italeri brand of model kits – It had everything; good moulding, sensible build complexity, good material, and an economical price. The fact that it fits into my time period, nationality, and historical significance is a bonus. Plus there are numerous internet images…
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Douglas Dakota – Part Three – If They’re Not Shooting At You…Paint

There are many reasons for camouflage paint schemes on aircraft: a. A disrupted earthen top pattern prevents the enemy from seeing the plane from above while it is parked on the ground. b. A solid blue or white top pattern can also prevent the enemy from seeing it from above when it flies over water…
