Category: Model Airplane
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part Eleven – What’s Big And Pink…?

And full of high explosives? Why Strawberry Bitch, of course. Not a popular airplane in Romania, though it did visit there some years ago. Not that it hung around – just popped in, dropped something off, and popped out again. Sort of like a pastel-coloured courier van. No-one signed for the parcels… The real SB…
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part Ten – Break Out The Spray Gun, Lars.

I’m feeling sentimental… You cannot laugh at the Finnish Air Force. If you do they swoop down on you and open up with cannons and rockets. The Finns have very little sense of humour. This is not surprising. They live in between two heavily-armed neighbours – the Swedes and the Russians – and in their…
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part Nine – The National Capitol

Australia is similar in many respects to Canada and the United States of America – we all established separate and specific cities for the seats of our national governments. And we elect representatives from our disparate states or provinces to go and sit there. In earlier days this was a great comfort, but now that…
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part Eight – Chop Till You Drop

I really must make more of a study of model helicopters – having built four of them for my own small airfields. Thankfully, the kit industry has as much affection for them as for fixed-wing aircraft and there seem to be varieties from every country on offer. If you were a dedicated helicopter modeller you…
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part Seven – The Great Grey Elephant On The Table

As Ray Stevens might have said…” Well, I seen it. ” It was the 1:72 scale components of a Saunders Roe Princess flying boat produced using some sort of 3D printing machine…and cello-taped together as a teaser at the Sandown Park exhibition. No-one around, but enough literature left as a clue to allow me to…
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part Five – A Red Star Track

When Red StarTrack deliver…you sign for it or else… This year’s exhibition pointed out something to me – the quantum shift in the scale modelling word from US and UK manufacture of plastic kits to makers behind the old Iron or Bamboo Curtains. With the moulding going to areas of former Soviet influence there are…
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Sandown Park 2019 – Part One – Silver

Well, there we were, folks – Sandown Park in Melbourne for the 2019 model exhibition. Plenty of parking, real live motor cars circling the track, and a large canteen area set aside for the punters. What more could one want? One of the first tables that caught the eye after I rounded the Wall O’…
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What’s In This Stuff, Anyway? – Part Three – Masking Solutions

I counted up the bottles on my Little Workshop shelf and I now have more masks than Zorro. That’s not counting the tiny rolls of modellers masking tape or the big ones from Bunnings – I’m talking about bottles of goo designed to mask under spray paint. a. Maskol from Humbrol – the heading image.…
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What’s In This Stuff, Anyway? – Part Two – Decal Solutions

If I want to enjoy myself in the Little Workshop I can either fasten decals on a freshly-painted model or hammer nails into the back of my hand. Some days I am torn in an agony of choice… It was never like this in the old young days – I just found the place on…
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What’s In This Stuff, Anyway? – Part One – Paint And Cement

An inveterate visitor to hobby shops in my old age, I am now also a sucker for little vials of chemicals. Whether it is glue, paint, liquid mask, thinners, retarders, or clear coats, I never seem to leave anywhere without bearing away another expensive bottle. And i do mean expensive – At the bottle shop…
