Category: Model Airplane
-
Whirling Or Non-Whirling?
Decide the section in which you wish to be seated. The business of the propeller on a scale model kit can be a painful one. Some makers mould them with fine detail but flimsy construction – expect to have to straighten them repeatedly. Some are just hubs and blades and these can be horrible to…
-
Hobby Boss MiG 3 – Part Three – Side by Side
I couldn’t resist bringing the Italeri/Zvezda MiG 3 back from the VVS shelves to compare it to the Hobby Boss version. I also wondered if the extra canopy in the HB box could replace the scratch-built part on the older kit. In the end I decided against this as the fuselages seem somewhat different dimensions.…
-
Hobby Boss MiG3 – Part Two – Day One
Tuesday at the club is always a balancing act – the opportunity to speak with friends vs time to build a model. Often friends win out and a great deal of manure exchange takes place. It makes the hobby all that more fertile. It is a good opportunity to work on a simple kit like…
-
Hobby Boss MiG3 – Part One – The Kiddie Shelf
For very old kiddies… I saw a brilliant series of posts on INCH HIGH GUY recently that dealt with the various iterations of the MiG fighter. He got kits from a number of different makers and compared them as he built the lot. Many were extra-detailed from his own scrap box and scratch materials. They…
-
French Lancaster – Part Four – The Flying Bribe
I’ve been reading about the donation of WU 16 – a Lancaster patrol aircraft of the Aeronavale to Australia in 1962. The story is detailed elsewhere so do go google it up. It seems to have a number of amusing elements; requests from the local RAAFA for a time-expired Lancaster – refusal by the French…
-
French Lancaster – Part Three – Strut…
Alors! As soon as you see a good idea – then a better idea – all the ideas prior to it become bad ones. Students of model kit design are particularly sensitive to this, because we pay high prices for our education. Remember the old model airplane kits you bought that had a slot on…
-
French Lancaster – Part Two – Part Works
No, not one of those wretched Paul Hamlyn newsagency schemes that sell you a part and a line of guff each week until you either spend $ 2000 or throw the remains in the bin… This is about the little sub-assemblies you can deal with as the main parts are setting. Cockpit, tailplanes, engine nacelles,…
-
French Lancaster – Part One – Not My First Rodeo
Third one, actually – as I have built two other Lancaster bombers in the past. The first was an old Airfix kit in 1960, the next a new Airfix kit in the last 5 years. The old model was SOOTB as an RAF subject. The new model became an RCAF rescue aircraft. This Hasegawa kit…
-
Atlantic Wildcat – Part Three – White And Grey
Like a West Point dress uniform. The Wildcat build started on Saturday and finished on Monday – with plenty of eating, drinking, and sleeping time in the interval. It was not the most complex nor puzzling kit ever built. But what a sweet model. There is a current air show Wildcat flying in North America…
-
Atlantic Wildcat – Part Two – Look, Ma! No Instructions!
Do the wings go on the back or the front? Well, it was free. How can you complain at the lack of instructions with that in mind.? And how hard can it be to make a monoplane fighter? Not hard at all, as one afternoon at the bench showed. Even early Minicraft kits are good…
The Little World 