Category: design
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RCN Avenger – Part Two – You Will Be Dismayed
I nearly was. Not with the Sword model kit. This is a good one. With the Royal Canadian Navy – for their re-christening of the Grumman torpedo bomber ( Note that this is a TBM, which indicates that it was made by General Motors, rather than Grumman as a TBF – but it is the…
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RCN Avenger – Part One – The Eh Model
Another Sword model in the post – this one was a certain purchase as soon as I saw it had Royal Canadian Navy markings. The ASW and replenishment role that the Avenger took after service in the US Navy and Royal Navy in WWII eventually brought them to the RCN. It got rid of the…
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Vautour IIN – Part One – Who Made it?
I initially thought it was Dassault. Then I thought it was SNCAO or SNCASE and then Pret a Manger and then eventually I didn’t care any more. It was designed and produced by someone in France, for some reason, at some stage of the game. Many were made and quite a few flew. Past that…
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Curtiss Shrike – Part Four – Dragon Boo Boo
I generally have complete faith in things I read. This has served me well with all the elections I’ve ever voted in – I follow the instructions on the how-to-vote card and so far all my candidates have been elected. I also follow the printed instructions on the back of the Betty Sydney cake packets…
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Curtiss Shrike – Part Two – Folding Wing Or Not?
Not. The USAAF was not concerned about squashing a dive bomber onto a deck-edge lift to strike it down to a hangar deck. They could specify a fixed wing and get a stronger one that would hold more bombs. The Dragon model company makes this kit serve several purposes – US Navy SB2C as well…
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When Something Tickles Your Fancy
Rejoice. It means you still have a fancy and it is still capable of being tickled. There are people in the world for whom this is just a distant dream. Celebrate the fact that you can still be amused. If the thing that captures your attention is just a passing phenomenon you can take some…
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MiG 17 – Part Three – Dam Those Wings
I have always thought that wing dams were an admission of error on the part of an aircraft designer. Yet they feature on any number of Eastern and Western jets – mostly the ones that have swept wings. You may know them as stall fences or barriers. They keep the air moving back past the…
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MiG 17 – Part Two – Smarter Than The Average Bear
Look here, Prague. The Russians – crude stumbling peasants that they are…drunken, covered in ice and angst…can make a cockpit tub that fits into the fuselage first time. The tub is a precise moulding and the partitions that hold it in place allow both sides of the fuselage to approximate without gaps. It’s almost as…
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Martin B10 Bomber – Part Four – If I Want A Pretzel…
…I’ll go to the bakery. The production of a complex fuselage is…well…complex. And sometimes the strange shape must cause the final product to come out of the mould a little distorted. I suspect this was the case with the Martin B 10. There was enough of a warp to render it impossible to set all…
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Martin B10 Bomber – Part Three – A Split Personality
And split on the horizontal plane, not the vertical. This form of model design is not as common as the vertical, but in this case I think it is perfectly logical. The Martin B10 has a sinuous body – and the proportions remind you of the Handley Page Hampden or the Dornier Do 17-K. The…
The Little World 