Category: design
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
PZL Gull Wing – Part Two – Polish Plastic
I would love to read a definitive article on the plastics that we encounter in our model kit building. I suppose a lot of it is trade secrets and economic choices, but I think there would be a lot of interest in a scientific analysis of the various styrenes In particular, please give us a…
-
Wait For It…Wait For It…
The state government in Victoria has just announced that it will introduce legislation in 2022 to ban the public display of Nazi symbols in public. This sort of legislation exists in Germany, Austria, Poland, Ukraina, and France and has existed for quite some time. Exceptions seem to occur for museums or other institutions but the…
-
Morane-Saulnier N – Part Two – Simplicity In Silver
The Revell ( NZ ) model of the Morane-Saulnier N monoplane is the aviation equivalent of the spoiled vehicle kit it replaced – so simple in construction as to admit of assembly before painting. The pilot – Dimitri – has been painted separately and can rest in the shade while the rest of the build…
-
Use the Dull Blade…
Said no modeller, ever. Yet we all do it. We use the blade until the tip breaks off and the edge has tram lines on it and we need to push it 300 times harder to get it to cut. And when it is just right; dull, nicked, and rusty, we push it over the…
-
Matchbox Helldiver – Part Three – The Hubley Kit
If you are from North America you’ll recognise the name Hubley. They were a die-cast toy maker of the 40’s and 50’s who made larger size offerings. I owned a Hubley Bell telephone truck with working winch and pole trailer – surely an odd choice of prototype even for the times. I observed other kids…
-
Matchbox Helldiver – Part Two – Wing It Or Sling It?
Here’s a dilemma. I’ve pictures of the prototype SB2C with folded wings. And the Matchbox kit has folding wings. But they are folded on the toy principle and look bloody awful. I have low standards but every now and then something shows up that undercuts them. I have built folded wings on an Airfix Devastator…
-
Perverse Hopes
Relax. This is Safe For Work. If they have accepted the fact that you build plastic model kits, the worst is over. You can stop pretending to respectability and go back to looking at Airfix magazine in the toilets. The perverse hopes we speak of are: a. The hope that a major manufacturer will mould…
The Little World 