Category: Uncategorized
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Soviet ZIS-5 – Part Four – Yes Or No?

Do I take an extra day – and undercoat the body parts of the ZIS-5? Or just spray paint straight onto the tan plastic and hope it doesn’t scratch off? Well, I have decided to be moral, and careful, and cowardly. I have seen too many finishes ruined by me when I try to take…
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Soviet ZIS-5 – Part Two – The Truck Factory

Well, that’s what it feels like as you sit at your bench with a kit of this type. You are working in the factory. This same feeling was encountered years ago with a 1:24 scale kit of a Bedford fuel tanker made by Emhar. They obviously had an original vehicle to base the model upon,…
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Four Chances To Be Happy

You have just got your new model kit home. You’ve paid for it – no more eating or drinking for a month. All your money is gone. But now is the time to decide whether you are going to be happy or not. It all depends on whether you are going to follow one of…
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The Medium Is The Message

As Marshal McLuhan said, and was misquoted ever after. He had a right to be mad – he’d ordered a large, instead of a medium. And he was too Canadian to complain. In the hobby world, and especially in the hobby shop, there are lots of mediums – paint mediums, medium brushes, and medium tank…
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Nakajima Ki-27 – Part Two – Sitting On The Wing

Because that’s what it looks like the pilot of this fighter is doing. The curved structure of the wing continues inside the fuselage. Not a feature seen anywhere else, in my experience. I bow to ICM’s superior knowledge, however and build as they direct. The options provided in the kit are simple enough – wheels…
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Nakajima Ki-27 – Part One – Not A Nate

This evocation of the Nakajima Ki-27 fighter is for a different war; before it became and Allied ” Nate “. The type is the first monoplane fighter for he Imperial Japanese Army, and this time it is moulded by ICM. Their attention to detail is typical for the Ukrainian firm – every part fits and…
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The PREMIER Club…

I listened to a chap tell me that one of the scale modelling clubs that he belonged to was the PREMIER club in Western Australia. There was a touch of gas and o’erweening pride in the announcement, but it set me to wondering about club rankings. What constitutes supremacy? Is it member numbers, models turned…
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The Scale Sketch

Versus the final model painting. Which is better? Which is more authentic? Which is likely to get you a medallion on a ribbon at the Big Local Scale Model Exhibition? I think we all know the answer to that one… But not every model is destined to be under the eye of the Judgemental Committee.…
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Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

For the most part…don’t. Spend a good deal of your modelling time trying to locate it and when you find an entry point, crawl right in and close the hatch after yourself. Your ancestors lived largely outside comfort zones, as it happened, and spent a lot of time trying to locate them. They worked and…
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Give Us A Sign!

Or at least a good line drawing. The quality of instruction manuals for our kits is one thing that we often overlook – until we get to the stage of constructing the landing gear or rigging the sails. Then we can look them over as much as we like without being any wiser. Often the…
