Category: Scale Models
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Beaufighter TFX – Part One – The Alternate Version

I built an Airfix Beaufighter model a year or so ago – the modern kit – and was extremely pleased with the result. It was completed as an RCAF model with a famous pilot in it. This Beau is a very much older version of the plane from Airfix. Scalemates tells me it is a…
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The Stoic Modeller

Or ” Epictetus Builds A Short-Run Kit “. Stoicism is not just about cold showers and lumpy porridge. It is a whole philosophic outlook designed to increase the happiness and tranquillity of the practitioner. A good deal of it is internal dialogue with someone who should listen more. This applies particularly to the scale modeller…the…
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Fokker D VII – Part Five – The Starter Kit Ended

My determination to make a starter kit in period style has resulted in a delightful model. It was not all retro-perfect. I did resort to a computer program and an inkjet printer for the lozenge-pattern decals. I did add little licks from several paint pots that Revell did not supply. And I did poke a…
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Fokker D VII – Part Four – The Sweet Lozenge

Well, I claim privilege. This is my column and my model and I can break step when I like. I stopped being 14 years old long enough to operate the computer and the printer and printed out that decal sheet you saw in Part Two. It was coated with a matt varnish and left for…
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Fokker D VII – Part Three – A Kid At The Club

True to my original promise, I started the Revell Fokker D VII as if I was an adolescent. I took it to the club and set upon it with the pots of paint supplied; one red and one blue. I also cracked three other colours from the general stock to improve the details, but the…
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Fokker D VII – Part Two – Not That Much Of A Kid

My resolve to build the Revell Fokker as if I was fourteen has foundered somewhat. The basic paints did not go anywhere near being enough to make a good representation and the decal sheet was a nightmare. As I needed to ring in more paint I decided to reprint the decals too. The novelty of…
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Fokker D VII – Part One – I’m A Kid Again

I have decided to try the Retro Challenge. I want to see if I can be a kid again. I’m not sure if I was good at youth the first time round but I did have fun. And now I get a chance to do it again – specifically to build a kit as if…
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How Do You Know When To Get A Divorce?

Not a divorce from your spouse. Heaven Forbid. You married, and you have no right to demand happiness now. If you are a scale modeller you have other resources… No, I mean when do you decide that a kit in the stash is never, ever going to get built, and decide to sell it or…
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I’m Bypassing My Second Childhood

And I’m heading straight for my second adolescence. More money to spend, I get to stay up later, and there’ll be girls. Well, girls for later. For now I get to spend some of my allowance on better model kits. And there’ll be increased privileges and responsibilities. I am going to be allowed to have…
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Westland Wallace – Part Five – Swuping Aviation Corporation

No-one who sees the Westland Wallace owned by Generalissimo Stein Kai Shek can doubt that the province of Swuping is progressive. Other areas are still under the conservative rule of the warlords and cliques but Swuping is firmly headed into the Twentieth Century. Once the minor setbacks of invasions from the Nationalists, the Communists, and…
