Category: frugality
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Fouga For The Win
The rivets may have been numerous and the decals may have fought back… But the little Heller 1/100 scale Fouga Magister is actually a nice model. It is now perched on one of the older plastic model stands – I save ’em all for just these occasions – and will never land. But it does…
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Snowed Into The House With A Fouga
On a Saturday, with a new model kit, no homework, and a whole Coffee Crisp chocolate bar to myself. If you are English you can equate this to Christmas afternoon, a tin of Bullseyes, and a new Airfix kit plus a James Bond movie to watch. Religion has a lot to offer the thinking adult,…
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Yak 23 – Part One – Front Line Fighter?
Provided you are smart enough to put the front line as far away from you as possible. This was the thinking of the Soviet VVS when they donated Yak 23 fighters to the Poles and Czechs in the 1950’s. The Soviets had the MiG15 to defend the Motherland against the west and the inferior Yak…
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Getting Away With It
Note: I did not write ” cleanly ” at the end there. There are always consequences. A friend has speculated that a mathematical formula should be worked out to tell our spouses how much the new kit has cost. I applaud a scientific mind and sense of honesty and will mention it in his eulogy.…
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Boeing B17G – Part Two – Doodle Bug
There are very few steps to the average 1/144 kit – and if you walk fast… You get to the end very quickly. This Academy kit was started on Saturday and finished on Wednesday. That was not a deliberate sprint – it just happened to fall together with very little filling or sanding and a…
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Boeing B-17G – Part One – Academy
Or is that Minicraft? The box for this old B-17 lists both companies and a recent announcement from Academy in South Korea says that the assets of this older American company have been acquired by them. This box looks to be slightly old and slightly squashed and the instructions date the Academy sheet at 1992.…
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Modelling Without Guilt
It’s rather like sex without guilt – fun, but a little bland. Not that you want to be pursued through bedroom doors and corridors like a Feydeau farce, but a little innocent concealment of the new kit makes for a frisson of excitement – even if it turns out to be the same old moulding…
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What To Do When You Can’t Get It
Relax, lady. This is about scale modelling – not sex. What do we do when the scale model magazine shows a wonderful new range of after-market parts to detail a kit and everyone else in the world can get it except us? Stuck on the edge of the Indian Ocean way out past where the…
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Tasman Airspeed Oxford Mk I – Part Five – Wild Blue Yonder
And off we flaming go… Someone at Tasman was enamoured of the vacuum moulding machine – the one they used for clear canopies – and of the possibilities that it presented. So they made a decision to try something that is – so far – unique in my model-building experience. They vac-formed the canopy a…
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Tasman Airspeed Oxford Mk I – Part One – Agricultural
New Zealand is a superb agricultural country. Their wool and meat, dairy and fruit, and all things related are absolutely first-class. Their 1:32 scale model kits – when produced in China to NZ designs, are also world-beaters. Their 1:72 kits moulded in Rollaston, near Christchurch are an experience. I have made one before – a…
The Little World 