Category: Uncategorized
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Breaker, Breaker. We Have A Breaker.
Have you ever noticed that some model kits are never destined to stay together? There are certain models that have been made to such fine – or such crude – standards that they can be assembled with however much care one can muster…but will fragment continuously ever after. They are destined to fall apart repeatedly.…
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Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk V – Part Three – Subassembly Day
A day at my model building club is a short one – I get there about 9:00 AM and leave at noon. But I can accomplish a lot in those hours…drink coffee, eat cake, make bad jokes, and cement the first parts of a kit together. The amount of cementation depends to some extent upon…
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Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mk.V – Part Two – I’ve Seen That Somewhere Before…
The more I looked at the AW Whitley in parts on the sprue trees, the more I got the feeling that I’d seen something like it before. The French inter-war bombers came to mind, but it was the awkward chin window that stick in my mind. Surely they didn’t think it was a good idea…Where…
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Burbank
I appear to have started an aircraft factory. This was not my intention when I began my retirement modelling – I was just looking for one or two kits to while away spare time. Nostalgia. A mere bagatelle. Well, the Mere Aircraft Company’s Bagatelle Mk III turns out to have been a hell of an…
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Never Mind Washing Your Hands
Wash your Handley Page. If you won’t do it carefully, just do it for the Halifax… We all need to wash our mitts more these days to prevent the transmission of the Wuhan Plague and hopefully we will all do so – but what we really need to do is wash our model kits better.…
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Gluetoset
Waitin’ for the gluetoset. Is there a more agonising time? Waitin’ for the paintoset has been suggested, but at least while you are doing that you have something to look at. And you are trying to keep the rain/flies/dust/fingers off the new colour so you are occupied. But waiting for the gluetoset? Millenial boredom. Those…
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Grumman Wildcat – Part One – Hello Yellow
My friend Warren once pulled up a Hobby Boss kit of the F4F Wildcat in early colours and it set me investigating. This plane turned up in one of the profiles out of a modelling magazine – I can’t tell you if the kit makers made theirs from the illustration or if the illustrator drew…
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The Shelf Life
I have a miniature air museum of model airplanes. And a motor museum of model cars. And an air field. And an airport. And very little space to actually live in – I need to move a Tupolev sideways to sit on the toilet. Reform is needed. I thought that this was possible with IKEA.…
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The Inaccurate Model
If you are a reader of Britmodeller or some of the IPMS sites you’ll find that there are a number of people who live in mortal fear – whether it’s fear of discovering their plastic kit is out by three millimetres or fear of discovering that it’s not – is not clear. I think the…
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RCAF Lancaster – Part Six – Wings And Tail
I decided to risk it with the Lanc – to attach the vertical stabilisers and rudders at the end of the painting process. This might sound dodgy but the precision with which the joins were moulded encouraged it. And it meant that the masking and painting of the flying surfaces was going to be a…
The Little World 