Category: design
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Lockheed Hercules – Part Three – Enough Meat On The Bone
In my recent builds I have concentrated upon small aircraft. This is fun and fine – it delivers quick satisfaction and another plane for the collection. But it sometimes seems as if there is very little going on – that the thing flies together in a day or so. I start to miss the meat…
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Lockheed Hercules – Part Two – First Sprues
I may have been typecasting myself at the model club. Everyone who saw me start on the C-130 commented that I was building a big model at last. Well, it is big, but not much more than the Italeri Fairchild Flying Boxcar of 2018. The seams between panels are raised, but discretely so. The polish…
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Can A Manchester Or Lincoln Be That Far Away?
I am a solid fan of the Airfix company’s plastic model kits. I cannot remember ever having a really bad, unbuildable one from them. Some of their offerings could be a little crude, but they were of their time and reasonably priced withal. They did concentrate on British marques and that was fine – they…
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The Weak Link
In every chain they say the weak link will break first. So with every scale model. It changes with each type that you build. Do a few and you’ll know what to expect. You can fortify yourself against the troubles if you get in first. a. Aircraft are weakest in three areas; landing gear, antennae,…
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Mess With Their Minds
Scale model builders are in an enviable position; they are considered harmless and childish. This is ideal cover from which to snipe at passers-by… a. Build a perfectly standard kit of a common airplane. Perhaps a Spitfire, Mustang or Messerschmitt. Pick an average kit, and it need not be an expensive one. Assemble the fuselage…
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Grumman Guardian – Part …Well… The Only Part
I confess. I got greedy. I started building and just couldn’t stop. I didn’t even take build photos. But in the end, I fell back exhausted and satisfied. I had scored a definite win in the game of scale modelling. I had contemplated this model kit for a year at a local shop. The emotion…
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The Easternisation Of the Hobby
When I first started building plastic models in the 1950’s there were few Soviet-bloc models to be found. A few oddities, like the Aurora MiG 19 which proved to be totally imaginary…or the Airfix MiG 15 which was somewhat better. And a lone copy of the Bison bomber that Revell put out in the 60’s.…
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How Do You Know When To Get A Divorce?
Not a divorce from your spouse. Heaven Forbid. You married, and you have no right to demand happiness now. If you are a scale modeller you have other resources… No, I mean when do you decide that a kit in the stash is never, ever going to get built, and decide to sell it or…
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Westland Wallace – Part Four – Struttin’ Wid Some Barbecue
Or ” Jigging On The Spot “. The prospect of attaching eight interplane struts and four cabanes on the Westland Wallace called forth the engineer in me. Also the foam board fanatic. The basic requirement was that the struts sit straight but canted forward from the lower to the upper wing and that they allow…
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Westland Wallace – Part Two – In West You Build Model
In Russia, model build you! It certainly builds your basic modelling skills, as well as your stoicism. The ill-fitting parts, flash, and suspect plastic make sure of that. This kit started in 1964 as a FROG Trailblazer, and the trail has long since been lost – overgrown in weeds. Even when explored by a small…
The Little World 