Category: research
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Douglas Dauntless – Part Three – Perhaps It IS A Dountless…
Maybe they know something I don’t. In my relentless pursuit of knowledge – also known as surfing the net – I discovered that there were quite a few RNZAF Douglas SBD-4 and SBD-5 aircraft used in the South Pacific. There are a number of period photos of them in flight and on the ground in…
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Douglas Dauntless – Part One – The Core Aircraft
In all my model building career I have never built a Douglas SBD – the Dauntless – not even as a kid when there were Aurora and Monogram kits. For some reason I have held off doing so now. But a visit to Hobby Mania – a smaller retailer here in Perth – ended the…
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Things I Never Thought About
Vs things I thought about all the time… As a kid in Alberta in the 1950’s the northern horizon was a worrisome prospect. We knew that it was the closest route for the Soviets to attack Canada and the United States by air. We knew that they had multi-engine bombers that they could arm with…
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Douglas C-47 – Part Two – Honeymoon Express
The plane I’m building has a real history – apart from being a special scheme on a set of aftermarket decals. ” Honeymoon Express ” was the lead ship on a paratroop assault on Nadzab in New Guinea in 1943 in conjunction with an assault on Lae. It is a good point of interest as…
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The Home-Made Decals – Part Two
It is the Ancient Modeller who stoppeth one of three ” Take heed, Sirrah, to what I say Or suffer along with me…” The experiment went ahead as planned with the porous paper, the Golden Syrup ( Australian version of Karo ) and the warm oven: a. Syrup brushed on paper. Soaked right in. Paper…
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The Home-Made Decals…Part One
Get more home-made every day. We are in the midst of a drought of decal paper in Perth. It may have escaped the attention of the major news channels, but I assure you the effects are being felt in the model airplane world. Particularly in my own little one, as I have discovered the joys…
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Brewster Bermuda – Part Eight – A Lovely Surprise
Well, mustard gas is always a surprise anyway, but this experimental Brewster Bermuda adds a stylish note to it. Not sure if I’m proud to have made an experimental Canadian gas plane of it, but the other options weren’t all that much better. The new technique of masking off the greenhouse entirely and temporarily gluing…
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Brewster Bermuda – Part Six – How Did They Do It?
How did they spray poison gas from an airplane over troops? Or anthrax spores over cattle? How was it done? This grisly thought occurred as I continued to paint the Bermuda. The idea of chemical and biological warfare was certainly on everyone’s agenda in the 1940’s as by then the military scientists had discovered how to to…
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Brewster Burmuda – Part Five – The Germ Of An Idea
Or ” Having A Gas Of A Time In Alberta “. I found out what the Bermuda was doing in Suffield. It was airframe number FF 568 from the Brewster factory and it was one of three that were flown up to Canada. One apparently crashed at Dorval in Quebec, but FF 568 got out…
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Brewster Bermuda – Part Four – Well, Why Not
Having decided to convert a perfectly inoffensive Brewster Buccaneer with no purpose in life into a perfectly inoffensive Brewster Bermuda with even less purpose, I am now left with a kit that silently screams for something to call attention to itself Never mind that it has a dual rear machine gun with an armoured shield…that’ll…
The Little World 