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Polikarpov I-16 – Part Two – The Donk
If someone is so kind as to prepare an entire aero engine for me, I should be very ungrateful not to take notice of their effort. This is the philosophy that compelled me to construct a tiny, hidden component for the I-16. It has worked out beautifully, and I am loathe to close it in…
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Polikarpov I-16 – Part One – What Animal Is That?
Is it a mule, a fly, or an ant? All three nicknames have been used for this small Soviet fighter plane from the 1930’s. It was a somewhat revolutionary craft at a turning point in aviation that went from biplanes to monoplanes. One might have expected the Soviets to follow their standard Russian pattern of…
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Colour Choice In A Paint-Starved World
The racks in my favoured place of worship are looking bare. Time to put some more heretics to the question… Calm, down Torquemada – we’re talking about the paint racks at the local hobby shop. The Tamiya and Gunze sections are getting sparse as shipments are delayed around the world. Other sections are full –…
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Reading The Other Weblog Columns
Contrary to what you might think, I do read other weblog columns. Not the ones that deal with pre-teen poetry and /or how to make money online from home. I also shy away from the ones that have a conspiracy theory about the numbers on the side of cornflakes packets. I read other modeller’s reports.…
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Boeing Kaydet – Part Three – The Hills Are Alive – With the Sound Of Cursing
How so many biplanes and triplanes are sold as model kits astounds me. Every time I encounter one I have ” a time “. All goes well until the step where you cement the struts on and add the top wing. There are rarely any mechanical aids or structures that help the biplane builder get…
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Boeing Kaydet – Part Two – A Hole Lotta Filling Goin’ On
I mentioned the sink holes and ejector post depressions last column. I didn’t realise then how many of them there were going to be. The ones in the tyres were particularly galling. No-one else has this problem. Well, after some Perfect Plastic Putty, neither did I. To their credit, Revell gave me two seats that…
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Boeing Kaydet – Part One – Older Than The Hills
I pulled the Revell baggie of the Boeing N2S-5 Kaydet out of the stash with mixed feelings. On one hand it was a pretty good looking silver airplane and on the other it was so old as to be listed by the National Trust – was I going to build it or desecrate it? The…
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“ Toy-Like “
A well-known set of modellers discuss their builds on the internet regularly and show how they apply weathering, washes, oils, staining, filters, and a whole armoury of pictorial effects to their models. The results are indeed grimy and realistic – one has to applaud them for that. Yet, they fall into a habit of describing…
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The Physics Of Plastic Model Building
a. The shape of a fuselage is arbitrary. It can be one shape one side and another thing on the opposite side. This is known as the Buda-Pest principle. As there is a front and a back it can also be different there, so that’s four parts that may have their own opinion and refuse…
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Ilyushin 4 – Part Four – Baltic Bomber
When I picked the Ilyushin off the Hobbytech shelf before Father’s Day I knew it would be somewhat of a gamble – Mister Craft kits are always that. They would be the sort of kit that Forrest Gump would buy. However, this is a Zvezda, not an old FROG, and the basic structure is perfectly…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 