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Tupolev SB2 – Part Four – ” Red Is The Colour…”
” Of my true love’s national aircraft recognition insignia in the morning, as I rise…” This was an aviation folk song that Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie tried to promote in the 1930’s but it never really got off the ground, despite a headwind. Even when they offered to strike every Friday and bus in…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Three – The Gallows…
I never realised how much my painting stand looked like a gallows tree until I hung the Tupolev SB2 on it for undercoating and colour coats. Didn’t mean to be quite so morbid… But the fact that the SB2 was suspended there and took its paint so well pointed out the basic utility of the…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Two – In Russia Model Make You
If I had been in any doubt looking at the crude plastic on the sprue runners, it was dispelled when I got to the ” Made In USSR ” stamped into the plastic. I was relieved. Up until that moment I had been worried that this kit was an elaborate practical joke and that Alan…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part One – Katyuska
I was on tenterhooks when my daughter came back from Japan recently – I had tasked her with getting me a nice 1:72 model aircraft kit that we couldn’t get here in Australia. She obliged by searching out both a major and a minor hobby shop in Tokyo and bringing back 4 models – all…
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Play It As It Lays
That is either a very good rule for golf or a really weird idea involving musical chickens. But for our purposes we’ll apply it to scale plastic model building. Many people in my scale modelling club – The Tuesday Soviet – pursue the purchase of kits through the internet. They patronise larger shops in the…
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Model Porn
No, you fools. Not THAT kind of model porn. Scale model porn. The tempting images that the manufacturers of model kits put out to lure you into the dens of plastic iniquity so that they can separate you from your money. Box art, posters, videos. And the columns and columns of aftermarket accessory packs advertised in…
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Percival Provost T Mk 1 – Part Three – A Decent Set Of Clothes
The Percival Provost is done – and inside of a week. I am not surprised, as it is a rather simple kit on a mechanical basis. That is as a trainer should be – after all, the student pilot needs all the help he can get and the flying school doesn’t want to do more…
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Percival Provost T Mk 1 – Part two – Just Wants A Red Nose
And clown shoes. And a tiny little car to leap out of… I am quite taken with the Percival Provost as a sensible little training aircraft. The idea of putting the student and instructor side by side is excellent, and the fact that it can be done behind a radial engine even better. The landing…
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Percival Provost T Mk1 – Part One – The Box In A Box
I was delighted when my friend Warren presented me with this Matchbox Percival Provost – inasmuch as it has passed through three sets of hands for free I hope to make mine the last ones before it becomes an airplane. It was found inside another model box purchased at a secondhand arms and militaria fair…
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It Works, Igor! The Creature Lives!
This week’s photo session at the scale model club was the first actual use of the new focus-stacking technique I’ve just learned. It is undoubtedly old hat for many, but I have a new head and it just fits me fine. The technique is based in Photoshop 2019 and required several steps – but as…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 