Category: Model Airplane
-
Nieuport 17C – Part Two – Old But Good
This very old mould still can teach the new firms several lessons. The first one is that you need not engineer gaps into your parts. They can, indeed, be made to meet all along their surfaces. Unless your firm derives the bulk of its income from plastic putty and sandpaper sticks, providing close-fitting parts is…
-
Nieuport 17C – Part One – 1957 Again
1957 was a big year for me. My dad’s firm failed and we had to move to Quebec for him to continue in the heavy construction business. I had to learn school French – fast. And I got to see a whole new world of scale model kits that never made it out to Western…
-
True Scale No. 2
Second issue of the newsletter for the Scale Modellers Club Of Western Australia. The presses are rolling… Editor: Dick Stein Mild-Mannered Reporter: John France
-
Airspeed Envoy – Part Three – The Governor’s Plane
And not a British governor, either. The Airspeed Envoys that went to China were for the use of Chinese provincial governors. Presumably not of the poor provinces, either. Careful observers will see that a rocker-cover fairing on the starboard engine has been dented. This was in the days before bird strikes could get past the…
-
Airspeed Envoy – Part Two – Squeezy
Say what you will about the British being a stuffy and stand-offish nation, when they make a small airliner they make sure that everyone is chummy on the flight. Either that or the moulds for these seats are a little wide. You can get in the door and possibly into the back three seats, but…
-
Airspeed Envoy – Part One – The IKEA Airplane
And it’s not Swedish at all. The reason I refer to this RS Models kit of the Airspeed Envoy by the shop name is that – like most of the goods that IKEA sell – it is very nearly what I want, but not quite…I could make do with it, and change it around, and…
-
The Wrong Scale
There is no better way of starting a donnybrook than to suggest that a model is the wrong scale. Say it to whom you will, you will have a fight. And haven’t we all seen the box scale gem that is destined to shine alone? Or the model that supports too little or too much…
-
Are We There Yet, Daddy?
Or in scale modelling terms: is it real yet, Daddy? There comes a time in every scale model build – whether it is with scratch-built parts, a kit, or a box of Lego – when it becomes real. Perhaps not real as in finished, but real as in a model of something under construction. And…
-
Swiss F-5E – Part Three – Live Fire Day
I was fortunate to discover a net image of one of the exact Tiger II’s on the colour call-out and decal sheet from italeri. It was a large, clear image of the plane taxiing out to participate in some form of range day. The tanks and missiles of the kit were close enough to the…
-
Swiss F-5E – Part Two – Thank You, I Think…
I puzzle sometimes – at the decisions that the model making companies take when they design a mould. I cannot influence or gainsay them – they are providing the kits that I love to build. But the question of ” why ” comes up more than you’d think. Take the nose of the Northrop F-5E.…
The Little World 