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70 year old Englishman living in north east China (teaching English). Lifelong plastic kit constructor, especially like F1 cars, racing motorcycles, 1/35 military WWII models, and an aircraft every now and then.

F-101B Voodoo Kitty Hawk 1/48

Having seen Ravi’s @blackmopane, superb example posted in the last few days, I thought I’d dig my feeble effort of this kit out and see if it was worth posting here. Why did I buy/build this kit? I think there were three reasons. [...]

My year’s modelling work

I managed to keep one of my new year’s resolution - no military models - and kicked off 2022 with Tamiya’s 1/12 Yamaha XV 1600. This was followed by the then new Suzuki Ecstar GSX-RR ‘20, as ridden by 2021 world champion Joan [...]

Trick Star Kawasaki Ninja H2R

The Kawasaki Ninja H2R was introduced in 2014, and was the company’s flagship motorcycle. Different parts of the Kawasaki engineering empire collaborated in achieving the aims of the designer, particularly the installation of the [...]

Zhuhai Air Show 2022

The Zhuhai Air Show is one of the biggest in China and is normally run every other year. This year’s show is the first since the Covid-19 epidemic. I was hoping to go but the city where I live is in lockdown. Zhuhai is on the south [...]

Tamiya 1/20 F1 SF70H

This is, of course, a Ferrari, in fact it was the Scuderia’s 2017 entry in the Formula One World Championship. Tamiya released this 1/20 scale kit in 2018, and so far, it’s their last F1 kit apart from a couple of re-releases from [...]

Two Yamaha YZF-R1s

The Yamaha YZF-R1 needs little introduction to motorcycle fans, and has been featured in these pages before by my friend Richard McStay, indeed he says it’s his favourite bike. Introduced in 1997, it featured a 1000cc engine in a [...]

Ducati Panigale Racer, Tamiya 1/12

Browsing the internet one evening, as you do, I came across an after market set of transfers to help turn Tamiya’s road going kit into a World Superbike Racer. When the transfers arrived there were no instructions or maker’s name, [...]

Nu Nu BMW M6 GT3, 1/24

Just to prove that I don’t just do motorcycles these days, here’s Model Nu Nu’s 1/24 kit of the BMW M6 GT3. Nu Nu are fairly new on the scene, they are based in Macau, but seem to be part of the Aoshima group. I think that the [...]

Suzuki RGV (XR89) Tamiya 1/12

Back in 2014 my friend Jack Mugan @camaro1 posted his build of this kit, it was his first, and, as far as I know, his only motorcycle kit. In fact, Jack was the first person to post a WIP thread on the then new Automotive group. I [...]

Fireblade

Yes, folks, it’s another Tamiya 1/12 scale motorcycle kit, this time, to give it its full name, it’s the Honda CBR 1000RR-R Fireblade SP, one of Tamiya’s more recent offerings. Here’s an excerpt from the instructions giving the [...]