Category: design
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Swedish NA-16 – Part One – The Beechnut Models Company

You’ll want to remember that name – in case you are ever faced with one of their kits. If so, you have choices: a. Buy it, spend days of your life coping with its awful nature, and eventually turn out a masterpiece. Then die. b. Save time. Fall to the floor grasping your chest. c.…
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The Freedom To Explore

Includes the opportunity to achieve great things. And to fall down holes. If you can do this cheaply you are all the better. I use the opportunity provided by donated model kits to try out fresh ideas. Being honest, some of them are thrust upon me by the nature of the kits – and they…
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Straight Out of The Aftermarket Box

Or not, as the case may be… The decision of whether to use aftermarket parts or just what is in the kit box is often a hard one to make. It’s one of the marvels of the age we live in that we have this choice. At one time there was nothing between the Airfix…
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Aero Vodochody Delfin – Part Two – If You Call For Your Czech Early

You don’t have to leave a tip. A morning at my scale modelling club begins with 45-60 minutes on the road – coping with a series of traffic lights and a clogged-up river bridge. It is wearisome but I figure you have to pay for your pleasures somehow. The comes up to 3 hours of…
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The 1/285th Scale Model

Don’t let those pedants force you to 1/350 or 1/200 or anything else. If 1/285th was good enough for the 1950’s it is good enough for now. All we need is for the kit manufacturers to cut new moulds to this scale and box them. We desperately need another MISSOURI and BISMARCK…preferably with box art…
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Okay, Chase Me Around The Room With A Fire Axe

But listen to the idea first… Perth displays need a place to shine. Whether they are toy train shows, jewellery shows, or chicken butchering shows, they all need a good place to be seen. Currently the places that will host them are drafty, cold, ill-lit, and expensive. There is no support for displays that is…
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Ansaldo SVA 5 – Part Two – López De Media Cara

Or, in English, half-face Lopez. Because that is all this little 1:50th Spaniard has – his body is moulded well and he has a uniform, flying boots, and a helmet, but half his face is still in the mould. Just as well that he has been depicted facing to Port – the deformity is masked.…
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The Blank Slate Model

Few scale models are built on an original idea – nearly everything is a good or bad copy of something that already exists. The prototypes might have been just a one-off or even just a plan, but it was in someone’s mind before that of the modeller. However, there are exceptions. I think I have…
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Two Feed Gates Joined To A Sinkhole

By flash… The Far King L Scale Model Company has released its latest kit – a 1: 21.5th reproduction of the strutless biplane: the Christmas Bullet. It is tipped to be every bit as successful as the prototype. Modellers who are discouraged by other biplane kits will love the Bullet. The wings are cantilevered out…
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How To Achieve Air Superiority

Without firing a shot. Easy…spread propaganda that you have a new plane that is many generations beyond what your rival has. Produce propaganda and animated simulations of the aircraft and make it do things that are frankly impossible while claiming that you have hundreds of them in secret underground bunkers. Make accurate scale models of…
