Category: subassembly
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part Four – PE P/O

Or what to do when you cannot get your hands round the throat of the person who designed the kit. I make no complaint about the mould-cutting shop. Or the injection plastic line. The design department are mostly blameless as is the decal office. My venom is reserved for the acid-pocked faces of the photo-etch…
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part Three – Seams We Need To Fill Something

If you paid more to read these posts, the jokes would be better. The fuselage on the Dora Wings is a model…of course it’s a model…of sturdiness. Once the sides and top come together with some liquid cement and dry for a night the whole is greater than the parts. But there is a discrepancy…
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Bellanca Pacemaker – Part Two – Windows Of The Soul

If this were an Academy kit it would be windows of the Seoul. Thank you, thank you. Here all week. Try the veal. The missing windows ( a puzzle in philosophy – if windows are missing portions of the fuselage but they are not missing, are they missing? Answers third tub left in the Agora.…
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Tupolev ANT-5 – Part Three – Afterthoughts

I pasted that title on because of the tail of this Soviet fighter plane. Sukhoi did a bang-up job of designing a fuselage for this one – the curved lines of he corrugated metal are superb. The fairings for the Rhone engine are massive, but give the front end a really sleek look. I cannot…
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Tupolev ANT-5 – Part Two – The Midget Submarine

It’s not really, but it looks like it – or Sherman from Sherman’s Lagoon. The actual fit of the fuselage halves for this Zvezda model is spot-on – only basic smoothing needed. The sesqui-wing needs some putty help, but even that is pretty minor. It encourages me to think that the rest of the components…
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Gloster Gladiator Mk I – Part Two – One Day’s Work

Every fortnight or so I visit a private home for a friendly scale modelling session with a group separate from my normal modelling club. The experience can be quite different. I enjoy the routine of each experience, but I keep them separate in my mind. Oddly, one of the other participants in the home sessions…
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Lima Beans And Spinach

Some people like lima beans. Some like spinach. Some cannot stand either vegetable*. If they are in a restaurant it’s easy – they don’t order either. If they are eating at the family table or someone else’s house the problem becomes more difficult. They may have a heaping helping steaming there on the plate and…
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A7 Corsair II – Part Five – On Her Feet

When next you see a charity tin marked ” Italeri “, stop and put a dollar in. They are good people. In particular, they have respect and kindness for builders of their 1:72 aircraft – they always provide decent landing gear and attachment points for gear legs in the engine nacelles, wings, or fuselages. If…
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A7 Corsair II – Part Three – A Grey Eminence

I am always a little daunted when I see a paint call-out that calls for different shades of grey…I am never certain whether they should be gray. The only thing about which I can be certain is that I will pick the wrong one. No, I’m wrong – the second thing I am certain of…
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Vultee Vanguard – Part Four – Mind The Gap

Fitting an eastern European model together is like opening Forrest Gump – you can never tell whether you have a soft centre or not. In the best kits the parts fit, and in the rest they nearly fit. You are fortunate if the gaps are symmetrical and the surfaces parallel. Plastic strip and sheet can…
