Category: Scale Models
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Modeller’s Pixellation

If you’re a digital photographer you’ll know what pixellation is; the blocky nature of photos that have been taken at small resolution and blown up large. It’s present in every digital picture if you go down far enough to look for it, but disappears once you step back. It’s a good way of thinking of…
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Nakajima ‘ Kate ‘ – Part Seven – One From Column A And One from Column B…

I’m never completely prepared for the end of a build. Whether it is a 1:18th scale post office or the newest of the 1:72nd scale aircraft, the final touches seem to sneak up on me. I just put down the brush or the knife and then…realise that I should not pick it up again. I’ve…
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Nakajima ‘ Kate ‘ – Part Six – Hold My Coffee…

It’s the sober version of ” Hold my beer…” but you can get into just as much trouble anyway. I have a plan. So, you’ll reflect, did Ludendorff ( and didn’t that work out well…), but I hasten to add mine is peaceful and productive. And it revolves around something that revolves around. Okay, enough preparation.…
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Nakajima ‘ Kate ‘ – Part Five – Well, That Escalated Quickly…

It seems like just this morning I went out to the Little Workshop with a cup of coffee and looked at the bare grey plastic of the latest Airfix kit. Then I started to do this and that and suddenly it was 9:00 at night and there it was in camouflage. It shows the value…
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Nakajima ‘ Kate ‘ – Part Four – The Basic Structure

Or ” When Does An Airplane Start To Live? ‘. Okay. You’ve done the interior painting. You’ve stuck on the instrument decals. You’ve decided whether or not you’ll spend an extra month trying to put in photoetched seatbelts, pilot’s clipboards, and spare chewing gum dispenser ( US aircraft only).* Everything that could be sub-assembled and…
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Nakajima ‘ Kate ‘ – Part Three – The Sub-Assembly

I once wrote that there are always some areas of model building that are a chore – something we approach with a groan and leave with a cheer. And it’s different for each modeller. Well, the same applies to certain stages that are a real pleasure. Oddly enough, for me it is completing sub-assemblies. It’s…
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Nakajima ‘ Kate ‘ – Part Two – Realistic Manufacture

The new Airfix model kit is sitting drying in the warm workshop as I write. I’ve done the washing of the parts, scanned the decal sheet and instructions, and done a preliminary check of the parts. I’m delighted with what I’ve found. Or not found…no polyurethane blocks with miniscule parts to be sawn free and…
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The Little World In The Big World

I recently visited York in Western Australia ( I believe they also have one in England…and a newer version in the USA…) and wandered through the York Motor Museum. It’s a commercial building in the main street of this country town that houses a number of the cars that a local mining magnate – Peter…
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How Dare You Attempt To Entertain Me!

One of my friends has commented that the world now seems to be full of people who are determined to be offended by something. I think he may be right, though it might always have been this way – we just never had the access to social media that brought it to our attention. What…
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Northrop Nomad – Part Three – Bumblebee

If you are going to let teach inexperienced airmen the arts of flying, you send them up in training aircraft. And it’s not just the pilots that need to be up in the air – the observers, gunners, navigators, radio operators, flight engineers, and flight attendants also have to get their feet off the ground.…
