Category: frugality
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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 Three – Uganda
How could you not love an air force that puts a chicken on their roundel. After the Entebbe raid in the 70’s Uganda got a transfusion of ex-Soviet and Warsaw Pact aircraft including this Czech L-29 Delfin. The net says that it was used as a training aircraft with occasional military operations. Whether that meant…
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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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Will The Robber Baron Succeed Where The Red Baron Failed?
Will Trump manage to shoot Snoopy down? If the Petulant of the United States succeeds in nailing his tariffs to the fence and/or increases them to an unsustainable level, will he put the nail in the coffin for imported model kits? Will US citizens be restricted to what they can buy from US moulders? Will…
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Ansaldo SVA 5 – Part Three – And There It Is…
The sting. The bit where the kit bites back. The inter-plane struts that look so promising lure you on to fasten them to the bottom assembly and then offer up the top wing – only to have your hopes dashed. I do not mind parts that fit where they touch, but that argues that they…
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Ansaldo SVA 5 – Part One – Czech, Box, And Soviet
Normally a set of red flags for me. In this case a boon. This is a gift from my club – an abandoned kit that sat on the shelf in the storage room for all the years I’ve been a member. It is box scale – 1:50th. It is early Czech production, and is presented…
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Selective Ordering
A recent Youtube post by a Canadian hobby shop owner pointed out the selective nature of the current tariff brouhaha. He gets supplies in from US distributors and recently had a shipment stopped by Canadian Customs, with a 25% tariff fee slapped on it. When he was notified of this he took his ordering invoices…
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Hawker Hunter FGA 9 – Part Five – Singapore 1962
A squadron brought into Singapore for ground support in what was to become a confrontation of the Cold War. This one was with Indonesia – at that time backed by the USSR and Communist China. The Hunters worked with spotter aircraft to deliver effective air support for Commonwealth and Malaysian troops on the ground. The…
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Hawker Hunter FGA 9 – Part One – Swap Meet
Our club rooms play host to a swap meet every few months and I attend regularly. It is best to come on the opening gun for these as the bargains can run out quickly. Many of the items on display are of little interest to me – cars, trucks, and tanks – but there is…
The Little World 