Category: Model Airplane
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McDonnell Douglas Phantom – Part Two – Vietnam Era
Little of my aero collection so far shows schemes of the Vietnam War period, but gradually this will change. Many of the kits now seem to have decals for the period and If I can overcome my aversion to both stencil decals and three-colour camouflage schemes, I can go right ahead. The call-out for this…
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McDonnell Douglas Phantom – Part One – The Iconic Fighter
As a young person I was as susceptible to hype as anyone – including that put out about modern aircraft. The jet fighter that seemed to get most of it was the McDonnell Douglas Phantom. For a while I confused it with the older McDonnell Phantom – a late 1940’s straight-wing jet. But it was…
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Decal Or Paint?
Not a difficult choice when the design is complicated. Also not a tough decision when the decal sheet has something exactly as needed. There are any number of decal setting solutions today that will let you drape a design over a wet porcupine, so just take your time. When it comes to bigger scales and…
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Grumman Albatross – Part Three – Before 1965
If you look closely at some of my RCAF aircraft, they look odd; there is no lightning flash down the sides and the the flag is wrong. Wrong. The planes are pre-1965 with the old national flag on the tail. And if you look closely you’ll see that it flies with the Union Jack to…
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Grumman Albatross – Part Two – Shipmates Stand Together
Don’t give up the ship. Or the kit, for that matter. My first club morning with this kit went very well - the dry parts fit was excellent for a period piece and I was ready to work on the interior by the time I left for home. I did paint the inside and started to…
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Grumman Albatross – Part One – Rescued From The Past
At last – my chance to do a classic Monogram kit that I never built before. Whatever the flaws there may be in this old kit – the raised rivets, etc, it has the priceless advantage of being part of plastic history. There will be movable landing gear, and I shall not hesitate to make…
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Do We Read Or Watch?
A good question for scale modellers. We used to have books and magazines to inform our modelling. Increasingly we turn to screens…sometimes to read, as you are doing now…but sometimes to watch an unknown person tell us how to do something or what to think about some subject. The video proceeds at its own pace…
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The Kit That Makes You Say Hmmm
We have all had one…and those of us with bad luck have had several kits that make us doubt whether we should have even started them. Sometimes it has been commenced in a hurry with blithe disregard to warnings from the internet. Sometimes we have been seduced by box art. Plastic porn, if you will.…
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Supermarine Swift FR.5 – Part Five – NATO Eye
Call me suspicious and cynical if you wish – I mean a person like you would…but I suspect that the ranks of photo reconnaissance aircraft are generally made up of fighter failures. They are either not fast enough, nimble enough, or well-enough armed to succeed on the battlefield, and are relegated to flying above it…
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Supermarine Swift FR.5 – Part Four – Get Thee Behind Me, Stencils…
You cannot escape decals on model aircraft – they are needed to complete everything. But they can completely ruin the job. Or your day, if you let them. I’m thinking of the friable, misprinted, graphic horrors that flow out of eastern Europe. You can tame them somewhat, but you are never really satisfied with the…
The Little World 