Category: design
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CAC Wirraway – Part Four – Gappy vs Gapless
It is pretty simple to guess whether kit builders prefer their models with good or bad fit. But if there is going to be a situation in between – where do you want the gaps to fall? The aircraft modeller generally sees it in wings and tail, with the ambitious factories inventing new places to…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Three – An Evergreen Cockpit
When the world gives you bare cockpits you just go out and build your own. The High planes Wirraway is a kit on a budget and there doesn’t seem to be enough in the kitty for much interior. I count a cockpit floor, two seats, two control sticks, and a couple of instrument panels. As…
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CAC Wirraway – Part Two – The Grind Begins
With a grinding… Specifically, inside the wings and the fuselage, Both these areas have cast re-enforcements running diagonally over their rough plastic. I suspect they are extra conduits for the molten styrene to flow through so that sufficient bulk of material reaches past thin areas. Other makers may design sprue tree elements outside of the…
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RCAF Hudson – Part Four – 145 (BR) Sqn
Eastern Air Command, Torbay, Newfoundland. Well, if you cannot have dedicated patrol bombers from the British Air Ministry, you buy or borrow them from the USAAF. Pressed into service for a long time, they did succeed in sinking a U-Boat and damaging several, The last few years of their service was arduous and even the…
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RCAF Hudson – Part Three – Mother Hubbard’s Hudson
She went to the cupboard – or in this case the interior of the bomber – and it was bare… Just as well my model of the Lodestar from Special Hobby has a full passenger interior- even their Harpoon had a better cockpit. About all you can say for AIrfix is that the bulkheads fit…
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RCAF Hudson – Part One – At Long Last
I have skirted around the Lockheed Hudson for decades. My collection includes a Lodestar, a Ventura, and a Harpoon – all fun to build and successful finishes. Yet the basic Hudson has eluded me – until Airfix decided to revive a Vintage Classic. I’ve been haunting the red-box shelves in two shops for months –…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Six – Manitoba
Winnipeg, actually. Remarkable place. When I was a child I spent a month there one week and I shall never forget it. The pills help, though… It is the site of the museum that houses CF-WCE – the Norcanair Bristol Freighter. Ex-RCAF, it served many years flying out of Saskatchewan to points north. Now it…
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It Is Hard To Sell A Poisoned Chalice
Especially if you have been killing off people’s enthusiasm with it for years. This sentiment applies to a lot of things; hobby publications, exhibition organisation, and box-scale kits come to mind. The magazines we loved to buy are slowly giving way to YouTube presentations that take up hours of our time for minutes of information.…
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The Future Of The Box Scale
I am starting to wonder about the future of the dear old box scale for model kits. I would have judged that the day is dead for this form of moulding. The division of the plastic kit industry into recognisable scales for particular purposes is so far advanced that there would seem to be little…
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Gloster Meteor F.8 – Part One – Third One Out Of The Stable
Fate has dealt me three Gloster Meteor kits; a Cyberhobby F.3, an old Airfix III ( ? ) , and a new Airfix F.8. I have played the first two as best as could be – the first as an RAF plane in the 1945 conflict, the second as a corroded gate guard on a…
The Little World 