-
Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

For the most part…don’t. Spend a good deal of your modelling time trying to locate it and when you find an entry point, crawl right in and close the hatch after yourself. Your ancestors lived largely outside comfort zones, as it happened, and spent a lot of time trying to locate them. They worked and…
-
Let Us Now Praise Famous Buildings

Particularly if they are made by obscure companies. I needed a building for a desert museum layout. I have many small structures but they all look vaguely North American or British. It was with dubious enthusiasm I rolled into my local hobby shop. As I suspected – the Superquick and Meltcalf offerings were mostly railway…
-
SE5A – Part Three – The Roundels Wearing An Airplane

The basic structure of the little ESCI kit for the SE5A was rewarding – things fit and lined up. But that did not make the 30-year old decals any better. I tried, folks. I honestly tried. John France saw me trying and lent me some Micro Sol to try and get the things to lay…
-
SE5A – Part Two – Plain As A Pikestaff

As admirable as I may find the WW1 British designs for their aircraft – and I do like the SE5A – my admiration doesn’t extend to the War Office and their parsimonious attitude to paint. In short – their aircraft schemes are dull. I have seen some colonial examples that looked sharp, but apparently were…
-
SE5A – Part One – Is There A Model In There?

A good question – this old Esci baggie was sitting forlorn and unbuilt – and likely to be touched for many a year until the Kit Whisperer found it. I will be frank – I deliberately seek out the most modest of kits to build. The $ 500 aircraft carrier is not for me –…
-
Give Us A Sign!

Or at least a good line drawing. The quality of instruction manuals for our kits is one thing that we often overlook – until we get to the stage of constructing the landing gear or rigging the sails. Then we can look them over as much as we like without being any wiser. Often the…
-
Do Not Sell Your Models

Build them. Whether you build them SOOTB, or tricked out with a dozen packets of after-market…build them. Build them painted or plain, weathered or fresh, well or otherwise…but build them. That is why they were made. That is why the designers sat at the drafting board or computer screen until their eyes turned red. That…
-
Yakovlev 15 – Stalin’s Stopgap

Don’t panic and start to look for previous posts about this Soviet fighter – this is the one and only mention it’ll get. The PM models Yak 15 was cheap enough by any standards – even in Perth. It cannot be said to occupy many minds nor cause much lust, no matter who kits it.…
-
Hurry Up.

Hurry Up! Hurry Up! Hurry Up! This is a hobby, you know. No time to sit there enjoying yourself. if you don’t speed up you’ll fall behind the others – the other modellers who are speeding up. Then where will you be? You’ll be sitting there with a half-completed model while they are out buying…
-
A Little Knowledge Is A Fine Thing

Too much, and they don’t fine you – they throw you in gaol. I had been seeing the word ” washi ” for some time in the modelling press. It was mostly associated with masking tapes for model painting. This is a subject dear to the hearts of all of us – we use the…
