Category: Model Airplane
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Gloster Meteor F.8 – Part Two – IAF

And wasn’t that a clever idea, Great Britain? Selling Gloster Meteors to the Israelis and De Havilland Vampires to the Egyptians? Bit of export cash in the old exchequer, What? And a good leg in either bed, no matter who won, eh? Pip,Pip…! Looks like GB supplied Meteors to Egypt and Syria as well. Jordan…
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Gloster Meteor F.8 – Part One – Third One Out Of The Stable

Fate has dealt me three Gloster Meteor kits; a Cyberhobby F.3, an old Airfix III ( ? ) , and a new Airfix F.8. I have played the first two as best as could be – the first as an RAF plane in the 1945 conflict, the second as a corroded gate guard on a…
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Was It Edison?

Who said he had discovered 10,000 ways that you could not do something before he made a successful electric lightbulb? I feel like that sometimes dealing with the scale modelling world. Whether it is painting or moulding, soldering or carving, there seems to be a long and winding road always ahead of me. A case…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Five – The Cavalry

That was the phrase used to describe the Mirage IIIC in a recent YouTube story about the Yom Kippur war. Apparently two Israeli F4 Phantoms were engaging a vastly greater number of MiGs that were trying to destroy a desert airfield. The Mirages were touted as the cavalry coming to save the Phantoms, but I…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Four – Who’s Hiding?

And from whom? Where are they lurking? Is it all just nonsense these days? I have no idea – I presume the various air forces have worked out how to hide in the air with grey paint and rubber knobs on every sharp point of an aircraft. The business of greying out national insignia to…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Three – Let’s Give The Customers Something…

What shall it be? Accurate instruction sheets? Flawless mouldings? Adequate colour information? I have it – let’s just give them trouble. It’ll be fun and cheap and we can do it by making bad decisions. Like avoiding a centre seam on the top of the Mirage fuselage that could be smoothed and polished easily –…
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Mirage III CJ – Part Two – The Approximate Cockpit

I confess myself mystified at the philosophy that spends money to mould a resin seat of truly superb quality and then cannot make adequate provision to anchor it accurately within the fuselage. I admit that it is unlikely to escape once the two halves of the thing are cemented together, but the business of deciding…
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MiG 3 – Post Script

Looks like I was barking up the wrong tree – or at least one containing different squirrels. The MiG 3 kit I reported on – with the home-made canopy – came with an Italeri instruction sheet. I assumed they were the authors of the mould, and was a little nonplussed at some of the quality…
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Mirage III CJ – Part One – The Very Thing

I set myself the task of building Israeli aircraft for a desert museum airfield – this kit was sitting on the shelves of a specialist dealer when I went to look for decals. How could I resist? It shows a horrible modification of a beautiful aircraft on the box top…but the sides promise the original…
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Some Models Are Not The Model

Like some jewels, they are just there to show off the setting. Dioramas and vignettes and layouts and displays can be far more than the models on show. The PDMC stand has contained a large set of letters: PDMC. These for containers for smaller models and the effect is charming. The contents of the letters…
