Category: design
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Piper J3 – Part Five – The Universal Cub
The best thing about the Piper J3 Cub is it is so darned cute. The second best thing is that it is ubiquitous. It can sit on the tarmac of any of my airports or air museums from the 1930’s onward and be perfectly at home. The kit has proved to be a beauty –…
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Junkers Ju52 – Part Three – Hugo’s Ghost
Hugo Junkers died in 1935. May he rest in peace. What I am left speculating about is; was he buried in a corrugated coffin? All the Junkers planes I have built so far have featured this form of sheet metal and I am starting to think it would have been a nice touch if he…
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Junkers Ju52 – Part Two – The Four-part Fuselage
The Potez bomber that Mister Craft boxed up from a Heller mould had a distinctive four-sided fuselage that lent itself to IKEA construction. So does the Junkers 52 – as long as you get the elements in registration it all goes very well. But that doesn’t mean that you can wipe round the edges, clap…
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Living Up To Low Standards
I have often stood in awe of the work of other modellers. I can say truthfully that when I have seen results that are far superior to anything I could ever hope to achieve, I have given them their due. It is the fair and gentlemanly thing to do and if you look at things…
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Grumman Goblin I – Part Five – The March To The Gallows
You can only put off unpleasant things for so long – eventually you have to face up to them and either conquer or be conquered. In my case the dread arose because of the cabane and interplane struts of this aircraft. True to their past form, the short-run moulders had made hardly any provision for…
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Grumman Goblin I – Part Two – Interior Lines Of Confusion
I like photo-etch brass pieces. I also like chiggers and toothache. All three are acquired tastes… In the case of the Goblin I, the brass fret is not too daunting – rendered more comfortable by the fact that I am not going to touch about half of the tiny parts on it. This is not…
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The Proper Font Is Never There
I do my own decals in an inkjet printer for many of the 1:72 aircraft I build. It’s not that I am contemptuous of the commercial maker’s decals – far from it. I love Cartograf and other fine printing companies for they ability to make a good decal with thin carrier film and good moulding…
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Bristol Bulldog – Part Six – Pip Pip Reggie
The Lockdown Bulldog was finished – and a day before time. Shows what you can do when you are doing what you can do… Someone – I cannot think who it was – gave the big horse laugh at US Navy and US Army aircraft of the 1930’s for being too colourful. He saw the…
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Bristol Bulldog – Part Three – Plane, True, And Plumb
Say what you will about super-detail kits and expensive models – you just cannot beat a kit that will go together cleanly with no strain on the components. Oh, we’ve all had kits where we’ve coped. Where we’ve managed to make one warp counteract another and end up with something that looks like the box…
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The Commemorative Scheme
We’ve all seen one that we liked – and ten that made us wince. I mean the commemorative scheme applied to a current airplane in someone’s roster. It may be a warplane, a civil airliner, or a private plane. It might be an R/C model or a static one. But as soon as you see…
The Little World 