Exploring Aviation History through Scale Models |
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| Newsletter 17 - March 2023 |
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The Curator comments on reaching this museum’s first milestone
Workbench Note - McDonnell Douglas F-18A in 1/72 by Hobby Boss
Additions to the Museum Collection in the previous three weeks
Three new Curator’s Choices - More Douglas Commercials - Lesser Known German World War I Fighters - Big Supersonic Jets
Show Time
Additions to Dates to Remember
Aviation History - the latest issue of Aviation Heritage
Club Corner |
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For extra points name the kit maker and scale. It's somewhere in the Galleries. |
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The Little Aviation Museum has reached it’s first milestone. After it’s first year in operation it now contains the entirety of my model collections and the beginnings of two others. There are now a total of 881 aircraft and other models on show in the display galleries and special displays and about another 100 bits and pieces scattered around the museum. In addition there are about 170 Workbench Notes and other pieces of written commentary.
Having completed the first stage in our development we are now entering a phase of much slower expansion with a focus on consolidation. We have been learning as we’ve built up this site so there are some features and many images that we will need to revise and possibly replace gradually in the future. This process is already under way and you can now find, in the Big Museums and Association section of our Recommendations page the names and contact links for over 40 aviation related museums in Australia and overseas.
We have become aware that the large amount of material and information in The Little Aviation Museum discourages visitors from taking advantage of it all. To make our museum more user friendly we are planning to add a couple of search features to make it easier for visitors to find what interests them. Unfortunately a recent family tragedy means I will have to give priority to more pressing matters in the coming weeks and months. However, these improvements will become available to visitors as soon as possible.
One small change is that this Newsletter will be published monthly from this issue, probably in the second week of them month. It will, I hope, expand to be more useful to readers, but those changes will have to wait a little while longer yet. |
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| McDonnell Douglas F-18A in 1/72 by Hobby Boss |
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I suppose you’d call it at New Years Resolution but I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I looked at two of the Special Displays in this museum, the one containing US Navy and Marine Corps aircraft - which has 72 aircraft - and the Special Display of RAAF aircraft - which has only 25 in it. ‘I’m going to have to do something about this’, I told myself. Since I made this resolution at the beginning of the year I suppose it counts as a New Years Resolution. So, this year I’m planning to write only about the RAAF aircraft I make which should bump up the numbers a little. Let’s see if I can stick to this resolution.
I’m old enough that I remember when the F-18 entered service with the RAAF. Hell, I’m old enough that I just remember when the RAAF was still flying Avon Sabres. Here we are now in the 2020s and the F-18As and F-18Bs have been replaced in RAAF service and I’m only thinking of making a model of one. I did pick up a kit of the F-35 with RAAF marking the other day, which I must make before they go out of service too. That’s almost what happened to me in making this model of a RAAF F-18A.
Many years ago, before I started keeping records so it was probably in the late 1980s, I bought the newly published Hasegawa 1/72 F-18A and F-18B kits. They were beautiful and the F-18B also had decals for the RAAF’s Operational Conversion Unit. Of course I intended to make them straight away, but you know how things go, and I only opened the boxes again last month. I also had some Hawkeye decals I’d picked up years ago for both aircraft, very simple and modest decals in comparison to the decals Hawkeye is making today.
Perhaps I was over-enthusiastic, I dashed into making the F-18A without paying too much attention to what I was doing. After all, we know that Hasegawa kits are top-shelf so what was there to worry about? However, time had not treated the kit well and it was badly warped around the rear fuselage and intakes. If I had been more careful I might have avoided the huge steps at the seams for the upper and lower fuselage halves, but I didn’t and, after a week of sanding and filling to try and get rid of them I realized that it was a lost cause and consigned the kit to the rubbish bin of history.
A year or two ago, having a fixation on aircraft in Blue Angels livery, I’d picked up the Hobby Boss F-18A with decals for that aircraft. My first thought was to get another Hasegawa kit, but there were none to be found, so it fell to the Hobby Boss kit to be turned into a RAAF aircraft. The Hobby Boss kit is not as detailed at the Hasegawa, which is particularly evident in the undercarriage bays and other details, but it would have to do.
