Category: Scale Models
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Five – Et Voila

There is a lesson to be learned with this Airfix model of a DC-3 in Aéronavale colours – and I must compel myself to learn it. It is a lesson of humility. At the start I thought this a marginal model – the sort of ugly cousin kit from an old company that had been…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Four – Keeping The Faith

If you have shares in 3M or in the Ustar manufacturing company in Taiwan, take heart – your yearly dividend is assured. I have been masking the Douglas DC 3 and it has taken slightly more tape than would have been required for the full-sized aircraft. You need to have a vision as you do…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Three – The Airfix Channel

Well, I’d watch it if they started broadcasting, and so would you. But this is not about the television – it’s about the Airfix channel that they put between the fuslage and inner wing panel of the DC3. It is so far the widest gap this side of Darien. Not on both sides of the…
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Douglas DC-3 – Part Two – It Fits Where it Touches

I am trying not to be discouraged by the Airfix DC3/C47 kit. I have chosen wisely to make it into a closed kit – the door fitting on the port side is truly appalling. Or perhaps I am looking at it from the wrong perspective – in the original form it has three mini-guns and…
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Potez 540 – part Six – Acqui De Espero!

I think that lost something in the translation… Or maybe it was a famous battle cry. Or a caption on a poster. Whatever…it translates as a bare ” here I wait “. Honest – it googles up as an advertising phrase for a hotel in the Canary Islands… Don’t ask why it appears on the…
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Potez 540 – Part Four – IKEA Day

The day I assemble the fuselage from the flat pack with a little hex wrench. I almost seemed like that was going to be the case when I first saw the way the aircraft had been sectioned. But Heller was wise – if the Potez was rectangular in cross section there was no point in…
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Potez 540 – Part Three – Three Days On The Road

And I’m definitely not gonna make it home tonight. Not riding the Potez 540. The heading image is three days later. Not hectic days, mind, but steady use of my evening modelling time. I think we are making progress and I hope it is in a forward direction. The engine nacelles or housings for the…
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Potez 540 – Part Two – The Hatch Of Heller

The moment of truth arrived in my hobby room – I opened the Mister Craft box and saw what I had exchanged money for. I was pleasantly surprised. Heller it was, and Heller is still is. But not as bare or sad as some people would have you think. And not moulded as badly as…
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Potez 540 – Part One – The Roll Of the Dice

When my mother was expecting me, an angel appeared and offered to make me either smart or good looking – her choice. I now begin to suspect which idea appealed to her. The reason I’ve come to this conclusion is I have purchased another Mister Craft kit from Poland. You’ll remember my experiences with other…
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The Bellanca Ball-Ache

I’m being unfair to Bellanca – I could have chosen Beechcraft or Bristol. The alliteration was the thing – a ” B ” aircraft maker was needed. Let’s start out by saying there never was an aircraft called the Ball-Ache. There may have been many that induced the condition, but that is a matter for…
