12 articles · 1,093 karma · 5 friends · active 14 hours, 55 minutes ago

Retired (March 2019) after 30 years in outdoor education, but still work part-time in the field, including a gig at Downsview Park, which was the site of DeHavilland Canada. During the war, DHC built over a thousand Mosquitos and post-war went on to build iconic Canadian bush planes like the Beaver, Otter and Twin Otter.

Born on RCAF base Baden-Söllingen, Germany home of 4th Fighter Wing where my dad, Aldo Sr., was a meteorological officer and my mom was a nurse.

Live in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada (near Toronto).

Just as recently returned to model construction after a 45 year hiatus.

Interested mainly in WWII aircraft in 1/72

Supermarine Batfire Mk. I

While the whole world was embroiled in the dark days of WWII, in Gotham City a battle still raged for the soul of the Metropolis. Bruce Wayne had the resources to battle the endless parade of archvillains, but how to best use his wealth? [...]

Creating Prop Blur with Photoshop

I've only built a couple of wheels-up, in-flight models, and have used clear acetate for the prop spin. However, I have admired many of the great "flying" models posted by the "experten" of the iModeler community. [...]

Spitfire Mk ITamiya 1/72

My First Tamiya kit. Figured my skill level was progressing enough to do it justice. Level of detail for 1/72 blows me away. Really challenges the extremes of my psychomotor skills painting all the tiny cockpit items. Tried to paint [...]

2020 Vision

Happy New Year Fellow Modelers. Did short articles on some of these, but the Twin Otter and Mosquito are technically works in progress as they are meant to be in dioramas for display at an outdoor education centre (they are posted in [...]

A Heller of a Spitfire

When I started going to model shows with my modeling guru Archaeo Bob, prior to restarting the hobby, I picked up a lot of $5 specials from the vendor tables. Came to realize you definitely get what you pay for when it came to actually [...]

Exploring the Dora

So back when I first started going to model shows with my Modeling Mentor, I was stocking up on cheap kits (long term retirement planning of the less practical kind) - 5 bucks or so, often multiple kits jammed in to the box. Eventually I [...]

MagneStand

So to take up from where I left off in my previous article...( (link) ) Now having a lovely flying aircraft, I needed a stand, but I couldn’t bring myself to drill holes in the lovely underside detail to accommodate the tab of the stand [...]

Spitfire HF VII by Italeri in 1/72

Found this kit in the giftshop of the RCAF museum in Trenton Ontario. Loved the paint scheme of PRU blue under with Medium Sea Grey over, the D-Day stripes, the "B" Roundels, the extended high altitude wings. Had to have [...]

À la recherche des maquettes perdu

One of my resolutions on retirement was to finally re-indulge in the long-abandoned pleasure of scale model building. I built my first models when I was confined to hospital for long periods around age 8 to 12. My dad, a former RCAF [...]

Tamiya Fiat 500 1/24

The Fiat "Cinquecento" (Italian for five hundred) is the iconic people's car of Italy during the 50's, 60's and 70's. It is to Italy what the Beetle is to Germany and the Mini to England. Like those classics, you still see them [...]