Category: Uncategorized
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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…
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Buy A Curse

Be careful in your selection – you want something that will disturb and haunt you for a long time to come. The thing to do is go to the hobby shop and search the shelves until you find something that is both impossibly expensive and horribly complex. Preferably with a complicated colour scheme and a…
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Take It Off

Take it aaaaall off… If your mind replayed the music of Dave Rose – ” The Stripper ” – you are a reprobate. I am ashamed to be seen with you. This morning I have to strip paint from an old Airfix kit to get enough parts to complete a stash build. I have rejected…
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Me 262 – Part One – Another Childhood Ambition

As a child, I had many model aircraft kits – but one that always eluded me was the Airfix baggie of the ME 262 jet fighter. I have since seen them as Hobby Boss and Czech kits, but never gave it much thought. Then a Revell kit called to me through a fog of disinterest…
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Know When To Fold ‘Em

Kenny Rogers’ good advice to scale model builders. We all know the virtues of perseverance and hard work, having had it drummed into us by parents, schools, and employers. What has been missing is the virtue of quitting while you are ahead. Kenny Rogers’ gambler knew it, and it is time we did too. You…
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Our Years Of Confinement

We all served a year of confinement in 2020-2021…even if we were guilty of no crime. Disease is an unfair judge. Most of us are as free to travel now as before, if you factor in the extra costs, the current wars and dangers, and the deterioration to our welcome as tourists. Even those of…
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The Burgeoning

It is like ” The Quickening ” only it takes longer. It also takes more money, time, and space. The Burgeoning is the process by which scale model kits get bigger and more complex. It steers the scale model hobby into new areas of expertise while it clutters up display cabinets worldwide. It’s not hard…
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The Modellers Declaration Of Rights

A treatise for the times. And good luck to you defending these propositions in the scale modelling world. There are more dictators in the hobby than in all of Africa and South America combined, and they would all rule you if they could. From shape of kits, to equipment, to paint colour, to pattern, decals,…
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Potez 63-11 – Part Four – The Fishbowl Of Sadness

I refer to this rather sleek French aircraft in this way as it was witness to the failures of its own armies in the spring of 1940 – from an elegant vantage point. The design is deliberately biased toward the primary mission – reconnaissance – with the pilot up above like a hansom cab driver…
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Potez 63-11 – Part Three – The Problem

Solved. Until the next one crops up. The fuselage, wings, and tail of the Potez observation aircraft are together and the amount of filler is absolutely minimal. I have undercoated and smoothed it, and could not be happier. In the intervals of waiting for things to set or dry I tackled the engines, wheels, landing…
