Category: design
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part Five – An Ephemeral Chinese Bomber
Ephemeral? Well look at the guns, antennae and landing gear of this Soviet design. This model will be lucky to make it to my display shelf without these breaking off. The pictures you see in this post may be the last complete images of this ICM product ever shown. I am not unhappy with the…
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part Four – The Inevitables
” The Inevitables ” is a cartoon band of super-heroes that you eventually watch, even if you don’t want to… The inevitables in a complex kit from Eastern Europe are the things that don’t fit and the things that are too complex. The first was illustrated when I found gaps in the structure – yawning…
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part Three – Ministry Of The Interior
I am in several minds about detailing the insides of 1/72 scale aircraft. On one hand it is a pain, but on the other it means an additional glance into the design – even if I am the only person who will ever see it. In the case of this Tupolev bomber, the open cockpit…
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part Two – More Pegs Than A Dublin Phone Book
And every one of them working… The next time you hear someone blithely tell you that they ” winged it “…and make out that it was all so easy…refer them to me. I have winged the Tupolev TB-3 and I know what the abyss looks like. The basic bracing inside was actually very precise –…
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part One – The Flying Shed
Say what you like about Soviet bomber designers of the 1930’s, few could match them for the ability to hope. Hope that their designs would be accepted, Hope that they would fly. Hope that they would not be imprisoned or liquidated. This assembly of sheet metal and hubris seems to have made it through the…
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Fairey Firefly Mk V – Part Two – Stub Wings
The first day of work on a new kit can be either basic cockpit or even more basic part sanding. Imagine my surprise when I got through a club meeting with the stub wings joined to the fuselage.The Airfix engineering has large mating surfaces for the wing roots onto the fuselage so you can proceed…
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Bristol F.2B – Part Two – Struttin’ Wif’ Some Styrene
And I had much rather it had been wif’ some barbecue… The point at which you regret your choices in life occurs to all of us, but it comes repeatedly to the scale modeller who builds biplanes. The original designers of the aircraft were forced to use multiple wings and sticks and wire between them…
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PZL – The Karas Yet Again
You might have to avoid me on the street – I seem to have become slightly fixated with this old Heller kit. I may start babbling… At least I am logical maniac. I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories – I recognise the randomly idiotic nature of the world and do not attribute any of…
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Radio Controlled Daily Driver?
Are all R/C cars racers? Or 4WD buggies? Has no-one got the ambition to drive a scale model Toyota Camry to a scale model shopping centre and spend a half hour trying to back it into a parking space? I was brought to this when visiting the doctor recently. In the car park was a…
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RAAF Spitfire Mk Vc – Part Three – Peg ‘0 My Heart
I love you… Okay, there is an earworm for you. If you are too young to know the tune put your cap on backwards, go away, and stare at your mobile phone. I am the strange old guy in the supermarket that looks at clothes pegs. Or the weirdo in Bunnings that tests out every…
The Little World 