Category: design
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Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk V – Part Three – Subassembly Day

A day at my model building club is a short one – I get there about 9:00 AM and leave at noon. But I can accomplish a lot in those hours…drink coffee, eat cake, make bad jokes, and cement the first parts of a kit together. The amount of cementation depends to some extent upon…
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Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk.V – Part Two – I’ve Seen That Somewhere Before…

The more I looked at the AW Whitley in parts on the sprue trees, the more I got the feeling that I’d seen something like it before. The French inter-war bombers came to mind, but it was the awkward chin window that stick in my mind. Surely they didn’t think it was a good idea…Where…
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The Inaccurate Model

If you are a reader of Britmodeller or some of the IPMS sites you’ll find that there are a number of people who live in mortal fear – whether it’s fear of discovering their plastic kit is out by three millimetres or fear of discovering that it’s not – is not clear. I think the…
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Savoia Marchetti S.79 Sparviero – Part Three – Clearly…

I’ll bet you are the same as I – as you open any new kit box you approach the little sprue of clear plastic bits with fear and trembling. Trepidation. Horror and anxiety. It is the equivalent of meeting the computer date for the first time. You never know what you are going to get……
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Somewhere There Is The Land Of Giants

Little worlds abound on our planet. From my own RCAF WET DOG and Wet Dog Regional Airport or countless model villages in the UK, to Madurodam, or the giant German public rail layout or the equally large private US and Canadian layouts…there are slices of tiny life everywhere. I am prepared to award the title…
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Scale Model Philosophy 101

I once completed a very nice build of a very bad kit. It was not the worst one I had attempted, nor the best job I’d ever done, but it did bring into focus what has become my guiding principles. I hasten to add that these are not virtues or glories…just realisations about the hobby.…
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Grumman F9F-2 Panther – Part Three – You Only Forget Once

Putting together a model of a jet airplane is pretty straightforward in comparison to a biplane or a WWII bomber. Fewer parts, no propellors, and usually a much sturdier undercarriage. But there is one thing that most modern jets have in common – tricycle landing gear and a tendency to sit on their tails. The…
