Category: Scale Models
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Sopwith Camel – Part Five – Hendon’s Prize
On some occasions I will have all I need to decorate a model but miss out on one thing. In this case it is a set of small decals for the airframe number. There is one on the Academy decal sheet, but it’s wrong for the Hendon camel. I adopt a sensible attitude to these…
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Sopwith Camel – Part Four – Marking The Territory
And the next time I do, it will be with an incontinent dog. The colour scheme chosen for the Academy Sopwith Camel is the closest I could come to the preserved example in the RAF museum at Hendon. Working on the assumption that if any knew what a Camel would look like it would be…
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Sopwith Camel – Part Two – The Bagatelle Trap
How many times have you dismissed something as too minor to much concern yourself with? And how many times have you been proved wrong? The casual builder of this little Academy kit may well miss some of the joys of the universe if they take a flippant attitude. Admittedly, the cockpit is nothing at all.…
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Sopwith Camel – Part One – A Kind Gift
A gift camel. I feel like a middle eastern potentate. Actually a second gift Camel. One came from my friend Paul and one from my friend Warren. This latter one is the Academy kit, and as I’ve just completed a Revell WW1 fighter, I thought I would have a change and do the Academy. It…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Seven – Why Was It Not Named?
Dauntless, Helldiver, Avenger, Hellcat…all good historic names for US Navy aircraft. The Army Air Force had Mustangs and Thunderbolts and such. Why was the BT 1 just a code, instead of a name? I suspect it is because it never established itself in the affections of the press – or at least in the press…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Six – The Arcane Scheme
I occasionally go to our local bottle shop and buy beer or wine. It is a big shop and has hundreds of varieties of booze, and the only way to differentiate before you buy is by the labels. I have given up being a gourmet or a gourmand and have finally come down to being…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Five – A Pit Of Cocks
Settle down class. Stop giggling. You in the back, too. The cockpit on the BT 1 had every chance of being awkward – PE rudder pedals and control knobs and such Czecherie – but I refused to let it daunt me. I have already made a Douglas SBD-4 and I am dauntless… The green colour…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Four – The Donkey
And I spent a morning pinning the tail on it. No blindfold. Czech and other short-run airplane kits have many flaws, but one of the most worrying is the fact that they often provide no way of attaching the tail securely. If there is a tab and slot it is rudimentary, clogged with flash and…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part Two – Teeth Gritting Time
The start of a build is either going to be heaven or hell. The choice of which is largely up to the builder, but it can be more attitude than anything that determines which destination you’re heading for. In the case of a lot of short-run kits the removal of parts from the sprue tree…
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Northrop BT 1 – Part One – The Bargain Bomber
I took advantage of a stash sale one time to purchase a number of never-to-be-seen-again model kits. You’ve already seen one of the Eastern European maker’s short-run planes – the Mitsubishi ” Ann “- in this column before. This Northrop is the accompanying model – a contemporary in the air in the early 1940’s. This…
The Little World 