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If You Were Asked To Pick…
Your favourite airplane, or ship, or car, or tank…you would spend hours going over the possibilities. Then you could spend more drinking time debating it with other modellers. What a great idea! Now suppose the discussion turned to the favourite model making company… and here the discussion was serious. Exacto knives would be drawn and…
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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 Four – A Powerful Flop
From all accounts great things were expected from the Kawanishi reconnaissance float plane. And then the contra-rotating propellers and jettison-able float proved problematical and the service missions undertaken with the type were failures. So it was quietly shoved back into a training role. The appearance of the aircraft in the box art was what attracted…
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Kawanishi Norm – Part Three – Sprayin’ Weather
This last week has been good weather for spray painting. Clearish, dryish, and warmish…enough to be able to manage lacquers with regular thinner and also spray rattle cans of clear. The shop heater has been on to make a warm box but this is less of a problem now that I have overcome my fear…
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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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Kawanishi Shiun – Part One – A Norm By Any Other Name
If you are scandalised by the use of Allied code-names for Japanese aircraft of WW2, make sure you check back later when I use NATO reporting names for Soviet planes. This is officially the E15K1 but not again in this column. It is a Norm. A very special plane and welcome in the collection. 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…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
