This little Arctic Decals 1/144 kit of the deHavilland DH-86 had been hanging around my work bench for the past year because I couldn’t work out how to make the decals for it. In the second half of the 1930s several Australian airlines brought this airliner into Australia, in particular Holymans Airways used them in … More Models for December 2021
December 2021 The Vought A-7 looks as though somebody did something terrible to a Vought F-8 Crusader. It is basically the same shape but the miscreant squashed the poor F-8 and then attacked it with a bicycle pump. No wonder it got the nickname ‘Short Little Ugly Fucker’. Of course, that was the point … More Vought A-7A in 1/72 by Hobby Boss
(December 2021) Eighteen years ago I made four models of the Airbus A.330 and A.340 using the Revell 1/144 kits, the shorter -200 and longer -300 versions. (You can read about it in the column on the right.) That was fairly much at the beginning of my entry into the world of airliner modelling and … More Making some Revell 1/144 Airbus A.330s
Just published by BHS Publishing is my latest book, Western Airways, Flying in Western Australia 1919-1941. It is a massaged version of my PhD thesis which is about exactly what the title says. I think it’s pretty good and interesting, but I may be biased. For publication details and how to get a copy download … More Western Airways
(November 2021) We take it for granted now, but surely the shape of Lockheed P-38 is one of the strangest shapes to emerge from the design offices of any 1930s aviation company and serve during World War II. It was the logical but unusual result of the need to create the most efficient two engine … More Lockheed P-38F in 1/72 by RS Models
When the Minicraft 1/72 Lockheed PV-1 Ventura was released back at the end of the 1980s it was rated as a very good kit and by modern day standards it is still reasonable but fairly basic. I must have bought this kit fairly soon after it was released and also bought some vinyl masks for … More Models for November 2021
(October 2021) When I first came across the F-Rsin company they were a little business that made respectable full resin 1/144 kits of obscure airliners. These days they offer also a range of injection moulded airliner kits and some airliner decals. Their injection moulded kits look as though they have come from the Mach … More Sud Ouest SO.30 Bretagne in 1/144 by F-Rsin
Beginning with the big scale of 1/72, here is another model made from the recent Hobby Boss Grumman F8F-1s, this time in the markings of the 1st Fighter Bomber Wing of the Royal Thai Air Force in the mid 1950s. The obvious difference between a F8F-1 and a F8F-1B is that the latter replaced the … More Models for October 2021
(September 2021) MORE BEARCAT BEAUTY A few months back I wrote about making the Monogram 1/72 kit of the Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat which is still a pretty decent kit after fifty years. There have been a few F8F kits released since then but they are either unavailable or unmakeable. Towards the end of that article … More Grumman F8F-1 in 1/72 by Hobby Boss
I’ve had these couple of Zvezda 1/144 Airbus A.321s in the works for a while. They are made more or less straight from the box and by now I reckon I’ve figured out their little quirks so that they are not hard to make. The main trouble comes with the slats and flaps that are … More Models for September 2021
Leigh Edmonds little box of stuff 