The other things I needed were paint for early RAAF F-18s which were easily acquired from SMS. The Hobby Boss ejector seat was only slightly more inaccurate than the Hasegawa one and in the large cockpit a replacement would have improved the look of the finished model. However, the only aftermarket ejector seat for a F-18A I could find on the internet was somewhere in Europe and, although it cost only about 4 Euros, the postage was 44 Euros. So this model had to go without - a modeller has to draw the line somewhere. I doubt that anybody but the most discerning viewer will notice the lack anyhow.
There’s really nothing remarkable about assembling this kit. The pieces go together nicely with the exception of the air intakes which are slightly larger than the fuselage slides they slot into. It required quite a bit of filling and sanding to deal with this problem, which would still be blindingly obvious if they weren’t hidden underneath the wing extensions. Although this was an easy build it was not a very enjoyable one because I kept feeling that this kit misses out on many of the details that might bring it to life. There is probably a better and more satisfying kit of the F-18A out there, but there are so many of them I don’t know which one it might be.
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Painting is fairly easy too with the two tone scheme, a touch of colour with the radome tan on the nose and the white undercarriage. The jet exhausts are very plain too, in comparison to the subtle variations in tone on many jets, and I found that AK Extreme Stainless Steel look most accurate than most other options.
The Hawkeye decals are very basic and offer only the rondels, special marking for the ARDU aircraft and registrations. The rest have to come from somewhere else. The Hobby Boss kit offers nothing of any use so I returned to the Hasegawa decal sheet which has many small stencils and other details. I spent an evening applying ‘no-step’ and other small decals to the upper surface, but you can’t see most of them so I didn’t bother with the lower fuselage. After that the model got a couple of coats of SMS Flat Clear, the bits and pieces were attached and that was that.
The result is a very plain and uninteresting model. It demonstrates, I guess, the whole point of the grey schemes that military aircraft are painted in these days - to make them unremarkable. This is probably one model that does need some subtle weathering to bring it to life a little. But if I spent a few nights doing that I wouldn’t be getting on with my next RAAF build.
Leigh Edmonds
March 2023 |
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| Additions to the Museum Collection |
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| Museum Additions for 19 February 2023 |
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Additions to the Public Galleries
Boeing 737-700 (Virgin Blue) in 1/144 by Revell
Douglas DC-6 (TEAL) in 1/144 by Roden
Douglas DC-7C (Braniff International) in 1/144 by F-Rsin Plastic
Douglas P-70 in 1/72 by Revell
HFB-320 in 1/72 by VAMI Models
Piaggio P.180 Avanti in 1/72 by Amodel
Republic F-84F in 1/72 by Italeri
Republic XF-12 in 1/144 by Anigrand
Ryan XF2R-1 in 1/72 by MPM
SNCASE 161 Languedoc (Air France) in 1/144 by F-Rsin
Sud Aviation Caravelle III (United) in 1/144 by Airfix
Sud Aviation Vautor IIB in 1/72 by Azur
Vickers Valiant B.1 in 1/144 by Welsh Models
Vought Corsair I (F4U-1) in 1/72 by Hasegawa
Vought F4U-1D in 1/72 by Hasegawa
Vultee XP-54 in 1/72 by Anigrand
Additions to BAC Lightning Special Display
BAC Lightning F.1 (XG331, AA&EE, 1961) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.1 (XM144, 60 Maintenance Unit, 1967) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.1A (XM181, Binbrook Target Facilities Flight, 1973) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
Additions to the US Navy and Marine Corps Special Display
Ryan XF2R-1 in 1/72 by MPM
Vought Corsair I (F4U-1) in 1/72 by Hasegawa
Vought F4U-1D in 1/72 by Hasegawa |
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| Museum Additions 26 February 2023 |
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Additions to the Public Galleries
Boeing B-52D in 1/72 by Monogram
Convair B-36B in 1/72 by Monogram
Fournier RF-9 in 1/72 by Dujin
North American XB-70 in 1/72 by AMT
Northrop Grumman RQ-4B in 1/72 by Italeri
Potez 540 in 1/72 by Smer
Additions to the BAC Lightning Special Display
BAC Lightning F.2A (XN781, 19 Squadron RAF, 1974) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.3 (XP749, 11 Squadron RAF, 1984) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.3 (XP749, Lightning Training Flight RAF, 1985) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.6 (XS903, 11 Squadron RAF, 1988) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.6 (XR728, 11 Squadron (Lightning Training Flight) RAF, 1988) in 1/72 by Airfix
