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Stealth Aircraft – Part Four – B2 Spirit

Northrop are finally vindicated. After suffering the indignity of having their pioneer flying wing bombers canned by the US Air Force in the 1940’s due to commercial and political pressure, they have won the day by producing the B2 Spirit stealth bomber. It is in service and has done service. It will likely be replaced…
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Stealth Aircraft – Part Three – F117 Nighthawk

Do Not Place In Dark Cabinet… Or you might as well have not built it. This is four parts and a stand, there is no glazing except over the eyes of the modeller. There are few details, but I shall attach a note saying the cockpit is fully detailed. It looks as if it should…
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Stealth Aircraft – Part Two – Painting The No-See-Um

I’ll bet you’re just itching to know what a No-See-Um bite feels like… The colours of the F 117 and the B2 are quite different, though in both cases the paint is part of the circus trick. The night attack aircraft is very dark grey/black and the strategic bomber nearly as dark, but with gradation…
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Stealth Aircraft – Part One – The Unseen Gift

The 1/144 scale kit for the B2 bomber and the F-117A fighter snuck up on me at the modelling club. Rick Slattery presented them to me as a gift – he usually concentrates upon larger scales – and I was delighted to take them. I am starting to appreciate this simplified scale as a way…
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Can A Table Of Modellers Build A Kit?

Yes, if they do not all try to do it at the same time. A dozen pairs of hands in a small cardboard box is a recipe for disaster. Likewise, a dozen minds making up decisions about colour, marking, fittings, etc…fine if you are making a 1:35 scale model of the Tower Of Babel, but…
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Sitting For Your Exams

We have all sat for exams. School, university, the military, the professional board…whatever…we have all had that sinking feeling as we presented ourselves for assessment and judgement. Would we be good enough? No, of course not. The fact that someone has the power to judge you, per se, says you are inferior to them –…
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The Hobby Shop For Other People

I visited a hobby shop in our metro area today in the search for any interesting new kits in my preferred scale – 1/72. It has a big supply of goods in there and I can see where people who are into other aspects of the Little World would enjoy themselves. Some hobbies are catered…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Six – Dortmund Or Bust

Not ” or ” as it happened…” and “… This aircraft – airframe W5390 – started out from RAF Pocklington near York on the night of April 4, 1942 – heading for Dortmund. This city, close to Essen, Duisberg, and Dusseldorf was very heavily bombed…nearly all the time. Well, W5390, wearing LQ*X code and flying…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Five – Night Black

The RAF night bomber scheme is a grim sort of design. Well I guess flying 300 miles in the dark, amongst a thousand other flying bomb dumps, and through radar-directed flak is a pretty grim business anyway. With a German Chancellor at one end and Arthur Harris at the other it seems like a murderous…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Four – It’s No Sin To Fill

But it’s no great honour, either… I’ve no idea if Tevye built model airplanes, but if he did, he would have been philosophical about it. For my part I accept the inevitability of gaps and defects and the need for a good fill and sand. AIrfix, on the other hand seem to have decided to…
