Category: Painting
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Five – Night Black

The RAF night bomber scheme is a grim sort of design. Well I guess flying 300 miles in the dark, amongst a thousand other flying bomb dumps, and through radar-directed flak is a pretty grim business anyway. With a German Chancellor at one end and Arthur Harris at the other it seems like a murderous…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Two – Missing The Point

The new Airfix Wellington Mk II has a full set of interior parts. These are proper injection moulded parts – not resin bits on a block or impossible slivers of brass. If you follow the very detailed instruction diagrams you can end up with a fully kitted-out bomber interior. Yet Airfix suggest that you can…
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Pitts S2A – Part Two – Canadian Reds

I wonder if someone will pick up on this one at the next WASMex show. Will I get talked to by the committee? Well, we shall see. If they press me I will say that the sponsors are a fine Canadian company that sponsored a team for air racing and never sells dangerous products. Not…
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SUCKER!

Tell me the minute you were born and I’ll introduce 5 people who want to discuss virtual investment. You’ll have something in common… You’ll want to recreate yourself after the financial discussions are over, so go to the hobby shop and buy yourself a new kit. Follow these easy steps to make sure you get…
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RWD 5bis – Part Three – Bon Dia

Or Dzień Dobry, if you are just starting out. Because this little 450Kg light plane flew from Warsaw to Brazil. Not in one leap, nor in one day, but it started and finished a winner. For a long time the lightest aircraft to cross the Atlantic. The model is also a winner, and will take…
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Vickers Viscount – Part Three – The Picture of Dorian Grey

All beautiful and serene on the stand…but up in the attic… Under three layers of masking tape and two vinyl gloves… If you can’t stand horror, do not start airbrushing your models. At some stage of the game it will all start to look like a Hammer film. You must screw your courage to the…
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Norcanair DC-3 – Part Five – CF-CTD

A nearly good model… The basic structure of CF-CTD is fine – Italeri make a first-rate moulding of this aircraft. The military modeller who makes a D-Day C-47 will be delighted with the result. The invasion stripes should make for a spectacular OOTB build – even though research seems to show that the real stripes…
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What Do You Do When It All Starts?

Starts to go pear-shaped… Make cider, possibly. Or begin to panic. Panic is always a good choice as it gets the circulation going nicely. And you get a lot more done when you are screaming. Some kit builds progress well – they are logical procedures that flow from one to another as the structure matures.…
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Norcanair DC-3 – Part Four – Trying To Read The Pictures

As soon as you decide to change a scale model kit from what the manufacturer has given you in the box, you should be cautious. What did the real thing look like? Hopefully like the mouldings in the box. What was the finish and what were the markings? Well, if it isn’t on the decal…
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US Navy Phantom II – Part Three – Repeated Masking

Sometimes I make work for myself, and sometimes people make it for me. This Airfix US Navy scheme is really quite simple – the top light gull grey and the bottom white – but the navy decided to complicate things by painting some of the flying surfaces in white as well. Indeed they also apparently…
