Category: Model Airplane
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Caudron Renault 714 CI – Part Three – The Rocketeer

Well, the Caudron Renault is ready to join the Jagdschwader of the RRAAF armed with the new Ruritanian secret weapon – the rocket. Fussy types will want to know if this is an air-to-air missile or and air-to-ground missile and the answer is yes. After the pilot presses one of four buttons the rocket no…
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Caudron Renault 714 CI – Part Two – Flip Her Over, Maurie

Well, she’s got pretty good seams on the top and bottom of the fuselage, and the wing roots are no worse than an Amodel or RS kit. But oh, Lord the ailerons… It looks as though the mould that was supposed to close up for that portion of the wing shifted in the machine. There…
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Caudron Renault 714 CI – Part One – Yet Another Hill To Climb

I was extremely fortunate to wander into a hobby shop that had just relocated to new premises. They decided to have a sale on plastic kits to gain shelf space and the little Mister Craft Caudron Renault CR 714 CI was on the bargain table. Disregarding the free donations, this is my second cheapest model…
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Seriously Successful Decals

I’ve written before about the traumas of trying to get old decals to work – and failing miserably with some of them. But now I can brighten the day – Even 1959 decals can be brought back. There is a little of the Transylvanian laboratory about it, but you can do it. All you need…
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Hot And Wet

I used to dream of this, but times have changed. Now I dread it. It stops the fun. Perth, Western Australia is occasionally hot – very hot. It is also occasionally wet – very wet. Both of these weather conditions are a signal to go somewhere and do something…but it is generally to the pub…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Four – ” Red Is The Colour…”

” Of my true love’s national aircraft recognition insignia in the morning, as I rise…” This was an aviation folk song that Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie tried to promote in the 1930’s but it never really got off the ground, despite a headwind. Even when they offered to strike every Friday and bus in…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Three – The Gallows…

I never realised how much my painting stand looked like a gallows tree until I hung the Tupolev SB2 on it for undercoating and colour coats. Didn’t mean to be quite so morbid… But the fact that the SB2 was suspended there and took its paint so well pointed out the basic utility of the…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Two – In Russia Model Make You

If I had been in any doubt looking at the crude plastic on the sprue runners, it was dispelled when I got to the ” Made In USSR ” stamped into the plastic. I was relieved. Up until that moment I had been worried that this kit was an elaborate practical joke and that Alan…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part One – Katyuska

I was on tenterhooks when my daughter came back from Japan recently – I had tasked her with getting me a nice 1:72 model aircraft kit that we couldn’t get here in Australia. She obliged by searching out both a major and a minor hobby shop in Tokyo and bringing back 4 models – all…
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Play It As It Lays

That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
