Category: research
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Messerschmitt Me 109E – Part One – The Internet Delivers Again

If you have nothing to do for the next few hours, start Googling. Tear yourself away from the porn, conspiracy theories, and on-line shopping and research something arcane. I just did and now I can have a week of fun with it. I don’t build aircraft with certain markings – which is somewhat of a…
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Hawker Tempest V – Part One – The Elegant Buster

Fired with enthusiasm for a new technique, I set out in quest of a Buster – a kit cheap enough to act as sacrificial styrene so that I could see in 3D what I had just ben trying on scraps of wood. The trip to Hobbytech is always fun, but it is always anguishing as…
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Beechcraft Model 18 – Part Four – Spirit Of Lodgepole

CF-ACL is ready for service. The Spirit of Lodgepole is named after a small town in the Pembina that serves the oil industry and was once the main service town for the Brazeau Dam project. It had an RCMP post, a hotel, a school, and a general store, as well as repair shops for the…
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Beechcraft Model 18 – Part One – The Promising Twin

I was ambushed by this kit through an email from a Melbourne hobby shop. They send out regular lists of new arrivals and this was in the same order as the Hawker Sea Fury. It also came with a companion Beech 18 – a USAAF AT-11. The cost of this kit is $19 and the…
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Heinkel HE 111 – Part One – Welcome To The Rafwaffe

Yes, you read that right. Rafwaffe. Specifically 1426 Flight RAF. The unit that took captured and abandoned German equipment and tested it for the RAF. At Duxford and RAF Collyweston. They got one of the Heinkel 111’a that had been downed to a soft landing early in the war over the UK and repaired and…
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A Modest Proposal

Kit makers are always trying for another use of a previous model. The tricks of new decal sheet and box art plus a hike in price mean that even if you have not invested any money in a new cash cow, you can milk the old one again. The problem is there are only so…
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Boeing KB-29A – Part Eight – Corporate Image

When someone says ” uniform corporate image ” to you in an effort to make you paint the delivery van beige or paste the logo on the toilet rolls, look them steadily in the eye and then punch it. They are full of shit and you need not do what they say. The United States…
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Boeing B-29A – Part One – The New Kit On The Block

Or the shelf, as it happened. I made a safari through the 1:72 jungle at my local hobby shop and this Academy B-29 was lurking at the bottom of the new pile. I am wise enough to know when a model will be popular and not hang round – so I grabbed it with glee…
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Learning Something – Part Two – The Mask Of Mystery

So Ivan’s wax coat was a failure. So be it. But now a different idea. I have made up a set of cardboard masks that can be laid over a model in various fashions. The material is stiff and will not conform to the smaller contours. For the first trial I took two of the…
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Any Day You Learn Something – Part One – Bright Ideas

Is a good day. The something you learn may be of great or small import, but the fact that it is now your possession is wonderful. Today I made use of Ivan Seryy it find out whether or not a scheme for camouflage painting was viable. The idea of being able to make soft-edge masks…