BAC Lightning F.6 (XR753, 23 Squadron RAF, 1970) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning F.6 (XR770, 5 Squadron RAF, 1987) in 1/72 by Airfix
BAC Lightning F.53K (53-414, Kuwait) in 1/72 by Trumpeter
BAC Lightning T.5 (XS452, Akrotiri Station Flight, 1975) in 1/72 by Swords |
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More Douglas Commercials
Douglas DC-4 - Douglas DC-5 - Douglas DC-6
Ten weeks ago we looked at the first three Douglas Commercial airliners, the DC-1, DC-2 and DC-3. They had a major effect on the development of air travel in the 1930s and 1940s. Let’s now look at the next three Douglas airliners. Two of them, the DC-4 and DC-6, had a major impact on air travel in the 1940s and 1950s while the DC-5 might have been just as influential had it not been for war. |
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Lesser Known German World War I Fighters
Roland D.II - Fokker D.VIII - Junkers D.I
About the only good thing that can be said for war is that it brings on rapid technological change. Improvements which might have taken years or decades to be tested and adopted took only months or years under the pressure of war. World War I brought rapid change to the field of aviation in which the simple wood, fabric and wire biplanes of 1914, like the Morane G, had been replaced by sophisticated wood and metal machine only four years later. Here are three examples, two of which might have revolutionized fighter design further had the war continued into 1919. |
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Big Supersonic Jets
Myasishchev M-50 - North American XB-70 - Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde
Last time we looked at the early days of aviation when the force of war created new advances in technology very quickly. This time I thought we’d move to the other extreme and look at the development of large jet powered aircraft capable of flying faster than the speed of sound. Many smaller aircraft, such as fighters, routinely exceed the speed of sound but not large aircraft. Perhaps this is because it is much more difficult to fly large aircraft so fast or perhaps it is because of the enormous financial cost of making large aircraft fly so fast. While all three aircraft we’re looking at could sustain very high speeds, none of them was a success and all now are museum pieces. |
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It's always enjoyable to go to model shows and displays to take pleasure in seeing what modellers are making and displaying. Unfortunately we can't go to all of them so we miss out on seeing a lot of excellent model making.
Photos of a lot of those models turn up on the interweb and our intention in this section is provide links to social media we've come across that displays some of that work. |
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11 September 2022
Northern Area Modellers Annual Modelling Competition and Swap & Sell
link to images
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11 & 12 September 2022
Townsville & District Scale Modellers Inaugural Model Exhibition
link to images
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22-23 October 2022
Wagga Wagga and District Scale Model Club
36th Annual Scale Model Show & Expo
link to images |
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26 November 2022
IPMS of New South Wales
End of Year Scale Model Competition
link to images |
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4 February 2023
Rockhampton Scale Modellers Association
Model Comp 2023 and 18th Qld NNL Titles
link to images |
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| This is not a competition but a display of models, most made by club members. The Day also features a Swap and Sell and the club is looking for interested vendors to notify of their interest in attending. |
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16-18 June 2023
Model Expo 2023
Sandown Entertainment Centre, Sandown Racecourse, Princes Highway, Springvale, Vic |
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8-9 July 2023
Western Australian Scale Model Expo (WASMEx)
Carrington Agricultural Hall |
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21-33 July 2023
Aviation Cultures Mk.VII
(Flying High: Aviation in Popular Culture |
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If you would like your event to be mentioned here get in touch through our guest book or our email address; [email protected] |
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The latest issue of Aviation Heritage, the Journal of the Aviation Historical Soceity of Australia is now with us. This magazine is always full of interesting articles about our aviation history and this issue lives up to its reputation.
