Category: Utility Models
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The Clean-Up
New year seemed to demand new experiences. Also new work. So I rather hurried to complete a model before midnight. It was not hard…just a small one. That meant that January could start afresh at the club with a new kit. The stash owner always has the problem of which to select. In my case…
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All My Best Models Cost Under $ 10
Because they are the poor, sad runts of the hobby shop litter – or the nearly-dead ones that just pass from stash to stash without ever getting built. I give them hope and dignity. I clip their parts off the distorted sprue trees without making noises of obvious disgust. I sand off flash and rivets.…
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Mil 24 Hind F – Part Four – UkrAF
My first venture for the Ukrainian Air Force – and a good way to use an ex-Soviet design. Apparently the Ukrainians think so too – this Cold War troop carrying attack helicopter is doing quite well at low-level attacks and shooting down the larger Russian drones. The slower speed of a helo, plus its ability…
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Mil 24 Hind F – Part Two – How Green Was My Helo
I am prepared to defend my choice of blue-green for the interior of this aircraft for hours. Provided you bring the drinks. I sourced the shade from an internet image of Czech Mil 24 that they had handed over to the Ukrainian Air Force. It was remarkably clean in the picture but the interior here…
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Open Form Modelling
You might think that individuality and enterprise would be rewarded enough in scale modelling when we choose one of the options on the kit instructions. Or when we go the whole hog and get a packet of aftermarket resin or brass. Past that, there are the heady heights of what-iffery and enthusiast sci-fi to absorb…
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CAC Wirraway – Part One – The Challenge
Apparently that is what the word translates to from one of the aboriginal languages. In modern day terms it was one of the licence-built derivatives from a North American design – the root of which gave us the Yale, Harvard, Texan, and NA 16. And probably a Soviet copy somewhere, if they ran true to…
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VVS Tupolev SB2 – Part Two – The Honourable Amphibian
Do not despise the frog… The name of FROG models has been in the modellers dictionary for a very long time – and many of the kits that this British firm made are still turning up on the second-hand market as re-pops from older Russian factories. This NOVO Tupolev was boxed in the Soviet era…
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Should You Be First?
Here’s the scenario: Super Hobby Good Times Model Kit Cooperative produces the first-ever model of the Benoit-Farquarrson medium bomber. You can get it in Tanganyikan, Ecuadorian, or Moldavian markings – armed with either blunderbusses or cruise drones. There are PE parts, resin parts, and a genuine wooden voodoo idol included with the kit. Should you…
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Higgins LCVP – Part Two – The Built-up Barge
I can be no more complimentary than to refer to this Airfix landing craft as a barge. I admire barges. My whole family admired them – so much so that we built them for years for service on Canadian rivers and lakes. To our credit, none of them ever sank. The LCVP kit from Airfix…
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The Nearly Model
We’ve all had the experience of seeing an item on the shelf of a decor store antique palace that looks like a model from a distance – but a dust catcher from close up. Not that real scale models do not catch dust…it is just that the decor items are stuff that is churned out…
The Little World 