Category: subassembly
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SAAB Tunnen – Part Three – Not Scot Free

As you can see in the heading image, the SAAB Tunnen has not gone scot-free from the need for filler. The culprit is the optional piece for the underside of the nose – it is either a cannon-armed fighter like this or the photo-recon version with camera windows. You are faced with a curved seam…
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SAAB Tunnen – Part Two – Spacious Swede

Nearly all tricycle-gear planes need some sort of nose weight to prevent them sitting on their tails. In some cases it can be a geometric nightmare trying to find enough space at the front of the fuselage to accommodate that weight. You are asking for trouble if you try to do it with lumps of…
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Grigorovich IP-1 – Part Three – Close Enough For Jazzski

And there I was, getting along so very well…and then winter set in. I knew it was winter because the snow started drifting into the gaps between the wing roots and the fuselage on this Avis model. I was delighted, as it obscured the giant trenches that had appeared. But come spring, the ruse would…
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Grigorovich IP-1 – Part Two – The Soviet Engine

I might not have been paying attention in the past to the details of aero engineering…but I do now that the kit makers are making much more detailed efforts. For instance, I always built the Airfix and Monogram fighters with radial engines that fit inside cowlings. In many cases they were just engine fronts inside…
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PZL P.11c – Part Two – Volte Face

Ahem. This may be difficult. I need to change my mind without giving the impression I was ever wrong. I mean, I don’t want to rend the fabric of the universe, now do I? But I need to change my mind about the Polish model moulding business. I once was of the opinion that the…
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Oh Ye Of Little Faith

Draw Nigh And Listen Unto Me. Cement it twice and glue it three times. For that is the only way that thou wilt be able to keep the pissy little landing gear legs in their position, or the canopy on firmly. Or indeed the fuselage halves together. Add another layer of cement or glue and…
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Fiat CR.32 – Part Three – Subassemblies

The call-out and the box art for this Italian/Chinese fighter show sub-assemblies bolted onto the basic structure. The pictures provide a valuable clue that the instructions fail to show; you need to pre-paint the assemblies before you attach them – or you’ll never get clean demarcations. So, emboldened by the Slovakian jigs, I tried a…
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Fiat CR.32 – Part Two – Rosatelli Rocket

I had never heard about Celestino Rosatelli before I read the instruction sheet for this kit, but the story there was enough to send me looking at some of his other designs. They were mostly successful and few of them looked like clunkers, but as with most of the designs of the period I long…
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Fokker Eindecker – Part Two – Is This Thing Actually Lego?

You might be tempted to think so as you assemble it – the squareness and the simplicity. Antony Fokker was a genius, no doubt – he could get the most out of the material available to him by seizing upon the simplest of forms. It apparently had a workable synchronising mechanism for the Spandau machine…

