Category: frugality
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Swedish NA 16 – Part Six – Uncle Dick’s Kit O’ Doom
Inside every silver lining is a cloud. My week building the Beechnut Models CAC Wirraway into a Swedish NA 16 trainer was a humbling experience. No, that is not quite right – that should be ” bumbling “. With a kit this bad you are feeling your way from the start – over a carpet…
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Swedish NA-16 – Part Four – Pinning Your Hopes
When all else fails, reach for the drill… Sorry, old habits die hard. Actually that should be reach for the forceps and slide that bucket over here. Open wide. The butt joint wing or tail surfaces are the easy way out for many short-run kit designers. They imagine you will square up the fitting surfaces…
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Swedish NA-16 – Part Three – Dr. Phil
Not the TV chap – I’m thinking this kit should have been built by the famous Irish dentist: Dr. Phil McCavity. Six separate applications and removals of two grades of putty plus a styrene sheet fitted to the worst of the gaps. All done in a cheerful frame of mind and without the aid of…
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Swedish NA-16 – Part Two – The Plastic Mangler
I would have written ” wrangler ” but you wouldn’t believe this kit. The fuselage halves are two different sizes. Not by much, but by enough. I reduced them somewhat upon a sandpaper sheet taped to a flat surface, and then attacked the thicker half with a Dremel tool, The centre seam doesn’t fit, but…
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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 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…
The Little World 