Category: Uncategorized
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Wait Until The Judges See My Entry
Then they’ll know I’m good, and everyone else will know it as well. I hope I can convince myself. But what if I don’t win? What if I get marked down by the judges with the clipboards and the scoring sheets? What if someone else wins and I’m just an also-ran? a. The world stops.…
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The Things I Never Knew…
Are probably only half the things that I don’t know yet. This has never been the case so much as in scale modelling, and particularly in the adhesives. Until I started adult modelling I had no idea of the possibilities for success or failure of PVA glue when I tried to use it on a…
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Kawanishi Norm – Part Two – How Much Do I Trust You?
Not you, readers – I trust you implicitly. You have the sophisticated taste to read my essays and that’s good enough for me. And not Kawanishi. I have seen their Emily flying boat and desire one inordinately. They have my full confidence. It’s GSI Creos with their Mr Cement SPB that has me worried. I…
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The Imperial March
Followed by the Democratic April and the Socialist May. The Big Local Scale Model Exhibition is coming to town. In Anarchist August this year. There will be contests and contestants – exhibits and exhibitionists – sales and suckers. I hope to be one of the latter. I have money and a gullible nature and there…
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The Hobby Room
I have a hobby room that has accommodated any number of pursuits – yet I am still chasing perfection. And it is still elusive. The first use of the hobby room – the 5th bedroom in a house that has only three sleepers – was as a photographic darkroom. It was the days of film…
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F-16A – Part Four – Play Nice
How many times did your mother deposit you with your cousins and say that? And you did, thus allowing them to eventually grow up and become miserable beasts. If you had only disobeyed when you had that opportunity… Well the F-16A was an opportunity that has come out well. Hasegawa kits are either wonderful or…
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F-16A – Part Three – In Every State Except…
In every state of the Union and nearly every country of the world, the heading image would raise little interest; it’s a toy airplane with a lead weight glued in the nose. In California, I suspect, it would cause sirens to wail and lawyers to leap from their kennels. Lead! A known carcinogen! A dangerous…
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F-16A – Part Two – The Staged Build
I am constructing this aircraft model on the Fortnight System. It is opened and worked upon at the Cambridge Public Library during a meeting of the Historic Modelling Friends – a rather informal group of retirees who have been granted permission to use the library’s function room of a Saturday afternoon. As the room contains…
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Was Lacquer Thinner Good For Covid?
I had no idea, but one week I tested it out. I went down in iso with a positive RAT and a number of kits in the stash that needed paint. They had gone through the preliminary stages and were ready for primer and paint. And I did not intend to let a spare week…
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Ready-Made Mistakes
Or, how to tread the primrose path in spite of the barriers. You cannot blame me, unless I am guilty. And I always am. Guilty of following orders, guilty of believing what other people tell me, guilty of valuing theatre over intellect. Not in real life, I hasten to add. When someone in vague authority…
The Little World 