Tag: design
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Vultee Vanguard – Part Four – Mind The Gap
Fitting an eastern European model together is like opening Forrest Gump – you can never tell whether you have a soft centre or not. In the best kits the parts fit, and in the rest they nearly fit. You are fortunate if the gaps are symmetrical and the surfaces parallel. Plastic strip and sheet can…
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Triumph Herald – Part Two – Sending You To Coventry
In this case after the Luftwaffe have long gone. The Triumph Herald is coming along smartly, courtesy of a Covid isolation period. I am in no fear – this is what stashes are for, and like many wise modellers I keep a material and paint stash as well. The weather is cold but as far…
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JS-2 Tank – Part Three – Zvezda Economies
I am still making my mind up about the Zvezda kits. They seem curate’s eggs in many respects, but I have not built enough to be able to judge accurately. My first Russian kit was a MiG 15. It was chosen as the only kit of its type in that shop at that time –…
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Northrop Black Widow – Part Three – Swings And Roundabouts
Every airplane design has compromises and so does every kit. Some are adequately addressed and some are not – what you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts. In the case of the P-61, the twin tail booms made of two pieces each ( double the seams ) mean two chances to get…
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Scale Modelling And Interpretive Dance
Or ” It’s My Party, And I’ll Glue If I Want To. “ A. Are you a bold and original individual? Are you a trend setter? Have some of the trends you’ve set gone off in your face prematurely? Well join the Queens Own Scale Modellers and we’ll make it All Right. The first thing…
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Grigorovich IP-1 – Part Four – The Winter Coat
Part of the appeal of the Grigorovich is the seasonal one…the fact that it’s a winter fighter with skis for landing in the snow. I am not an Australian fan-boy for snow…I passed my childhood in Alberta and I got all the show I needed, thank you. The skis are a novelty, but so is…
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Savoia Marchetti SM.81 – Part Four – Stop Laughing
This is serious. That’s an Australian joke, for the overseas readers. For the locals, its a historic Australian cartoon. Go look it up. The Bulletin long ago. In my case the risible arose because I needed to occlude the window spaces of the Pipistrello before painting. I’d deliberately left out the bulls-eye plastic windows that…
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The Wrong Scale
There is no better way of starting a donnybrook than to suggest that a model is the wrong scale. Say it to whom you will, you will have a fight. And haven’t we all seen the box scale gem that is destined to shine alone? Or the model that supports too little or too much…
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Caudron C-445 – Part One – The Metro Trawl
I don’t know whether Metro Hobbies in Melbourne lie in wait for me or if it’s the other way round. As the flow of money goes east and the flow of plastic comes west, it doesn’t really matter. I tend to shop in three modes: Cheap, Curious, and Canadian. Some say that this is tautology,…
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F-82 Twin Mustang – Part Seven – Long Dong
All right. We might as well get this over with… Those of you inclined to ribaldry may dissolve into laughter at the thought of the Long Dong radar pod joke. Elbow each other in the ribs and snort. The rest of the readers just be patient. The Monogram F-82 is proceeding wonderfully well, with no…
The Little World 