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Airfix Vintage Val – Part One – Comparisons

It is said that comparisons are odious – or in the case of British cinema chains, Odeons. Be that as it may, I intend to contrast and compare the Airfix vintage classic kit of the Aichi Val dive bomber with the Fujimi example that I built earlier. The prices are rather similar, so it was…
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Justify Yourself

Have you ever heard this phrase in the mouth of a bikie – someone who deals in drugs and crime and standover tactics? Doesn’t it make you want to spew? But take it a little lighter – and apply it to your scale modelling. Don’t say it to others – you don’t want to be…
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Fourteen Little People

I approach the exercise of painting figures with trepidation. There are so many better painters that I feel I am a fraud. Yet I need pilots for my aircraft and spectators for my air museum. So it is either paint the inexpensive figures or pay for the ready-mades…and these are very often at a price…
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CT-155 Hawk – Part Four – Wayne And Gordie

It looks as if our two favourite Canadian pilots – Wayne And Gordie – have a new mount. The BAE CT-155 Hawk is on the line at Moose Jaw and the new commemorative scheme is finally done. The stencilling and decaling took two weeks, though this is because it was a club build and we…
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CT-155 Hawk – Part Three – Commem

Or a tive. The colours of the Hawk are meant to echo those of an RCAF bomber squadron in WW2. As this is a NATO fighter trainer, I think it an odd choice, but I’m not the politicians or the paint shop. I just follow along. The top is a mix of a Mr. Color…
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CT-155 Hawk – Part Two – First Mistake

First mistake was not reading the colour call-out fine print – and painting the wheel wells the wrong colour. A tiny print panel says they are all white inside. I painted them grey, same as the cockpit. ( The cockpit is correct. ) Fortunately this can be taken to mean I have primed them with…
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CT-155 Hawk – Part One – Idly Interneting…

I drifted past the RCAF historian’s site and glanced at the trainers – in this case at the new ones. The BAE 100-series two-seat Hawk seems to have been a hit with the RCAF as an advanced fighter trainer. I looked at Scalemates and was encouraged to see that AIrfix make a new kit of…
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Ess Bend Engineering – Part Three – Boxing Clever

I used to wonder at some of the kits I saw in the hobby shop – kits that seemed to be of such mundane subjects that I didn’t think anyone would ever be interested. Wrong. Wrong on many levels. I got the first indication of this when I saw the late, great, John Evans building…
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Ess Bend Engineering – Part Two – Now You Sea One

And I wish you could sea two. The Trumpeter kit for a 40′ sea container is a beauty – and as it came under the wing of an EOFY sale by Hobbytech, I seized upon it gleefully. I would have been even more delighted if it had been a pair of 20′ containers as these…
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Ess Bend Engineering – Part One – We’re Not Made Of Money, Eh?

Go easy on the toilet paper, willya? The cheapest repair shop in Alberta is located round the Ess Bend. Wayne and Gordie specialise in fixing things that other people won’t touch and if you’re smart, you won’t touch the stuff afterwards, either. They are the favourite shop for the less prestigious museums and collections as…
