Category: Utility Models
-
If Someone Gives You A Free Lemon
Squeezing it is optional. The free scale model kit may be a present or a practical joke. If it is your birthday or Christmas it’s most likely to be the former. If someone hands you a forty-year-old kit box that looks as if it’s been run over in the driveway, the circumstance may be different.…
-
Sprue Trees – The Movie
May the Swarf be with you… Modellers get a bad rap in movies. We are seen as small-scale weirdos – harmless at best but psychotic at worst. It all started with Marilyn Monroe’s ” Niagara ” of 1953 when the husband of Marilyn is seen as a shell-shocked loser addicted to building plastic car kits.…
-
Swedish NA 16 – Part Six – Uncle Dick’s Kit O’ Doom
Inside every silver lining is a cloud. My week building the Beechnut Models CAC Wirraway into a Swedish NA 16 trainer was a humbling experience. No, that is not quite right – that should be ” bumbling “. With a kit this bad you are feeling your way from the start – over a carpet…
-
Swedish NA-16 – Part Five – Courage, Sven.
You will be protected by the mighty orange wings of the Flygvapnet. And the black metallic fuselage. I am not sure if the paint has gone a little off in the pot, but we will spray it and see what happens. We have not bothered with wing walks on this trainer as we looked more…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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…
The Little World 