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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Five – The Ghost Decal
I was a bit puzzled when I opened the box for the Hobby Boss Northrop P-61 Black Widow and saw that there were two sheets of decals; a big one and a little one. The big one had all the usual insignia, tail codes, and wing lines ( BTW, I hate wing lines as they…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Four – The Black
If you want to be nervous, spray an undercoat of grey or white on your model kit. Then you’ll see just how good you were at spotting gaps and crevices. Of course then you’ll get a chance to correct them with putty or paint and you can get set to get nervous a second time.…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Three – Under Tension
Remember I mentioned that the disparate parts of the P-61 Black Widow fit well together? Well that was before I tried to mate the belly pan to the rest of the fuselage. The basic fit is fine, but tight. The makers have exercised computer machines to measure where the parts slide over each other –…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part Two – The Parts Are Greater Than The Whole
I am often overwhelmed when I open a new kit and see the dozens of sprues that they pack in the box. Well, make that several, rather than dozens, but you get the idea. Seeing the bits laid out on the runners makes the whole project seem more formidable, mysterious, and complex than it often…
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Northrop P-61 Black Widow – Part One – My Second Widow
Ninth grade – Christmas in Calgary, Alberta. The tree held a number of real surprises…a Guillows SE5A and and Aurora 1:48 Northrop Black WIdow amongst others. It was the first time I had ever seen the aircraft and I was astounded. The Aurora kits were fun for their time but their time was a long…
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Spatial Ambition
Or ” The Kit Designer Is Laughing At You “. I’m drawn to this conclusion upon seeing some of the decal sheets that ask you to reproduce a complex paint job with a two dimensional sheet of plastic film. The painters and decorators that the Air Force and Navy get in from time to time…
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The Perils Of the Hot Box
Now we’re not talking about a broken bearing f on a railroad car – the proverbial North American ” hot box ” that leads to the failure of the axle and derailment of the train. No, our hot box is the plastic curing box that sits on top of an electric oil-reservoir heater in the…
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IAI Kfir C-1 – Part Four – Clean And Neat Lion Cub
Pardon any typographical errors in this post, but I have just finished two days of decalling and I am now waiting by the side of the road for the wagon from the asylum to pick me up. I shall send the bill for treatment to Cartograf. The Italeri Kfir is ready for the clean section…
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IAI Kfir C-1 – Part Three – Camouflage
Camouflage in two shades is easy – just paint the lightest colour first, mask it off, and then paint the darker shade. Do the demarkation line as you like – hard or soft, and pay attention to whether the prototype wrapped any of its colours past a natural contour. Move to three colours and you…
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IAI Kfir C-1 – Part Two – Grey Plastic Day
The first assembly day for any model can be a school in itself – the Czech and Polish kits in particular are often hard lessons. They challenge both the imagination ( Where the heck is the cockpit actually supposed to be fastened…? ) and the patience ( Is that an ejector pin or a part…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 