Category: prototypes
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Norcanair DC-3 – Part Three – A Return To Sanity
One can only build obscure European designs from the 1930’s so long… Eventually your gall bladder starts to complain. There is only so much weird and ugly that it can take. A French bomber in the block-of-flats style tends to stretch the imagination past the snapping point – eventually you have to return to reality…
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Short Stirling Mk IV – Part Three – V3 To Canada
A very specific aircraft on a very specific mission. And no bombs carried. This Short Stirling was flown from the UK to Canada in the 40’s as a training aircraft to familiarise the trainees of the BCATP with the then-new H2S ground-view radar. You’ll see the characteristic H2S streamlined dome under the rear portion of…
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How Do You Second-Guess The Factory?
With boldness, one would suggest. Scale model kit makers get it right most of the time. Their products are meticulously designed, moulded, and packaged. They are sold at reasonable prices by retailers who have the best interests of the modeller at heart. And every time you wish upon a star a Fairey gets it’s wings…
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Consolidated B-24 D – Part Five – Unloved 23790
I am not going to assign a position to Unloved in the various waves of USAAF bombers that hit Ploesti in Romania. There are scholarly books that can report on every ship and crew that made the raid. I am just satisfied that it has most of the salient features of that early B-24 model…
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Build What You Know
Not what you don’t. This doesn’t mean you have to restrict your building to domestic objects or your own trade. Scale models of insurance policies are probably exquisite but few people bother to read them in 1:72 scale. You can do anything you like, of course, but you’ll be happier doing something that you understand…
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I Asked About The Difference…
Between fantasy and science fiction, and the chap with the space helmet, ray gun, and rocket back pack just shook his head. So did his four-headed dragon, and that was a messy business. Took us half an hour to put out spot fires. In the future, I shall just observe the future from a distance.…
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4-D Printing
The new art of 3-D printing is flooding into the scale modelling world like a bottle of cement tipped over onto the cutting mat. If you move fast, you can rescue your kit from it…any delay will see you stuck to the workbench. Well, not that exactly…but you cannot ignore the new technology now that…
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Model Car Sunday – Part Seven
The Daily Driver Does no-one have ordinary days any more? Have model car kits stopped being three-in-one? Can we not build the car our Dad drove in 1959? How about the one we drove yesterday? I do admire a good hot rod. I am in awe of the custom car that took a decade and…
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Model Car Sunday – Part Three
Local Model Car Sunday…with vehicles that really do resonate with our city and state. Not to diss the hot rodders or race car builders, but there is also a world that is average, mundane, and historically real and it can reach out to the viewer as much as the candy apple paint job or the…
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Mitsubishi Babs – Part Three – An Observant Aircraft
It goes to temple every weekend… The Mitsubishi Ki-15 was possibly very useful to the Imperial Japanese Army – depending upon where it was sent and what was going on down on the ground. The aerial observation of enemy movements – whether that was Chinese or Soviet – could have guided the high command to…
The Little World 