Category: Decals
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De Havilland Mosquito Mk II – Part Two – The Peek Into The Box
I must confess to a slightly pusillanimous nature when it comes to buying model airplane kits sight-unseen. I was bit by a Revell Tradewind kit as a child and the scar still throbs in wet weather. I prefer to look carefully at what I’ve got before I spend my money. Nevertheless I do read reviews…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Five – The Captive Bird
A surprising number of airplanes have been captured in war and returned to flying on behalf of their enemies. Some as service machines, some as decoys, and some as test beds. This might seem to be a bonus for the people who capture the enemy’s warplanes, but remember that they also need to capture the…
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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…
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Douglas Dakota – Part One – Ooh, It’s Started…
Okay, okay, I know. It’s just another 1:72 DC-3/C-47/Dakota. But it’s my plane and my workshop and my weblog column so I have a right to be excited. Particularly since I found a bargain. The kit is Italeri and has been out for a while. It sat on the hobby shop shelf next to other Italeri…
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When You Had No Idea Before…
Scale modelling has many surprises – not the least of which are the prices of the after-market accessory packs. But even if you do not go that far, there are still discoveries to be made: a. The size of things. Here one must have some sort of yardstick to measure what is seen in…
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Macchi C.200 Saetta – Part Three – Fascist!
And proud of it – so proud that they wore a stylised image of fasces as an air force insignia on the Italian Air force planes in the early part of WW2. Of course it featured largely in political imagery as well and was promoted by Mussolini for all sorts of purposes. It went out…
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The Longest Day
No, it’s not another D-Day memorial blog. You can wash the black and white stripes off your computer monitor… It’s a post about which day in the build of a model is the easiest – which is the hardest – which the least enjoyable – and which is the one you like the best. As…
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Bristol/Fairchild Bolingbroke – Part Four – The Coastal Command Wing
I have been delaying publication of the Bristol/Fairchild Bolingbroke final photos for several reasons; the weather is cold, the paint is slow to dry, and I have been making mistakes. Fortunately, not the sort of errors that are irreversible. The colour scheme of the Bolingbroke is taken directly from the Avia book I mentioned in…
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Bristol/Fairchild Bolingbroke – Part Three – Are We Hobbyists Or Detectives?
I bought the Avia book about Canadian aircraft of WW2 on a whim at Hylands Bookstore in Melbourne earlier in the year. Hylands is a peripatetic purveyor of printed matter – I have been to 4 of their premises in the CBD of Melbourne over the decades and each time it has been a unique…
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Decal Day
Well, I knew it was coming…I knew it when I saw the sheet of transfers in the kit – when I bought the extra packet at the plastic model fair – when I googled up all the various marques of plane that had the same name as the one a’ building. I knew that I would…
The Little World 