Tag: design
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Tasman Airspeed Oxford Mk I – Part Two – The Apology
At least Tasman Models are scrupulously honest. They recognised the problems of short-run manufacturing and the times when it just doesn’t come out like a Disney movie. The under-wing parts of this model apparently were consistently short-shooting at the wing tip. They realised it , modified the panel on the mould, and added two extra…
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Tupolev SB2 – Part Three -Guessing Game
Meetings in the design bureau of a scale model company must be interesting to attend. Are there knives? Do people disappear? Do they call in dancing girls and order pizza? I ask because some of the decisions that come from these meetings seem to be motivated by strange desires. Who would have split the fuselage…
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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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RWD 5bis – Part Two – The Solo Monoplane
Whenever you see the word ” monoplane ” you know you are looking at a period design. Because there were other choices – biplanes, triplanes, sesquiplanes, etc. These still exist today, but only in oddity or X-plane form. The big feature of this little airplane is the fuel tank – sandwiched into the tiny interior…
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Norcanair DC-3 – Part Three – A Return To Sanity
One can only build obscure European designs from the 1930’s so long… Eventually your gall bladder starts to complain. There is only so much weird and ugly that it can take. A French bomber in the block-of-flats style tends to stretch the imagination past the snapping point – eventually you have to return to reality…
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How Do You Second-Guess The Factory?
With boldness, one would suggest. Scale model kit makers get it right most of the time. Their products are meticulously designed, moulded, and packaged. They are sold at reasonable prices by retailers who have the best interests of the modeller at heart. And every time you wish upon a star a Fairey gets it’s wings…
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Potez 63-11 – Part One – Smooth Potez
As opposed to lumpy Potez. The designs of interwar and early-war French aircraft form a fascinating subdivision of aeronautical insanity. From the angular designs of the late twenties and early thirties to the sleek over-designs of the forties, they seem to have decided to over-run the buffer stops every time they drew up to the…
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Lockheed Ventura – Part Two – Assembly LIne
Well, it worked in Burbank – it’ll work in Bull Creek. I tackled the Lockheed Ventura in two club meetings as well as here at home by the simple process of parcelling it out into sub-assemblies and assigning them to places where the work could be done with the most facility. This was exactly the…
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When Is Shoddy Workmanship Justified?
Never? Always? Something in between? Let us explore… The classic maxims about workmanship emphasize how you must always strive. ” Any job worth doing is worth doing well “.” A poor workman blames his tools “. ” Go west, young man “…and so forth. Stirring stuff. Makes you long for a moral Mixmaster. It has…
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The Two Musketeers
Dumas became an economical man. And it was just gilding the lily to add an extra hero. Porthos was a nightmare to feed. I often wonder what we would have seen if accountants had as much control over literature as they seem to have over the cinema. Two coins in a fountain? And get a…
The Little World 