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Eventually The Kit Will Be Finished

Or the Earth will spiral into the sun. Either way, there will be an end to it. Some builds seem to take forever. You start out looking forward to a few weeks of building and eventually it becomes a few months. If the calendar stretches to an extra year, you know you have a special…
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The Underside

And differences in opinion. Nothing is more striking when looking at aircraft camouflage than the variety of colours and shades that the different air forces used under the Plimsoll line. A glance at any of the Profiles books, a visit to an air museum, or the call-out sheets from any kit maker show colours like…
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Making A Hobby Out Of A Job

It’s generally the other way round, isn’t it. People go along loving something they do for themselves and then someone suggests money should be made from it. The hobby becomes a side-hustle, and then a venture, and then a full-blown job. Eventually it palls and the former enthusiast comes to hate it. So they take…
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Junkers Ju-86 – Part Three – Lady Anne Barnard

Of course you name a German bomber after a Scottish lady of the Georgian period who walked up Table Mountain. Perfectly normal, what? And so they did – this Junkers-86 K passing from the South African airline to the South African Air Force when war commenced and the South Africans decided which side they wanted…
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Junkers Ju-86 – Part Two – The Four-Part Scheme

You have no idea how hard it was to resist writing ” Four-play “… The horror I experienced painting my first four-part camouflage scheme still exists in my display cabinet – wrapped around a Morane-Saulnier fighter of the French air force in early WW2. I was relying upon a back-of-packet colour call-out and masking fluid.…
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Junkers Ju-86 – Part One – The Lumbering South African

And I am not talking about elephants here… How often do you get to see South Africans flying overhead? Or landing on a local field? Or eating things off your lawn? Those of you who live in Perth know that the chances are quite good – we have seen many South African migrants over the…
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The Orphaned Kit

Shed a tear for the poor bedraggled box-scale kit that sits abandoned on the hobby shop shelf. It may have been there for months or years – left all alone in the world when its maker passed into the great bankruptcy in the sky. It is getting dented and dusty…shabbier with each passing day. And…
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The Rules Of Engagement

I was a a meeting recently that set out the rules for an upcoming scale model exhibition. The briefing was from one of the chief organisers and was very well done. He was in a position to make the set-up and operation perfectly clear, as I suspect that he was able to control his committee…
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The Birthday Money

I got my birthday money and went to the hobby shops to spend it. I went to three different ones in my city, and enjoyed myself in each…though not as much as you might expect. It was like being a fussy kid in candy stores that either did not have any fresh lollies…or had priced…
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Is It Light Into Dark?

Or the other way around? I can’t remember the correct sequence for mixing custom colours that need several hues or shades in one pot. Do I put light drops into a dark base or vice versa? I ask this because I need a purple for the top of a WW1 German aircraft and there are…
