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I'm a retired Lieutenant Fire Fighter / EMT. Prior to working as a Firefighter, I also served in Law Enforcement for several years.

In following with our long line of family military service, dating all the way back to 1776, I'm a US Army veteran (tanker). I served mostly in the M-60A1 and eventually the M1-A1 series tanks. I was a crew member in the Abrams only for a short while.

My Dad was kind of like "Lt. Dan" from the movie Forrest Gump. Fortunately dear old Dad broke our "family curse" of having members killed in every major conflict that the United States has ever had. My Dad was wounded in the Korean War, and thankfully he was not killed. Otherwise I wouldn't be here if he was. I accidentally happened some years later...

My other hobbies include restoring old "Mopar" muscle cars from the late 1960's and early '70s. I also enjoy building aircraft in 1/48 & 1/32 scale, along with 1/35 Armor. I especially like the WW2 stuff. Lately I have been gravitating towards the First World War 1/32 scale aviation kits though...

I built my first model (Revell 1/32 P-40 "Flying Tigers" version) when I was 8 years old. I currently have about 600 kits ( of which about 1/4 are built).

1/48 Monogram / Revell P-47D Thunderbolt “Fiery Ginger” Col. Neal Kearby 348th Fighter Group

Here's a kit that I built almost straight from the box about 10 years ago or so... The only change I made was with the leading edge of the wings, and how the .050 caliber weapons were oriented along the edge. On a Thunderbolt, if you [...]

1/48 Tamiya Messerschmitt Bf-109 E4/7 “White 12” flown by 7 / JG 26 Staffel Kapitan Joachim Muncheberg

Here is an article on another Bf-109 kit that I built about 18 years ago shortly after it first was released by Tamiya. It was built right out of the box and I used Model Master enamels to finish the plane. The mottling was done with an [...]

1/48 Tamiya Bf-109 E-4/7 Tropical, 8 / JG 27, “StaffelKapitan” Werner Schroer

I little while ago I took some photos of two Tamiya 109's that I built about 18 years ago. (man time really flies...). I had planned on posting them, (along with the other 1/48 Tamiya Bf-109 E-4 / 7 that I built as "White 12"), [...]

Announcing the “Year of the Cat” Group Build

”Year of the Cat” Traditionally, the Chinese have a calendar year that is named after some sort of animal. This year is the “Year of the Rooster”. So what do you think about this? The year of the “Cat”... Anything would go [...]

1/48 Hasegawa F6F-3 Hellcat, The Great Mariana’s “Turkey Shoot” Lt. Arthur “Payne” Whiteway, VF-16 “Fighting Airedales” USS Lexington

Today and tomorrow marks the 73rd Anniversary of the Mariana's "Turkey Shoot", which happened on June 19th and 20th, 1944. It is sometimes called the battle of the Philippine Sea, where the Japanese lost an estimated 550 - 645 [...]

Midway Group Build recap…

Greetings everyone ! It has been a little over a week since our reveals were completed from our Midway Group Build. The turn out was more than spectacular and exceeded my expectations by a long shot. I never dreamed that it would have [...]

1/48 Tamiya F4F-4 Wildcat VF-6, USS Enterprise “6-F-5” Midway Group Build

I really liked this colorized photo that shows F4F-4 Wildcats on the deck of the USS Enterprise, sometime during March of 1942. This picture was originally posted by Rob Pollock as a part of his usual "Friday Briefing" . [...]

1/48 Accurate Miniatures SBD-3 Dauntless, USS Enterprise VB-6, flown by Lt. Cmdr. Richard Best

75 years ago today "Dick" Best changed history with a single 1,000 pound bomb. At that exact instant, he also changed the course of the War in favor of the United States in the Pacific Theater. It has been written that this [...]

1/48 Monogram Douglas TBD Devastator, USS Enterprise, 04 June 1942

This is the picture that inspired the markings for my build, which was part of the recent Midway Group build. This plane has interior green paint inside the cockpit. More on that in a few... There were a series of color photographs [...]

Midway Group Build, VT-8 “Torpedo 8” Grumman TBF-1 Avenger, 1/48 Accurate Miniatures

Here's another historically significant plane from the Midway Group build. This plane represents the sole surviving Grumman TBF Avenger from Torpedo 8. This plane managed to limp back home after being mauled by Japanese Zero fighters on [...]