Category: Uncategorized
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Chance-Vought Cutlass – Part One – A 50’s Icon

With a lot of the 40’s in it… The Fujimi kit of the Chance-Vought F7U came as a complete surprise – a stash sale but not a type that I had considered before. As a kid in the 50’s I do remember other models of this fighter but they are so far back as to…
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How Do You Second-Guess The Factory?

With boldness, one would suggest. Scale model kit makers get it right most of the time. Their products are meticulously designed, moulded, and packaged. They are sold at reasonable prices by retailers who have the best interests of the modeller at heart. And every time you wish upon a star a Fairey gets it’s wings…
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The Drive-By Scale Dumping

Someone, somewhere, is dumping 1:12 scale old mattresses on the verge outside dollhouse maker’s workshops. And someone is dumping their old scale models at our clubrooms. We are slowly pulling them out of our display cabinets and subjecting them to scale scrutiny. It’s not the quality of the building that is suspect – it ‘s…
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All Over The Shop

A song to the tune of ” One Day At A Time “. This time the lyrics deal with scale modellers that build 10 models at a time. They start something, bog down, and go on to the next box in the stash to start again. Their minds shift the first kit to the back…
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Is It Organisation or Obsession?

I have spent an afternoon labelling boxes. The basic need was to identify the contents of cardboard grazing boxes that contain the larger model aircraft I build. These were too big for IKEA shelves and too difficult to dust – I needed to keep them covered, the boxes were a good solution, and both locally…
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The Double Decal

The idea of a commercial double decal is not new…but it might be just the answer for your home-made ones. Some decals come on Cartograf or other printer’s sheets as a two layer plan. I have made up French Air Force planes where not only the tail tricolor but the main roundels require two applications;…
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AVIA B.534 – Part Three – Great Patriotic Uprising

October 1944. The Slovaks rose up against the German occupation. They failed. But while they tried, they gained eternal fame, and part of that attempt was made with the Czech AVIA B.543 fighters. Biplanes against modern Messerschmitts and Focke Wulfes. You can guess what happened… I never knew this – the odd insignia on the…
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I Need A Secretary

Stop making those snorting noises – I really do. I write more than I can readily publish and the mechanics of translating these little pieces to the WordPress site and then sneaking them onto a Facebook page is taking up a great deal of time. They come off the ends of my fingers like literary…
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The Noodles You Have In Your Bowl

Are all you need. Have you ever been to a fast food outlet that tried to sell you food by asking whether you wanted to ” up-size ” it? Did you agree or decline, thinking that a standard-size assault on your gall bladder was all you really needed? You felt you had just been hustled.…
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Rain Clouds At Dawning

Gather round me now… Rain clouds at dawning, model maker take warningWhiskey at night, model maker’s delight. Arrr, the old tales be the true ones… I have never taken so much notice of temperature and humidity as when I started airbrushing scale models. I was fool enough to try the art when the weather department…
