Category: Model Airplane
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Ryan Spirit Of St. Louis – Part One – Nyet, Tovarich…

Is not could be Spirit of Amerikan town. Is Spirit of Leningrad. First solos transatlantic airplane fly from Soviet home of revolutionary peoples but capitalistic newspapers disguise this. Soviet union always first in everything. Well, not quite first with this model. We get mould from FROG in decadent England and hero workers of Soviet Union…
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Cessna Crane – Part Three – You May Not Have Noticed

I just thought – you may not have noticed that the newly-completed RCAF Cessna Crane has been painted yellow. They do that in case you are likely to stumble into it in a darkened hangar… So I follow suit. I make up a mixture of Mr. Color lacquer – one full bottle of No. 109…
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Cessna Crane – Part Two – It’s Not A Trainer

At least, I don’t think it is. I think it’s a small transport aircraft that can be disguised as a trainer. The Cessna Crane that I speculated about in the first post appears in bright yellow RCAF trainer livery in every historic shot I can find of it. Nowhere so far does it appear in…
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Cessna UC-78A – Part One – A Cat Becomes A Bird

I’ve written before about the RCAF’s aircraft nomenclature and how it can be alternately logical and puzzling. I’m not sure if this is because it is an armed service or an armed service run by Ottawa… In any case, I leaped upon the KP model of the USAAF Cessna UC-78A Bobcat when it showed on…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Five – Et Voila

There is a lesson to be learned with this Airfix model of a DC-3 in Aéronavale colours – and I must compel myself to learn it. It is a lesson of humility. At the start I thought this a marginal model – the sort of ugly cousin kit from an old company that had been…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Four – Keeping The Faith

If you have shares in 3M or in the Ustar manufacturing company in Taiwan, take heart – your yearly dividend is assured. I have been masking the Douglas DC 3 and it has taken slightly more tape than would have been required for the full-sized aircraft. You need to have a vision as you do…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Three – The Airfix Channel

Well, I’d watch it if they started broadcasting, and so would you. But this is not about the television – it’s about the Airfix channel that they put between the fuslage and inner wing panel of the DC3. It is so far the widest gap this side of Darien. Not on both sides of the…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Two – It Fits Where it Touches

I am trying not to be discouraged by the Airfix DC3/C47 kit. I have chosen wisely to make it into a closed kit – the door fitting on the port side is truly appalling. Or perhaps I am looking at it from the wrong perspective – in the original form it has three mini-guns and…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part One – The C-47

‘Well, duh. Of course it’s a C-47, because it is a Douglas DC-3. And It’s a DC-3 because it’s a C-47. And it’s a Vietnam-era gunship in this Airfix kit courtesy of four Air Force figures and a cargo floor that sports a number of mini-Gatling guns on stands. I’m afraid it holds little place…
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Potez 540 – part Six – Acqui De Espero!

I think that lost something in the translation… Or maybe it was a famous battle cry. Or a caption on a poster. Whatever…it translates as a bare ” here I wait “. Honest – it googles up as an advertising phrase for a hotel in the Canary Islands… Don’t ask why it appears on the…
