Category: design
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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…
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A Good Reason
Vs no reason at all. If you want a history of design you have no further to look than the RFC/RAF roundels. Airborne identification is very sensible indeed – people bent on murder need to positively identify their enemies. The roundel, cross, star, or other symbol on an aircraft wing lets you see it at…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Four – Who’s Hiding?
And from whom? Where are they lurking? Is it all just nonsense these days? I have no idea – I presume the various air forces have worked out how to hide in the air with grey paint and rubber knobs on every sharp point of an aircraft. The business of greying out national insignia to…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Three – Let’s Give The Customers Something…
What shall it be? Accurate instruction sheets? Flawless mouldings? Adequate colour information? I have it – let’s just give them trouble. It’ll be fun and cheap and we can do it by making bad decisions. Like avoiding a centre seam on the top of the Mirage fuselage that could be smoothed and polished easily –…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Two – The Approximate Cockpit
I confess myself mystified at the philosophy that spends money to mould a resin seat of truly superb quality and then cannot make adequate provision to anchor it accurately within the fuselage. I admit that it is unlikely to escape once the two halves of the thing are cemented together, but the business of deciding…
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MiG 3 – Post Script
Looks like I was barking up the wrong tree – or at least one containing different squirrels. The MiG 3 kit I reported on – with the home-made canopy – came with an Italeri instruction sheet. I assumed they were the authors of the mould, and was a little nonplussed at some of the quality…
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MiG 3 – Part Four – Red Eight
Is Hero of Great Patriotic Aviation! Not loved by its pilots, not safe to fly at altitude, not effective as a gun platform….but that didn’t stop PRAVDA from advertising it as the greatest thing since sliced borscht. The model is pleasing, nonetheless – even the slightly odd-looking canopy. Considering that it was an experiment that…
The Little World 