Category: Utility Models
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Swedish NA-16 – Part Four – Pinning Your Hopes
When all else fails, reach for the drill… Sorry, old habits die hard. Actually that should be reach for the forceps and slide that bucket over here. Open wide. The butt joint wing or tail surfaces are the easy way out for many short-run kit designers. They imagine you will square up the fitting surfaces…
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Swedish NA-16 – Part Three – Dr. Phil
Not the TV chap – I’m thinking this kit should have been built by the famous Irish dentist: Dr. Phil McCavity. Six separate applications and removals of two grades of putty plus a styrene sheet fitted to the worst of the gaps. All done in a cheerful frame of mind and without the aid of…
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Swedish NA-16 – Part Two – The Plastic Mangler
I would have written ” wrangler ” but you wouldn’t believe this kit. The fuselage halves are two different sizes. Not by much, but by enough. I reduced them somewhat upon a sandpaper sheet taped to a flat surface, and then attacked the thicker half with a Dremel tool, The centre seam doesn’t fit, but…
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Swedish NA-16 – Part One – The Beechnut Models Company
You’ll want to remember that name – in case you are ever faced with one of their kits. If so, you have choices: a. Buy it, spend days of your life coping with its awful nature, and eventually turn out a masterpiece. Then die. b. Save time. Fall to the floor grasping your chest. c.…
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Aero Vodochody Delfin – Part Two – If You Call For Your Czech Early
You don’t have to leave a tip. A morning at my scale modelling club begins with 45-60 minutes on the road – coping with a series of traffic lights and a clogged-up river bridge. It is wearisome but I figure you have to pay for your pleasures somehow. The comes up to 3 hours of…
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Ansaldo SVA 5 – Part Three – And There It Is…
The sting. The bit where the kit bites back. The inter-plane struts that look so promising lure you on to fasten them to the bottom assembly and then offer up the top wing – only to have your hopes dashed. I do not mind parts that fit where they touch, but that argues that they…
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Two Feed Gates Joined To A Sinkhole
By flash… The Far King L Scale Model Company has released its latest kit – a 1: 21.5th reproduction of the strutless biplane: the Christmas Bullet. It is tipped to be every bit as successful as the prototype. Modellers who are discouraged by other biplane kits will love the Bullet. The wings are cantilevered out…
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More Fire Tankers Needed
And not just in the summer months. The increasing problem of bushfires worldwide means more tanker aircraft are being used. The variety of planes that have been brought to the service is astounding. I have looked at a number of the bombers and surveillance planes I’ve built in their military configuration and realised that I…
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Snowed Into The House With A Fouga
On a Saturday, with a new model kit, no homework, and a whole Coffee Crisp chocolate bar to myself. If you are English you can equate this to Christmas afternoon, a tin of Bullseyes, and a new Airfix kit plus a James Bond movie to watch. Religion has a lot to offer the thinking adult,…
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Kit-O-Plasm
The spirit of dead models made to rise again. Let’s all sit in the dark, hold hands, and ask the ghosts of 1950’s kits to hover round us. Or we can go on eBay and do some exorcism. Or just go round the hobby shop and see what Revell have re-boxed. I’m waiting for the…
The Little World 