Category: Czech models
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Why Did You Want To Build That One?

If someone looks at your newly-completed scale model and asks you that question, you can give a good, cogent answer. If you ask the question of yourself, you are in trouble. If you cannot come up with an answer…you’re sunk. Or are you? There are some things that you cannot see clearly – some things…
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I Now Know…

I now know my least favourite scale modelling task: making up propellers from separate blades and hubs. I have just completed the gluing on two propellers for the Lockheed Electra Junior and am waiting for them to set. The maker decided to do the hubs in resin and the blades in styrene – so I…
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Vickers Wellington Mk 1C – Part Six – Don’t Touch Me…

I’m clean. And socially isolated. And I want to remain this way for at least five minutes… There probably never was a clean Coastal Command Wellington. Or Liberator, Sunderland, Digby, Whitley, or Hudson…or anything else that started life as white on the underside. Think about it. Underneath is where things run to when they leak,…
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Vickers Wellington Mk 1C – Part Two – More Poles

Our heading image is very close to the version of the Wellington Mk 1C that I am building, though in the case of this plane it has the later grey and grey/green upper works rather than the green/brown. But it provides painting hints that Italeri have left out of their instructions, so I am grateful.…
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Vickers Wellington Mk 1C – Part One – Sold Down The Aisle

If ever there was an example of successful box art it must surely be this Italeri 1:72 Vickers Wellington Mk IC – successful for me and for the hobby shop. The end flap illustration caught my eye in Hearn’s Hobbies in Melbourne and I was sold as soon as I slid the box down off…
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Avia S-199 – Part Six – A Messer By Any Other Name

As soon as I saw the photographs of the Avia S-199 in Czechoslovakia and then later in Israel I knew someone was fooling with me. The propellor gave it away. It was a cartoon propellor from a Daffy Duck movie. I mean, who would put as big a prop on a plane like that…? Well…
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Avia S-199 – Part Four – Ol’ Stripey Tail

I appear to have learned something from my past experiences with Israeli fighter planes. This time I did not attempt decals for the rudder, electing instead to paint the 101 Squadron stripes. They have been very successful, and tempt me further to try to paint the rest of the ID stripes and Magen Davids rather…
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Avia S-199 – Part Three – What Colour Is The Colour Of An Argument?

Answer: Whatever colour you ask about in a modeller’s paint forum. I went to my computer to google someone else’s opinion about the grey/green colour of an S-199 in Israeli service. I encountered scholarly works that deteriorated into name-calling and vulgarity. I did not see any profile pictures of the writers but I can pretty…
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Avia S-199 – Part Two – The Old Grey Mezek

She ain’t what she used to be. The 199 had the name of Mezek in Czechoslovakia – that meant ” mule “. In Israel it was officially a ” Sakeen ” or ” knife “. It was unofficially a Messer…which is pretty good because that means ” knife ” in German and it was the…
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Play It As It Lays

That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
