Category: Model Airplane
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The Mensa Shed

The term ” Men’s Shed ” is current in Australia – used to describe a social club centred around men doing workshop or other hobby activities. I have heard it treated with disdain – and wish to correct that attitude. It is a brilliant concept. I participated in one recently – devoted to scale model…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Four – The Production Line

I cannot think of a worse way to approach the business of being a scale modeller than that of a production line worker with a contract to produce a product in a set time. This also applies to the full-size workers who made the full-size airplanes – Some were employed and some were drafted and…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Five – The Captive Bird

A surprising number of airplanes have been captured in war and returned to flying on behalf of their enemies. Some as service machines, some as decoys, and some as test beds. This might seem to be a bonus for the people who capture the enemy’s warplanes, but remember that they also need to capture the…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Three – Suspicions…

I am not a naturally suspicious man, as anyone who has seen me in the police lineups will attest. I am ready to take anyone at face value…as long as I can pronounce them guilty. This benign attitude even extends to looking at pictures of fighter planes and trying to figure out their colour schemes.…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part Two – Modelers Sushi

If that seems like a funny way to think of a kit, consider that the Hobby Boss products are sometimes served on plastic trays within the external box – rather like the tasty Japanese food that we get from shopping centres. The kit is just as well presented – all that is missing is the…
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Messerschmitt 109 – Part One – Never Let A Chance Go By…

I am indebted to a friend, Paul, for that bit of philosophy. He’s another modeller/collector/builder type and makes regular visits to hobby shops and toy stores wherever he goes. And he has the modeller’s eye that sees viable scale building materials in completely unlikely products. In my case it was a visit to a store…
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The Bad Decision

Steel yourself – there will be some serious soul-searching in this post. You are going to have to confront your own failures. As for me, I’m going to hide mine by pretending that I never make mistakes. Anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault – even if there is no-one within 500 yds of…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Five – The Newfie

Those of you from the Dominion of Canada will know I speak with affection about Newfoundland – The place where this Hawker Hurricane was based. Specifically at Torbay in 1943 when German U boats were feared. They had successfully sunk ships nearby in the previous year and the RCAF needed to have a quick-response answer.…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Four – The Next Grievous Error

Well, I added one today. The next foolish error. The one that separates the men from the boys. And I know which side I’m on… I had masked the new Hawker Hurricane Mk II very well and I was ready to shoot the upper works. As it was a cold day. I selected lacquer thinner…
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Hawker Hurricane Mk II – Part Two – Ahhhhh, Chooo!

Oops. Sniff. Looks like it is all together…. Well, it almost seems like that with Hobby Boss. You sit there idly scraping down a seam line…that is nearly perfect anyway…and then you dry fit a couple of parts and then you decide to glue one in… And the thing is done. It’s not quite that…
