SCALE MODEL NEWS

HOBBY BOUNTIES of Singapore has a new competition for modellers. SMN report:  Hobby Bounties has announced that they are organising a ‘Phabulous Phantom Covid-19’ 14-day Group Build, focused on the Airfix McDonnell Douglas Phantom II. The competition will last from May 8-21, almost one year after HB organised its Airfix 48-hour ‘48th P-51 Mustang’ competition. This year’s comp will be run on Skype and WhatsApp, also Facebook at this address: https://www.facebook.com/events/3463573253747612?active_tab=about.   The kit is based on Airfix 1:72 scale McDonnell Douglas Phantom II, total build time allowed is 14 days exactly. You can use after-market decals, but the base kit itself will have to be an Airfix Phantom II. Take it as a challenge!

THE DELTA-WING COLD WAR WARRIOR is coming as an updated model from Airfix. The 1:72 scale kit of the Vulcan B.2 includes a drop-down crew access ladder, and under the belly nestles an accurate Blue Steel stand-off nuclear missile.  Scramble! Scramble!

YOU MAY NOT BE FAMILIAR with the name, but if you are anything like a regular model maker, you will have bound to have seen the work of John Amendola. Mat Irvine: John Amendola, who died at the end of January, was one of the foremost box-art illustrators, with a career that lasted many years.  John painted cars and other subjects, but his main passion was aircraft. He was born on Long Island, New York, during the ‘Golden Age’ of aviation, and it is that which likely developed his life-long interest in flight.  John was a graduate of the Academy of Aeronautics, the Pratt Institute in New York, and the Art Center College of Design in California. He was in the US Army, Air Force and Naval Reserve, and later worked for Boeing and on the early US space programs. As a concept artist, John worked on projects that included designing mockups of the Apollo LM (Lunar Module), various shuttle and re-entry vehicles, and rovers.  His work has appeared in print for over six decades, in...