Category: design
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Not Every Tool Is A Good Tool
But they won’t tell you that at the hobby shop or on the internet site. We all have more tools than we use…every toolbox I’ve ever seen has at least 10 – 20% excess in it that just gets shifted about when we look for the useful items. Yes, I’m guilty of this too. Every…
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Who Sets The Bar Over Which You Leap?
Who sets you up to fail? Is it the manufacturer who makes a 600-part kit where 50 parts would be adequate? Is it the contest judge with a God-complex who marks you down to boost himself up? Is it you, who live in perfect magazine images and internet sites and never realise that real life…
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General Dynamics F111 – Part One – A New Maker
I am never happier than when building a kit from a maker that I have not encountered before. It is a new land to explore. This Arii kit from Japan came with very rudimentary instructions - really nothing to help with decal placement or colouring save the box art. Yet the individual components and the decals…
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Bristol Type 130 Bombay – Part Three – Is It Mistrust Or Distrust?
The dictionary isn’t clear on the distinction. Either way, when I look at the design of some kits – particularly the butt joint of a thin horizontal stabiliser – I start to get sceptical. My experience of adhesives tells me that there are all too many instances when they don’t. I would not ask long…
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Bristol Type 130 Bombay – Part Two – The Inside Job
I’ve learned to do as I’m told…mostly. I do pay attention when the makers of a kit instruct me to build the aircraft cockpit first. Dropping one in after the fuselage is joined is very rarely an option. It can be done with some Soviet fighters where there is a large opening at the wing…
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Bristol Type 130 Bombay – Part One – Slow And Fat
This model was purchased in panic when I thought a local hobby shop was closing down. I did not want to miss out. Well the shop is still open, but I do not regret the purchase. I have recently built a modern Bristol Type 170 Super Freighter and this older bus will be a wonderful…
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Rounding On The Roundel
How many times have you put the decal on wrong? More that you’d think… The use of a distinctive insignia or roundel for any particular air force has been mandated for over a century. It was difficult for pilots to identify friends or foes if they have to land and ask a series of questions…
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Fairey Swordfish Mk I – Part Three – Wings Over The Workbench
I walk in awe of the people who build scale model biplanes and then rig them. They have condemned themselves to the sort of stage act that used to involve Chinese jugglers, bamboo poles, and spinning bowls…and then added the sort of things that would make a spider burst into tears. I don’t know what…
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The Glaring Omissions
In hobby shops full of Messerspitstang kits and the space ships of the latest franchise movie, it is actually painful to stride the aisles looking for the missing links. I concentrate most effort on 1:72 scale aircraft and have long built the standards. I’ve built the semi-standards, and a fair few of the obscurities as…
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MiG 23 Flogger – Part One – Swinging Wing Again
From what I read, the MiG 23 was a bit of a Soviet bust…nowhere near as successful as the previous MiG 21 on the world market. Not my problem. This 1/144 model was kindly donated and looks like it will build up well. It has the swing-wing feature of the period, and in this case…
The Little World 