Category: Self Reliance
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Hurricane Night Fighter – Part Two – Saturday To Monday
King’s Birthday long weekend and I had something better to do than go to the Royal Show. The basic structure of the Hurricane went together on Saturday afternoon. The undercoat and then the black sprayed on Sunday. The clear gloss was Monday. This kept me home – off the roads and safe from the double-demerit…
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” That’s A Pleasure To See “
Be fair and honest. Sometimes your mates will complete scale model projects that are far better than you could ever do. Don’t be jealous. Don’t be critical. Don’t push them off the shelf onto the floor. Give them their due, and ADMIRE them. I see other modellers in my clubs concentrate on their specialities and…
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Are You As Visual As I Am?
Or as the British Lords Of the Admiralty were in the days of sailing ships? The heyday of the Royal Navy in the 18th century saw construction of many wooden ships. Plans for these were a complex thing to see and the contractors proposing them to the Admiralty often had difficulty explaining the lines to…
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Perth’s Plastic People
Sunday morning at the big local scale model exhibition was a festival of wanderers – some with purpose and some with purses. I know…I was one of them. We do not dress well – in some cases because of poverty of purse…in others an equal lack of taste. No matter, we have paid to get…
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When Is An Apple Not An Apple?
When it is drawn as a diagram on the instruction sheet of a scale model piece of fruit. Then – particularly if the kit is from Prague – the part that looks like a Granny Smith, Mackintosh, or Cox’s Pippin could well be an aileron or de-icing strip. There will be few written notes to…
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Human Nature Is Optional
At a scale model competition there are certain conventions and rules: a. Models must be actually there. No good going around telling people how good you are. They are better at assessing you than you are. b. You enter your model in a specific division. There are 35,000 of these so it pays to be…
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If It Is Not The Best Model That You Have Ever Made…
Is it the worst? Let’s face it – we do have failures from time to time. Things start out fine and end up slightly horrid. We may have done what we always do, expecting a win…and ended up with a loss. The finish was off, the shape was off, the build was off. We were…
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The Sound Of A Human Voice
Will draw money from the tightest purse. I wanted to buy some hobby items. My local enquiries proved fruitless – the range of goods had once been carried by local shops but they’d gone on to better paying stock…or failed to sell the previous items. In any case, I was not robbing local tables of…
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How Much Fun Is It To See Other People’s Hobbies?
I wonder at that when I see exhibitions of scale modelling or other Little World pursuits. I know it is fun for the exhibitors as they vie to outdo each other and to buy things that they need for their next project. There is a deadly rivalry in some camps and shows are the battlefield…
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Like Kipling’s Cavalryman
I spend idle time studying how to reduce my horse’s burden. Even though mine is an iron beast that runs on petrol rather than hay, it is still limited in what it can bear. There is only so much a Suzuki hatchback can carry and that I can ferry from carpark to clubroom or exhibition.…
The Little World 