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Douglas RB-66B – Part Two – Postponing The Office Work

Every instruction sheet for a model airplane seems to commence with work on the cockpit. This may be a simple as an old Airfix pilot-on-a-shelf to the most complex brass and resin aftermarket kit. I sort of like doing this are and sort of don’t. So I look around for a way of postponing the…
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Douglas RB-66B – Part One – The Shelf Queen

Some kits fly out the door of the hobby shop as soon as they arrive. Some stay until the sales. Some stay until the owner dies and the executors hacksaw the door open. The reasons for this can be many – the kit is horrible – the kit is so obscure than no living being…
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Slovakian Jigs – Part Two

A hot Boxing Day is the ideal time to do a new cool kit. You are not stressed by work or family commitments and the precision that good work requires is at your fingertips. At least it is if you have not been on the turps for the last week. My Christmas had been abstemious…
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Doing The Slovakian Jig – Part One

I cannot say when my new jig kits were shipped from the port of Pressburg, but presumably it was before the Covid shutdown. My wife was able to order them from BNA in Melbourne a week before Christmas and they arrived in time to sit under the tree. I spent Boxing day with a new…
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You Know Where You Can Stick It, Buddy

And wash your hands afterwards… I use all sorts of perfectly good adhesives for my modelling – cements, glues, resins, etc. And while they all have different formulae and different actions on the plastic models, they have one thing in common; I can make them go where they are not wanted. I have smeared every…
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The Meaning Of The Universe

I hesitated to write that title in case someone was going to object on religious or scientific grounds – or was a fan of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. I also debated where to place it in my blogoverse – humour, photography, or scale modelling. In the end I decided upon…
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Yakovlev 6 – Part Five – A Flying Fin

Not a flying Finn – unless the Finns captured a few of these in the Winter War. The fin is the price that this Encore model cost. And I think it has proved a sterling investment. The green you see here is a lightened and blued form of the Russian Green. The scale effect, perhaps,…
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Yakovlev 6 – Part Four – Jayne Mansfield

Nothing whatsoever to do with this Yak 6 utility aircraft, but Jayne liked the colour pink as well. She would have appreciated the big nacelles… Now that your mind is sabotaged for the day, we will continue. The Amphibious Twins have been painted and are installed in their little bare cockpit. Fortunately the glazing over…
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Yakovlev 6 – Part Three – The Beauty Within

The crude nature of some kits is so overwhelming that many people just cannot bring themselves to build them. This is the result of the continuing development of the hobby over the last 70 Years. We in the west have benefited tremendously from the initial efforts of the British, American, and French firms that took…
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Yakovlev 6 – Part Two – The Amphibious Twins

Pavel and Sergei – the crew of the Encore Models Yak 6. I recognised them – they used to work for FROG in the 60’s, and flew nearly everything that company produced. It was hard work – the long hours wore them down so much that their faces fell off. I suspect that the two…
