Category: Soviet aircraft
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part Two – More Pegs Than A Dublin Phone Book
And every one of them working… The next time you hear someone blithely tell you that they ” winged it “…and make out that it was all so easy…refer them to me. I have winged the Tupolev TB-3 and I know what the abyss looks like. The basic bracing inside was actually very precise –…
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Tupolev TB-3 – Part One – The Flying Shed
Say what you like about Soviet bomber designers of the 1930’s, few could match them for the ability to hope. Hope that their designs would be accepted, Hope that they would fly. Hope that they would not be imprisoned or liquidated. This assembly of sheet metal and hubris seems to have made it through the…
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Well, It’s Official
You saw it here first. Ruritania, Liechtenstein, and Andorra have entered into a triple military alliance. This agreement – known as The Pact Of Zinc – should ensure mutual defence for the three nations and secure them from enemies in the east. Vaduz, Strelsau, and Andorra la Vella were bedecked with national flags entwined as…
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VVS Tupolev SB2 – Part Four-Red 3
Boy, you have to hand it to the Soviets – they kept their squadron codes close to their chests. Unlike the other air forces that might display this information plus the individual position in a formation, airframe number, and unit number on their fuselages – or the training squadrons that had buzz numbers under the…
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VVS Tupolev SB2 – Part Three – Freehand
Not a choice I frequently make – I am a mask and spray person. In this case the photos of an SB2 in the Winter War were pretty thin on the ground ( and that was covered in snow,…) and the delineation of the two areas of colour in the monochrome pictures is poor. Not…
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VVS Tupolev SB2 – Part Two – The Honourable Amphibian
Do not despise the frog… The name of FROG models has been in the modellers dictionary for a very long time – and many of the kits that this British firm made are still turning up on the second-hand market as re-pops from older Russian factories. This NOVO Tupolev was boxed in the Soviet era…
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VVS Tupolev SB2 – Part One – The Soviet Volunteer
May not be worth ten pressed men, but I am not fussy… This Novo model of a Tupolev SB-2 is the second one I’ve essayed to build – the first was a gift from my daughter – found at Leonardo’s secondhand model shop in Tokyo just before Covid hit. I built it as a Spanish…
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MiG-29 Fulcrum – Part Two – Thinking Behind
Thinking behind is opposite from thinking ahead and has different rules. a. You are not meant to feel good. b. You are not going to do a good job. c. The language is different. Shorter and sharper… My second lesson in second thinking came when I had closed up the fuselage of he MiG-29. It…
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MiG-29 Fulcrum – Part One – Not 1959
I can’t understand why Airfix did not make a 50¢ model of a MiG-29 in 1959 when I was a kid. But, better late than never. The second kit in the Fifty Cent Fighter series is as neatly moulded as the Su-22 – and contains just as many traps for the unwary. I am delighted…
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How To Achieve Air Superiority
Without firing a shot. Easy…spread propaganda that you have a new plane that is many generations beyond what your rival has. Produce propaganda and animated simulations of the aircraft and make it do things that are frankly impossible while claiming that you have hundreds of them in secret underground bunkers. Make accurate scale models of…
The Little World 