Category: Scale Models
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RCAF Hudson – Part One – At Long Last
I have skirted around the Lockheed Hudson for decades. My collection includes a Lodestar, a Ventura, and a Harpoon – all fun to build and successful finishes. Yet the basic Hudson has eluded me – until Airfix decided to revive a Vintage Classic. I’ve been haunting the red-box shelves in two shops for months –…
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Academy C118 Liftmaster – Part Three – Presidential Plane
There were a number of choices of livery for this Douglas aircraft kit. I chose the Republic Of China version as it was a presidential transport for a number of decades – replacing a previous DC-3. It is hard to find positive evidence on the net about the Academy decals but the actual plane itself…
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Academy C118 Liftmaster – Part One – A Deliberate Choice
Having been given a number of 1:144th scale aircraft and successfully completed them…I have decided the scale is a good thing. My main collection is 1:72, of course, but many aircraft are just not made in this size. If they are, the larger ones like transports and bombers become behemoths that devour display space. It…
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Is There A Mathematical Formula For Fun?
Or is it all just numbers? When you see scale model kits offered for sale at different prices, is there a correlation in those figures with the size of the scale and the degree of happiness that will be generated? Can we do the maths? a. If you never build the model, there is no…
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The Search For A Good Time
Well, isn’t that what we all want? The question is how we define it and where we look. Other people search for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Scale plastic modellers search for styrene parts that fit and paint that doesn’t dry in the bottle. Also the bits that drop on the floor. We are…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Five – Winging It
At a certain point in the build, your new airplane becomes a nuisance. Up until then, it is a manageable fuselage, some tailplanes, and a pair of wings. Or many wings, if you are making a bi or tri-plane. All the parts can be kept in the original box. When the erection stage comes around,…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Four – Mask, Spray…
Rinse, Repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s all your own fault, you know. You chose a scheme that has more than one colour and spurned the maker’s decal sheet. You could have done it as a prototype with bare metal, a works number, and be done in time for tea. But no, you had to pick something…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Three – Goo-ing It
You have to wonder how we did it. I mean back in the last century when we built scale model kits and did not use putty to fill in seams. Were the kits seamless them? Were we blind? Was filling a gap considered a disreputable act? Well times have changed, and many of you have…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Two – The Evitable
You can only put off the inevitable so long. Eventually it becomes horribly evitable and you either have to shit or climb off the pot. I finally had to start sawing on the Bristol. The vac-form plate was a surprisingly easy task. I’d YouTubed a group of modellers in Canberra who were discussing vac-form modelling…
The Little World 