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Is it Puttering Or Pottering?

I mean the faffing about that you do in between builds. The tidying up of the workshop and the sharpening of tools. The filling of thinner bottles and the tossing out of dried-up paint. The time when you blow down the air compressor tank and then have to wash the floor. When you vacuum up…
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Better Is The Enemy Of Good

Just as happier is the enemy of happy. Once you introduce comparison you have picked a rotten apple off the tree and are headed out of Eden. Because you have discovered that there is something you don’t have and that something is MORE. Were you happy with your food, you would not be hungry for…
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Douglas Skyray F4D – Part Three – Good For One Thing

And very good, at that. The Douglas F4D Skyray was built to intercept Soviet bombers as far away from American aircraft carriers as was possible. This was in the mid 1950’s when the threat from manned aircraft was at its height. The airframe – derived no doubt in some wise from a Lippisch design –…
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Douglas Skyray F4D – Part Two – Peacetime Colours

Or at least as peaceful as a Cold War aircraft could get… I am always happy to see military aircraft in bright colours – the yellow wings of the pre-war US Navy – the dazzling squadron codes of the pre-war RAF – the bright stripes of the pre-war Italians. Because brightly coloured aircraft are not…
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Douglas Skyray F4D – Part One – Unloved Tamiya

Don’t raise your eyebrows and make that noise – this Tamiya kit was half the price of other 1/72 models from the same maker in their Warbirds range. That tells me that it is not a big seller – rather like the Japanese submarine seaplane in the same line. People concentrate on the famous fighters…
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Geezers

Pilots, aircrew, figures…whatever you prefer to call them. They were once included with all scale model aircraft kits – now they are rarely seen. The only reason my RCN Grumman Tracker has them is that it is a very old stash kit. The quality of the mouldings is marginal, but far surpasses those moulded in…
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Will You Take Soup?

I note from a website that there will be a number of categories of competition in our Big Local Scale Model Exhibition 67 in fact. These are major divisions and subdivisions therefrom. No-one need feel unwelcome, and there is a good chance that they will go home with a prize. Who could complain? Well, not…
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Change? CHANGE?

We don’ need no esteenkin’ change! Or badges…Those of you old enough can tell me where that line comes from. But it applies as surely to scale modelling as to making drinks before dinner. The heading image was shared over three weblog columns; this one, Here All Week, and The Frontier And Colonial Photographic Establishment.…
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Dornier Do 27 – Part Four – Dror

Hebrew word for ” freedom ” or ” sparrow “. I favour the latter meaning when applied to this little Dornier observation aircraft. They were active in the IDF between 1964 and 1981 – a very active period. The internet says they were initially attached to the delightfully-named ” flying camel ” squadron. Observation, liaison,…

