Category: Decals
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The Curse of the Were-Decal

A modeller’s Halloween horror story… I had just gotten to the decal stage for a new model – a tiny little Academy 1:72 Sopwith camel. Lovely model, with interplane and cabane struts that just fell into place. And a simple colour scheme for mine – the RAF museum plane at Hendon; khaki and linen. The…
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Sopwith Camel – Part Five – Hendon’s Prize

On some occasions I will have all I need to decorate a model but miss out on one thing. In this case it is a set of small decals for the airframe number. There is one on the Academy decal sheet, but it’s wrong for the Hendon camel. I adopt a sensible attitude to these…
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Sopwith Camel – Part Four – Marking The Territory

And the next time I do, it will be with an incontinent dog. The colour scheme chosen for the Academy Sopwith Camel is the closest I could come to the preserved example in the RAF museum at Hendon. Working on the assumption that if any knew what a Camel would look like it would be…
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Sopwith Camel – Part One – A Kind Gift

A gift camel. I feel like a middle eastern potentate. Actually a second gift Camel. One came from my friend Paul and one from my friend Warren. This latter one is the Academy kit, and as I’ve just completed a Revell WW1 fighter, I thought I would have a change and do the Academy. It…
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Piper J3 – Part One -The Household Word

Hoover. Not Herbert, you herbert. Hoover like in vacuum cleaner. The brand name. Except, in England it isn’t a brand name – it’s the name of a class of product – the vacuum cleaner. People don’t vacuum the house, they hoover it. Losing that capital letter was the greatest piece of industrial and advertising good…
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” Paint Parts Before Assembly “

” What? Instructions? We laugh at your instructions! Real men glue everything together first and then mask for a week to paint something! We don’ need no estinkin’ instructions… An’ as far as dat go, we decal before we paint. We decal any time we damwell feel like! Nobody tell us when to decal. An’…
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Junkers Ju52 – Part Four – Czech Junk

Old Czech junk. Actually old French junk that was foisted on the Czechs. And happy they were to get it, too. The scheme of the Junkers 52 that you see in the finished product is listed as being in service with the Police Air Service in 1950. A bit of googling shows that the Police…
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Junkers Ju52 – Part Three – Hugo’s Ghost

Hugo Junkers died in 1935. May he rest in peace. What I am left speculating about is; was he buried in a corrugated coffin? All the Junkers planes I have built so far have featured this form of sheet metal and I am starting to think it would have been a nice touch if he…
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Grumman Goblin I – Part One – The New Appearance

I regularly cruise through Hobbytech in Myaree to see what’s new. Of course, no cruise is ever painless. I buy something every time. If it is not paint or a new tool, it is a kit of some sort. I am not complaining or bragging – just stating a fact of life. Like gravity or…
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The Proper Font Is Never There

I do my own decals in an inkjet printer for many of the 1:72 aircraft I build. It’s not that I am contemptuous of the commercial maker’s decals – far from it. I love Cartograf and other fine printing companies for they ability to make a good decal with thin carrier film and good moulding…
