Category: Uncategorized
-
CAC Winjeel – Part Four – FTS 1

Point Cook, Victoria. SOOTB rendition of this Winjeel and I don’t think I could be happier with the result. It will form the starting point of a number of RAAF training types – with the occasional side-excursion to an aerobatics team aircraft or the FAC service livery as used on ADF exercises. You have to…
-
CAC Winjeel – Part One – The Native Name

Air forces all over the world have code name families for their aircraft. Thus you get fighter plane names that project power like the USAAF Thunderbolt and Lightning or training names like the RCAF Yale and Harvard. In Australia there is a tendency to apply aboriginal native names to aircraft Like Boomerang and Wirraway. The…
-
Scale Modelling Is All About A Sense Of Proportion

Some buy it in kits – the scale is stated on the box, unless it was moulded in the 1950’s… Some scratch-build and measure it out with rulers and calipers. Their computers will lay it out and editing programs let them change it. And they can lose it entirely at a scale model exhibition. If…
-
The Display Of Apples At The Fruiterer

Lovely, red, gleaming – piled in geometric order out the front of the fruiterer’s shop. A temptation to buy apples. Or to steal one. How many children and youths have succumbed to the temptation of the display? How many destitute adults…hunger driving them. The fruit seller has legal rights and morality and more fruit than…
-
You Look At It

It looks at you. The scale model stand-off; you have bought a kit well beyond your comfort zone. It has 1468 parts plus a booklet and a decal sheet with 47 different options. Every track link has 18 parts and you need to make up 256 of them. This might be fine, except it is…
-
Your Environment Is Waiting To Mug You

As scale modellers we tend to forget a lot. We forget to save money in the hobby shop and we forget to put nose weights into our aircraft. We forget to to sign the club attendance book and to wash our hands in the loo. Most times we get away with it. However, the universe…
-
Tupolev TB-3 – Part Four – The Inevitables

” The Inevitables ” is a cartoon band of super-heroes that you eventually watch, even if you don’t want to… The inevitables in a complex kit from Eastern Europe are the things that don’t fit and the things that are too complex. The first was illustrated when I found gaps in the structure – yawning…
-
It’s All So Simple, Even A Child Could Understand It

Quick, go out and find me a child… The new rules for the competition are up. Now there should be no confusion as to categories, criteria, or critiques. Simply follow the 126 steps outlined in the ” Scientific Guide To Artistic Paradigms Of The Existential Scale Model Collective “. Copies are available upon submission fo…
-
No Security Is No Security

Put another way: do not display anything to the public you cannot afford to have broken or stolen. Also do not expect care and worship of your art, craft, object, or performance. You may hope for it but don’t hype yourself up to demand it. You have very little legal redress for criminal damage and…
-
If You Cannot Raise the Standard Of Your Skills

At least lower the level of your expectations. The hobby, after all, is meant to give you pleasure. If all you do is whinge about the efforts of others and wince at the sight of yours…well, is it time to seek your joy elsewhere? I have gone up and down in my own estimation a…
