Category: prototypes
-
Fairey Firefly Mk V – Part Four – Preserved Fly
According to Skaarup, these Firefly aircraft flew with the Royal Canadian Navy from 1946 to 1952 – roughly about the same time they served with the Royal Australian Navy. The carriers they flew from were Royal Navy donations to the Commonwealth countries – the MAJESTIC, BONAVENTURE, SYDNEY, AND MELBOURNE. The decks were perfectly suited to…
-
Bristol F.2B – Part Three – Warts And All
A rare week – it is not often that I build two models in one week – in parallel – of the same plane. I have no regrets. The seams and pins of the old Airfix kit yielded eventually to Sprue Goo and the the wretched struts were eventually cemented home in roughly the right…
-
PZL – The Karas Yet Again
You might have to avoid me on the street – I seem to have become slightly fixated with this old Heller kit. I may start babbling… At least I am logical maniac. I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories – I recognise the randomly idiotic nature of the world and do not attribute any of…
-
Will We Run Out Of Prototypes?
I asked myself this one day as I idly scrolled through the catalogues of Hasegawa, RS, and Special Hobby. I was trolling for 1:72 aircraft that I had not built yet. For a time there it was looking a bit bleak. The Hasegawa people are deriving a lot of their income from kits of Gundam,…
-
VVS Tupolev SB2 – Part Four-Red 3
Boy, you have to hand it to the Soviets – they kept their squadron codes close to their chests. Unlike the other air forces that might display this information plus the individual position in a formation, airframe number, and unit number on their fuselages – or the training squadrons that had buzz numbers under the…
-
The Whiff
Of what-if. This topic has been raised before on these pages in a somewhat sardonic fashion, but it can also have a serious side. a. Much of the whiffery revolves around Germany’s Third Reich in the middle to late 1940’s. Lots of unbuilt designs for tanks and aircraftare trotted out and kitted up. Yet few…
-
It Is Either A Wonderful Collection
Or an unhealthy obsession. Have you seen the exhibition display of fifty scale models that are all the same car or plane, but painted in different livery? They may be from different makers, but often are just the same kit, repeated. The sight is impressive. If a person has a real interest in one prototype,…
-
Art For Sale
And it’ll be the kind you understand. There were a number of trade tables at the WA Miniatures Association weekend show. They were selling furniture, clothing, foods, art supplies, and building materials…all in very small sizes. I counted paper craft and modelling, doll clothing, accessories, furniture, food platters, and any number of other temptations. I…
-
We Regard You As Innocent
Until someone suggests you could be guilty. A big local scale model exhibition seems to have attracted a very unusual visitor: A 1:1 scale replica of a motor vehicle from 80 years ago. It was parked in the front of the Cannington Exhibition Centre on the second afternoon of the show. I did not see…
-
Mitsubishi Betty – Part One – Flying Cigar
The Mitsubishi G4M bomber – the Betty – was given this nickname because of the fuselage. It featured an almost constant cylindrical shape aft of the wing roots and terminated in many models in a rounded tailpiece. This model kit contains this shape, thought he specific aircraft being modelled had the round-off removed to give…
The Little World 