Category: Secondhand
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Airspeed Oxford – Part One – The Leaky Frog
A recent estate sale brought this creature into my life; Lermontov the leaky frog. He is so named because he is from Russia, is made up of old parts, and is leaking sand all over the photo table. He is an apt analogy for the Novo Airspeed Oxford model. Lermontov cost nothing – the Airspeed…
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We Can Retro Better than You Can
If you are a collector of mid-century modern furniture, or fashions, or cars you can pay a small fortune for junk. It’ll be up to you to repair and maintain it, and make yourself think you’re doing a good thing. For the scale model builder, we can do the same thing, but with a bit…
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Boeing Dreamliner – Part Two – Dry Fit Wonder
I started this kit with some misgivings but they are rapidly evaporating. The only flaw I have detected so far is the loss of two engine fans. Whether they were wrenched off by the previous owner or never cast is unknown – I have just had to search the spares box and make up a…
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Swiss Ju-52 – Part One – Straight Out
Of the box. This one is a tribute to a club mate who left a large uncompleted stash. I’ll confess that it is not the first Ju-52 I’ve built – one was a Heller kit repopped by the Czechs, and one was a slightly later Italeri offering. Of course this Lufthansa plane will be the…
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Grumman F3F – Part One – At Long Last
I have been looking for a 1:72 scale model of this aircraft for years – and wouldn’t you know – one turned up at a swap meet sale a few weeks ago. It may not be the Monogram Four-Start Plastikit of my youth, but it is a perfectly good Czech MPM model sealed in it’s…
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RAF Wellington – Part One – Another Legacy Bomber
This kit is the second legacy purchase from a deceased estate. The club member who passed away had not started it. A short google search turned up a number of RAF squadrons who flew this type and several clear illustrations showing camouflage pattern and squadron markings. As I had built a Wellington Mk 1c before…
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Northrop Gamma – Part One – Inter-war Special
Newcastle Song Day. And I didn’t let the chance go by. This was the first time I had seen a Williams kit – though I had read about them in Scalemetes. The impression I got was that they were rather garage-kit like. This vanished when I opened the box at the club’s stash sale and…
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Kawanishi Norm – Part Four – A Powerful Flop
From all accounts great things were expected from the Kawanishi reconnaissance float plane. And then the contra-rotating propellers and jettison-able float proved problematical and the service missions undertaken with the type were failures. So it was quietly shoved back into a training role. The appearance of the aircraft in the box art was what attracted…
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North American Bronco – A Quick Build
This North American OV-10 model has a rather chequered history – it was sold twice and gifted three times before it was built. It is just this report on my column because it was a quick build. It started life in Korea as an Academy model, made its way to Japan into someone’s stash, and…
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All These Sprue Trees…
Of which i am collecting more and more each week… What the devil do I do with them? I’ve been in the habit of throwing them into the trash after I finish a build – minus the spare parts, of course. In some instances chopped up as I progress through the box, but in some…
The Little World 