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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…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Three – Sub-Assembly Is The Go
When you are building a model in three or four different locations, it pays to view each of these workshops as a separate shop. The real aircraft makers did this – in particular the American ones like Ford who could count on a number of plants in a general area. They assigned a particular sub-assembly…
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RCAF Wellington Mk II – Part Two – Missing The Point
The new Airfix Wellington Mk II has a full set of interior parts. These are proper injection moulded parts – not resin bits on a block or impossible slivers of brass. If you follow the very detailed instruction diagrams you can end up with a fully kitted-out bomber interior. Yet Airfix suggest that you can…
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RCAF Wellington MkII – Part One – The New
Well, the newest – this variant of the Vickers Wellington was kitted by Airfix recently and will be built as a Canadian aircraft – likely from the Vancouver squadron. The two other Wellingtons in the collection come from Italeri and MPM. This is the most detailed version, and despite Airfix’s option of leaving interior detail…
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Looks And History
This so often devolves into ” or ” rather than ” and “. Aircraft are designed by people with different senses of aesthetics. Add to this the different operational requirements, purchasing wishes, and actual manufacturing ability, and you can see why there have been so many flying duds. In some cases the crash of the…
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Do You Tell The Truth?
I should rephrase that; should I tell the truth? You probably tell it all the time. I would too, if it were a good idea. I used to practice strict honesty when I was in professional work, and quite good honesty when in trade. Now I am retired and writing about scale model making I…
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Carrie Nation’s Guide To Airbrushing
Stay away from Mick, John, and Dick. They have dangerous ideas. A recent discovery of a cheap Canadian whiskey on our local market led to speculation about paint thinners and prices. We looked out bottles of Tamiya X-20 and X-20A at the club, and noted the recent price rises. It’s now $ 15 – $…
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Douglas Skyraider – Part Three – Wham, Bam,
Hwacheon Dam! As I understand it, The UN forces in Korea in 1951 took exception to the use of the Hwacheon Dam by the North Koreans and decided to do something about it. The something turned out to be Mk 13 aerial torpedoes from the WW!! magazine stores of USS PRINCETON. Few aboard had any…
The Little World
Close focus on the world of scale models
The Little World 