119 articles · 11.3K karma · 30 friends · active 3 hours, 15 minutes ago

69 years of age, Modeling since birth. Do planes, armor, or whatever hits my fancy. World War 2 is main interest but will stray back in time, never forward. Competition shooting, collecting Military rifles and reading History occupy the non-modeling time. I was a mechanic by trade, now retired and loving it. Married 41 years to a lovely long-suffering woman and have one 35-year old kid, who builds better models than me and also appears on these pages on occasion.

How far can a LaGG-3 theme go……?

Not too far I betcha but let's see for the helluvit. This too is the ICM kit and as Tom says it has a mishmash of early LaGG features, but oh well. To me this is one of the hottest looking of WW2 aircraft, all pointy and streamlined, too [...]

Tamiya Mark IV “Male” WW1 tank

The one that started it all is Tamiya's first WW1 kit. And a beauty it is, molding, fit, packaging, all are top quality. And, it "Runs", having a little electric motor and drive, with track links that snap together perfectly, and [...]

Looky what I got yesterday….plus other things….

Tamiya's spankin'-new big ticket item, the WW one Mark IV tank. It's motorized! Yup it comes with motors, gears, beautiful working tracks and a 5-man squad to walk alongside. There's a lot of beautifully molded parts in this box. This [...]

2014 IPMS Nats Hampton Virginia Pics – Part 3

Still random. No the P-40 in the header is not mine.This is the end of 'em folks, including some shots of the vendor room and the Embassy Suites where we stayed, what a great hotel. Sorry about some of the fuzzy fotos, I'm a piker with a [...]

2014 IPMS Nats Hampton Virginia Pics – Part 2

Continuing with a random selection of pics from the IPMS USA Nationals...

Sorry to report, the Gladiator was shot down….

Some of you might remember I was building a 1/32 Sea Gladiator for the Nats, thanks to all who wished me well but 'twas not to be. The competition was pretty intense, including several Wingnut Wings thingies. (That's my excuse, and I'm [...]

2014 IPMS USA Nats Hampton Virginia – Pics

Here are some of the entries at this year’s IPMS USA Nats gathering. A well run smooth show, very large venue, I heard something on the order of 4500 entries. The pictures in this installment show mostly airplanes and props at that, [...]

Made It! Gladiator finished on last day. Well almost….

No longer a work in progress, The Silver Wing's 1/32 Gloster Sea Gladiator is ready to take to Virginia and the Nationals. Everything is done, all the little details, EXCEPT for the antennas. These will be left off to finish down there, as [...]

Deja Vu all over again....49th FG P-40N

Saw Ralph's model, and said hey that looks familiar. This is the Hasegawa 1/48 version, decals came from an aftermarket sheet, sorry I don't recall the maker. They do look sweet in NMF too bad the P-40Q didn't catch on...

Last of the V8 Interceptors…. Aoshima 1/24 Mad Max 2

One of my favorite Moving pictures has been Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior. I saw this one in '81 when it came out, and was bowled over with the nasties, machines, a young Mel Gibson at full tough, and overall atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic [...]