Category: design
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Westland Whirlwind – Part Two – Building Someone Else’s Memories
This Westland helicopter model of the late 50’s from Airfix seems to figure largely in the memories of other people. Everyone I have shown the box to seems to have built it back in the day and are scathing about it. I am fresh to the neighbourhood and am starting to feel somewhat wary –…
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Be Prepared To Be Wrong
Those of you who are married will find it a familiar feeling… But making mistakes in scale modelling is slightly different from the errors experienced during marital bliss. For one, they are quieter… And less permanent. You can paint something wrong, or badly, and realise it…and never do it again…without having to hear about it…
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A7 Corsair II – Part Six – Library Build Champ
This is the first aircraft that I’ve built in the Cambridge Library – not in the UK, but in Floreat, Western Australia. The venue has allowed a small group of plastic modellers to have a facilities room on alternate Saturday afternoons for a model-building meeting. We share the space with slightly bemused students who effect…
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A7 Corsair II – Part Five – On Her Feet
When next you see a charity tin marked ” Italeri “, stop and put a dollar in. They are good people. In particular, they have respect and kindness for builders of their 1:72 aircraft – they always provide decent landing gear and attachment points for gear legs in the engine nacelles, wings, or fuselages. If…
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A7 Corsair II – Part Two – Library Day
Somewhat of a novelty – an afternoon spent scale modelling at the Cambridge Library in Floreat Forum. It was as a member of a Saturday club that hitherto has met at one chap’s home. This was an experiment in connecting with his local library – a place where we also display a cabinet of our…
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Vultee Vanguard – Part Four – Mind The Gap
Fitting an eastern European model together is like opening Forrest Gump – you can never tell whether you have a soft centre or not. In the best kits the parts fit, and in the rest they nearly fit. You are fortunate if the gaps are symmetrical and the surfaces parallel. Plastic strip and sheet can…
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Vultee Vanguard – Part Three – Hate, Loathe, And Despise
If I told you I hate, loathe, and despise kits that have separate blades and hubs for their propellers you might get the wrong idea. Many 1/72 planes have this feature and the two, three, or four-bladed props sandwich in between a hub and a spinner and end up looking fine. I reserve my negative…
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Desperate Modellers
Every time you encounter a model of the Eiffel Tower made of matchsticks, doff your hat and stand silent for a minute. You are in the presence of death. The person who spent six months making the model – and paid $ 50.25 for glue and wooden sticks – was a fine human being. Perhaps…
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Polikarpov I-1 – Part Two – The Corrugated Cat
I think Junkers and Ford have a lot to answer for in what they did to aviation design. The Stuka and the Tri-Motor were certainly successful in themselves, when applied in the right way, but they must have led many others astray – Polikarpov amongst others. The temptation of a monocoque skin in corrugated aluminium…
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Polikarpov I-1 – Part One – One Tin Fighter
Captain Frugal here. I have been given an ICM kit – or I may have bought it…I cannot really remember. But it did not cost as much as the examples on the shelf of my local hobby shop. It is, however, every bit as good as the higher-priced spread, and good for me, too. The…
The Little World 