Category: Utility Models
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The Barnacle
AKA the shelf queen. The styrene albatross. The kit that has sat on the hobby shop shelf ever since the place opened. The Unsold Undead… It may be worse than this. There are items in stock in many retailers that have been delivered from other shops that have previously failed; I saw it several times…
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Are We Having Fun Yet?
When that question comes up, the answer is never ” Yes “. Yet it could be… I do things that are pointless and expensive and embarrassing. And fun. I’m not going to tell you what, but you can let your imaginations run wild. As this is a scale model column, wild is likely to involve…
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Mess With Their Minds
Scale model builders are in an enviable position; they are considered harmless and childish. This is ideal cover from which to snipe at passers-by… a. Build a perfectly standard kit of a common airplane. Perhaps a Spitfire, Mustang or Messerschmitt. Pick an average kit, and it need not be an expensive one. Assemble the fuselage…
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Canadair CT-116 – Part Three – Cold Lake Toy Fighter
All Good – after several false starts and a few execrable errors, the Cold Lake CT-116 is ready for the apron. I patterned the build after an internet image of a 116 over the Alberta tundra. The in-flight shot was perfectly exposed and opened all the markings up beautifully. The model could be measured and…
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Beaufighter TFX – Part One – The Alternate Version
I built an Airfix Beaufighter model a year or so ago – the modern kit – and was extremely pleased with the result. It was completed as an RCAF model with a famous pilot in it. This Beau is a very much older version of the plane from Airfix. Scalemates tells me it is a…
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I’m Bypassing My Second Childhood
And I’m heading straight for my second adolescence. More money to spend, I get to stay up later, and there’ll be girls. Well, girls for later. For now I get to spend some of my allowance on better model kits. And there’ll be increased privileges and responsibilities. I am going to be allowed to have…
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Alphabet Modelling
Or, how to classify your hobby. Nathan Robinson, the schoolteacher on the Flory forum, mentioned an idea several episodes ago that is interesting and valid. He was counselling Flory forum members not to become discouraged in their modelling when they encounter problems that are going to affect the outcome of the build. He said that…
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Revell SPAD XIII – Part One – A NZ Mystery
They don’t generally do impenetrable mysteries in New Zealand. Most of the country is pretty straightforward. Which means I have no idea why the instruction sheet from this unopened example of a New Zealand Revell baggie should have a corner bit out of it. Was there some secret there? Some corporate message that we were…
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FOMO OR FOGS?
You hear a great deal amongst the young ( those whose knees move in the same way every time ) about FOMO; Fear Of Missing Out. It apparently motivates them all the time and causes them to go off on backpacking trips to Guatemala. Or at least it did until 2020. It may have been…
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Curtiss SBC-4 – Part Two – In Praise Of Heller
It is unfashionable in the British Commonwealth to speak well of the French. The old prejudices born of war and ambition stretch back as far as William the Conqueror and have been topped up and re-aligned every century since then. It goes the other way, of course – the French despise the English nearly as…
The Little World 