Category: Self Reliance
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Is There A Mathematical Formula For Fun?

Or is it all just numbers? When you see scale model kits offered for sale at different prices, is there a correlation in those figures with the size of the scale and the degree of happiness that will be generated? Can we do the maths? a. If you never build the model, there is no…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Six – Manitoba

Winnipeg, actually. Remarkable place. When I was a child I spent a month there one week and I shall never forget it. The pills help, though… It is the site of the museum that houses CF-WCE – the Norcanair Bristol Freighter. Ex-RCAF, it served many years flying out of Saskatchewan to points north. Now it…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Five – Winging It

At a certain point in the build, your new airplane becomes a nuisance. Up until then, it is a manageable fuselage, some tailplanes, and a pair of wings. Or many wings, if you are making a bi or tri-plane. All the parts can be kept in the original box. When the erection stage comes around,…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Three – Goo-ing It

You have to wonder how we did it. I mean back in the last century when we built scale model kits and did not use putty to fill in seams. Were the kits seamless them? Were we blind? Was filling a gap considered a disreputable act? Well times have changed, and many of you have…
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Norcanair Bristol Freighter – Part Two – The Evitable

You can only put off the inevitable so long. Eventually it becomes horribly evitable and you either have to shit or climb off the pot. I finally had to start sawing on the Bristol. The vac-form plate was a surprisingly easy task. I’d YouTubed a group of modellers in Canberra who were discussing vac-form modelling…
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The Scholarly Modeller

People in the arts, sciences, and humanities will all have encountered the scholarly author or researcher – who will vastly overbear anything the average enthusiast can bring to a discussion. The scholars will have read, experimented, thought, or created their way to eminence in their respective fields and very likely have published and publicized all…
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The Mask

And I don’t mean Jim Carrey. I may be crazy about my hobby, but there are limits… It was Windows Day at the Little Workshop. Again, I need to clarify; this means I was masking windows on a scale model airplane – not seething in rage and frustration at clunky computer commands. I use an…
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Was It Edison?

Who said he had discovered 10,000 ways that you could not do something before he made a successful electric lightbulb? I feel like that sometimes dealing with the scale modelling world. Whether it is painting or moulding, soldering or carving, there seems to be a long and winding road always ahead of me. A case…
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Doing It The Way You Want To Do it

Vs doing it the way someone else forces you to do it. Guess which feels better in the end. I am brought to this realisation with my change of activity in the scale model hobby field. I have removed one of my club connections from a public space to a private one and rearranged with…
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MiG 3 – Part Two – Can O’ Worms Canopy

You have to confront your fears as they come up. Or run away. I have been dreading the missing/broken/spoiled canopy situation ever since my first cement fingerprints on a P-47. I hasten to add, that was when I was seven – I now glue the little beggars on with PVA glue and all is serene.…