For me there are two highlights in this issue. The first is a flying biography written by Greg Banfield about Sidney Marshall who flew with such historic airlines as Kingsford Smith and Ulm’s Australian National Airways and Guinea Airways in Papua New Guinea.
The second is Geoff Goodall’s long, extensive and detailed article about Percival Proctors in Australia which includes a center page spread of 18 colour photos of Australian Proctors (and another 38 in black and white). This is probably the definitive article on Percival Proctors in Australia. (Among other things, this article would be of great interest to anyone who has recently bought a copy or two of the Dora Wings Proctor that was published in 1/72 and 1/48 only a couple of years ago.) |
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Aviation Heritage is edited by Neil Follett and available from the Aviation Historical Society of Australia. Details of the Society and how you can join it to get this magazine are available at www.ahsa,org.au. |
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The Modellers of Ballarat meet on first Saturday of every month except for January. Doors open at 7:30pm and meeting starts at 8:00 sharp. The location is the canteen of the Eastwood Leisure Complex, 20 Eastwood Street, Ballarat, Victoria. Find them here on Facebook
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The ACT Scale Modellers Society in Canberra typically meets on the second Wednesday of the month at the Hellenic Club in Woden (but check the calendar on their website as meetings can vary a bit). Meetings start at 7.30pm but many members choose to arrive earlier to have dinner and socialize beforehand. The society has a website and a facebook page. |
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Australian Plastic Modellers Association |
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The Eastern Suburbs Scale Modelling Club meets on the first Tuesday of every month (except January) between 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm. The location is the Box Hill Community Arts Centre, 470 Station St, Box Hill, Victoria. Find them on their website or here on Facebook. |
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The Illawarra Plastic Modellers Association is an active club based in Wollongong, NSW. It meets on the first Saturday of every month between 12.30 and 3.30pm at the Dapto Ribbonwood Centre (Kurrajong 2 room), 93/109 Princes Highway, Dapto, NSW. It has a website and a facebook page. |
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IPMS Australia is a Melbourney of each month at theAshburton Public
Library, 152 High Street, Ashburton, Melbourne, from 7.45. The group has a
web page and a facebook page. |
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IPMS Queensland meets on the third Wednesday night of each month at 7.00pm at the library building at the Albany Creek State School, 696 Albany Creek Road, Albany Creek, Queensland. They have a website and facebook page. |
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The Northern Area Modellers in Melbourne meet on the third Saturday of the month between 7pm and 9.30pm. The location is the Gembrook Community House, 40 MacFarlane Crescent, Epping, Victoria. Find them here on Facebook
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The North Queensland Scale Modellers Inc is a casual
group which shares a facebook page and meets informally on Saturday
mornings between 10am and noon and holds a Zoom session once a month, on
a Saturday afternoon. Details of their activities are posted on their facebook page |
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Pakenham Modellers Group
Meets every second Saturday evening from 7.30pm at the Outlook Centre, 24 Toomuc Valley Road Packenham. They have a website and Facebook page. |
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The Perth and Districts Model Club meets on the third Wednesday of each month in the clubrooms at Robert Thompson Reserve, corner of Benara Road and McGilvray Avenue, Noranda. The doors open from 6.30pm. They have a facebook page and a website. |
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The Rockhampton Scale Modellers Association has a facebook page |
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The South Australian Plastic Modellers Association meets on the first Wednesday of every month at the Glenelg Lacrosse Club, West Beach Road, West Beach from 7.30 to 9.30. They have a web site and a facebook page. |
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If you would like your club to be mentioned here get in touch through our guest book or our email address; [email protected] |
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My heartfelt and sincere thanks go to our first three Friends of The Little Aviation Museum. They are Greg Murray, Stuart Brown and Nigel Brand. Their donations through Patreon are helpful but even better at this point is the moral support shown through their donations. Thanks very much Friends. |
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OUR GUEST BOOK
We welcome you to record an entry in our Guest Book and comment about your experience visiting our The Little Aviation Museum |
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SUPPORT THE MUSEUM
Please consider contributing to help keep our Little Aviation Museum running.
Your $2 per month will be a great help to us.
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