The Nieuport 28 was the final stage in the development of Nieuport fighters that had begun with the Nieuport 11 in the early days of World War I. All Nieuport fighters prior to the 28 were sesquiplanes in which the bottom wing had a single spar while the upper wing had two spars so the…

The Nieuport 11 was one of the best of the first generation of fighters. It was derived from a racing aeroplane developed before the war and had such potential that it was ordered by both the French and British governments. It entered service in August 1915 and its high speed, excellent manoeuverability and high climbing…

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 of the A-7,…

From what I’ve heard on old blues records it appears that when people wake up in the morning they feel the need to dust their brooms. I’m not really sure what kind of dusting that means but anyway that’s not how I woke up the other day. When I woke up there was a simple,…

Earlier this year I completed 1/144 scale models of some Fokker jet airliners, F-28s and Revell kits of the Fokker 100. At the end of that item I mentioned the shorter version of the Fokker 100, the Fokker 70, and that Alliance Airlines seemed to be the only airline in Australia flying it. I then…

Due to the way kits accumulate when you’re not watching them (the same way that wire coat hangers accumulate in your wardrobe) I ended up with three kits of the ancient Airfix 1/144 Airbus A.300B-2. These were not new kits. The first was the original 1974 boxing with Air France decals, another was the 1974…

After the success of the Fokker F-27 Friendship, the Fokker company next developed the F-28 Fellowship, a medium jet airliner that gave greater speed and range than the F-27 but was still smaller and cheaper than other jet airliners of the time such as the Douglas DC-9 and BAC 1-11. F-28s did very well in…

Those of us of a certain age (and beyond) may remember seeing the big old Armstrong Whitworth Argosies sitting on the tarmac at Essendon Airport. They were purpose designed freighters with a pod fuselage based on the idea that if you could open them at both ends it would be quicker and easier to unload…

This model represents a DC-5 flying with Australian National Airways in 1944 made from a F-Rsin 1/144 kit with home made decals The DC-5 was a rare aeroplane, it might have been very successful and had been ordered by KLM and British Airways. However, the war intervened and only 12 had been completed before production…

Welsh Models has been around for decades, initially offering kits of airliners in 1/144. These kits were fairly primitive vacform kits with everything for the model on the sheet of vacformed plastic, including tiny details such as the propellor blades. Understandably, these kits were quite difficult to make well. More recently Welsh Models have been…

A bit like the aeroplanes that this Matchbox kit depicted, the night fighter Meteors were made towards the end of the line. The night fighters lost a lot of the good looks of the earlier Meteors by having a big radar set in the nose, which made them look just a little bit ridiculous. Each…

A few months back I found myself in the centre of Melbourne with a few minutes to kill so I popped into Hearn’s Hobbies to have a look at their wall of paint. After having selected a few items to take home I went around to the other side where the aeroplanes are stacked on…