Category: research
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Supermarine Swift FR.5 – Part One – A Christmas Belle

Yes, I did get this for Christmas, and yes, I did select it myself. I know how to operate a holiday… This is a new Airfix kit – meaning that the plastic is a perfect consistency, the mouldings are accurate, and the instruction book is detailed enough to cope with even weird parts. There will…
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Take It Seriously

No joking. Take your modelling seriously. You’ll benefit – we’ll all benefit. My scale modelling club is comprised of a bunch of jokers – we bounce one-liners and corny Dad jokes off one another at every session. There is no decorum in the main room, and precious little more in the library and the kitchen.…
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The Gantze Megillah

When someone recalls the entire service history about something of which they have made a plastic model kit. It is a charming procedure, roughly as much fun as a prostate examination. It is not a surprise, considering the detail some modellers go to with their kits. You can buy magazines that show you how to…
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Local Shop For the Win!

I can get lucky… My air compressor was acting up. Not able to keep pressure in the tank, it was kicking in to boost very 30 seconds. Very different from when I started with it. I took my troubles to my local shop; Hobbytech in Myaree. The youngest chap on the staff was free so…
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The No Step Two Step

Or how I stencilled myself into the asylum. As a kid facing my first decal sheets, I was blazingly confident. Allowed to use water and scissors…what could possibly go wrong? After all, Aurora moulded the position of the USAF and the insignia right there on the top of the wing – all you had to…
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The Tsunami

It started as a fountain of knowledge – then a pool of information – then a flood of images. Now we have a tsunami and modellers are being drowned at their workbenches. I mean the internet, and specifically the Google images page. The go-to when you are looking for either inspiration or confirmation. You want…
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Boeing Dreamliner – Part Three – Mask And Re-Mask

Just when you think you are done with the paint scheme you realise that there is another stripe… Well, that’s civil aviation. The graphic designers get let out of the dungeon and chained to the drawing boards and new corporate liveries are born. This El Al scheme is to be a retro salute to the…
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Avia B-135 – Part Three – Black Green

Or Green Black – you can please yourselves as to what the colour was called. I suspect you will also be flailing about trying to pin it down exactly. Like PRU Blue, Russian Green, and Zinc Chromate, there will be as many shades of Black Green as there are paint manufacturers and club anoraks. I…
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Soviet AS Truck – Part Two – The Light Dawns

The ” Aha! ” moment in this build came as I tried to figure out what the platforms and driveshafts were all about and I ran across the term ” Huck starter “. A google hour then filled me in. And filled in a question I had about a number of airplane designs. On a…
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Soviet AS Truck – Part One – Diorama Time

I am so ignorant. I know nothing. I know less than John Banner as Sgt. Schultz. But I get to find out a lot of things. In this case the impetus proved to be the Library diorama business. I wanted to do the Soviet airfield at Uszhitmi and needed a vehicle for it. I thought…
