Category: French aircraft
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Damn The French
Not for their food, or wines, or railway trains – which are excellent. Not for their beautiful women or their wise philosophers. Damn them for their aero camouflage schemes. Particularly the three-colour ones used in the 1930’s and 1940’s. They are hell to paint. The colours are fine – I like grey undersides. British Sky…
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Potez 540T – Part Four – Allons Enfant…
Le jour de gloire is here – under a week after starting…The Potez 540T is ready to fly! The discovery of this long-neglected kit in a back drawer was made last week – It was a kind gift from John, a club mate. It was a classic case of a sleeper – hiding under a…
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Potez 540T – Part Three – It’s A Fish…
But not the sort that you choose to eat – Rick Stein would throw this one back. Dick Stein is not so fussy. The addition of the nose fairing is marginally better than the glass turret, but it has given a deep-sea blobfish look to the poor old Potez – in grey primer it is…
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Potez 540T – Part Two – Two Days Later
My faith in this old Smêr kit is being vindicated at every stage. The paint came off – the parts came apart – and the reconstruction began. The windows are still running on the original cementation, so they got masked for the internal re-spray. The FF company harkened to their pre-war colour with a very…
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Potez 540T – Part One – From The Back Of The Cabinet…
Another forgotten orphan comes in from the storm – a Smêr kit of the dear old Potez 540 from 1986 – a rebox of a 1967 Heller kit. I welcome it as a companion of my youth. Well, not exactly my youth – but someone’s. This kit was started but never got past the fuselage…
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Foam Core For The Win Yet Again
Using foam board is now becoming the new trend around here. We’ve stopped using sheets of pasta when we make lasagne – it’s foam board instead. It also makes pretty good non-lethal ninja stars, if you’re into sex games… It also solved a problem in the decaling of a new fighter plane. I built an…
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SNCAN Martinet – Part Two – Pre-Armed
I am never quite sure whether I want the good news or the bad news first – but in any case I want to be warned what is coming. In the case of the Martinet I looked up another modeller’s build of the same kit and learned that Czech Sneeze had made a slight error…
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SNCAN Martinet – Part One – A Siebel By Any Other Name
Christmas was coming to the hobby shop and it was time to choose my present. In this case before the actual day, so I got a fresh choice. The SNCAN Martinet was a Siebel 204 produced in France during the occupation and afterwards. It was used by the French air force and then sold on…
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Farman NC 223.3 – Part Eight – Air France Libre
My first aircraft model with the Free French cross of Lorraine and it has been quite an experience. The Farman in warpaint would have been simple enough to do, and the camouflage would have disguised many of the difficulties encountered, but the appeal of the ivory paint and those FF insignia won out in the…
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Farman NC 223.3 – Part Seven – L’Éminence Grise
By the time a large scale model gets to the Mr Surfacer 1000 stage I no longer have any authority over it – the command structure is reversed. In a way, it is comforting to surrender the initiative in this way. Oh, there will be patching and sanding and other attendances but the die has…
The Little World 