Category: research
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Israeli Phantom – Part One – A Kind Gift
My fortune is high – a good friend, learning of my ambition to add more modern aircraft to my Israeli desert museum, has donated a fresh Hasegawa kit. It is an E model dedicated to the USAF, but not all that far from Israeli practice, and certainly convertible for my purposes. The real desert museum…
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Short Skyvan – Part Five – Glide Like A Brick
One can only imagine what the situation would be if one or both of the engines of the Short Skyvan quit working. It is bad enough when one of the four engines of a big airliner powers down – or when one of the military engines on a Nimrod needs to be stopped. In the…
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Short Skyvan – Part Three – Once Seen…
Never forgotten – provided you photograph it. The inclusion of detailed interiors in scale models is not new – this Short Skyvan kit had a full set of seats for Olympic Airways passengers in the 70’s and benches for Austrian skydivers in the 2020’s. When my example served as an arctic transport in the 60’s…
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Short Skyvan – Part One – Never Saw It Coming
Which is remarkably short-sighted of me – this thing is as wide as a house trailer. And as long and as high. In fact, if it had an oil stove and a porch you could take your muddy boots off in, you could park it in Peace River for the winter… Never before have I…
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Do Not Marry A Hobbyist
Advice for everyone – not restricted to age or gender. If you are about to marry a hobbyist, pause and look around – around their house or room or desk. Is there open space or is every surface covered by ” something in progress:? Be aware that if this is the case, nothing may be…
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Start, Ya Bastard
You know, I am unable to convince some of my North American readers that there really is a product on the market in Australia called just that? Oh ye, of little faith… As it is, the expression serves perfectly as a reminder to scale modellers that the kit on the shelf is just a box…
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Canadian Dandruff
Or how to freeze your enthusiasm… At some stage of the game every scale modeller thinks it would be ” cool ” to make a snow scene. The big film studios have been doing it for years – some with great effect. Nothing says Eastern Front like a half-track with the crew starting a fire…
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The Anti- Camo Stand
If, like me, you like to build model aircraft – and if, like me, you like bright colours… Join the Western Front club. They concentrate themselves upon WW1 subjects and, while the allied planes may be a bit formulaic or muted, the German ones can give you all the colour you want. I concentrate on…
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Cheap Day Out
With all the burnt rubber you can want… If you are wondering where John France and I disappear to every second Wednesday – the times when we are not recording Little World Studio reels in the studio – come out to the observation positions at either Perth Airport or Jandakot Airport. With the wind from…
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A Different Bird
Oh, what a load of tales circle about the Plague Doctor’s costume. You can Wiki them yourself – I did and was immediately suspicious of the stories and supposed history. So many illustrations and rumours from the middle ages and renaissance eras have taken on lives of their own that I take many of them…
