Category: prototypes
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Six – Manitoba
Winnipeg, actually. Remarkable place. When I was a child I spent a month there one week and I shall never forget it. The pills help, though… It is the site of the museum that houses CF-WCE – the Norcanair Bristol Freighter. Ex-RCAF, it served many years flying out of Saskatchewan to points north. Now it…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part One – Airfix Again
And I could not be more delighted. Some years ago I purchased an Airfix kit for a Mk32 Bristol Superfreighter at WASMex. It cost a dizzying $ 10 and included a vac-form part for a new nose and tail assembly. I decided to build the Superfreighter in the original Airfix form and configure it as…
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CAC Winjeel – Part Four – FTS 1
Point Cook, Victoria. SOOTB rendition of this Winjeel and I don’t think I could be happier with the result. It will form the starting point of a number of RAAF training types – with the occasional side-excursion to an aerobatics team aircraft or the FAC service livery as used on ADF exercises. You have to…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
The Little World 