123 articles · 11.9K karma · 30 friends · active 3 days, 8 hours 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, rarely 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 42 years to a lovely long-suffering woman and have one 36 year old kid, who builds better models than me and also appears on these pages on occasion.
Never know why I'll build something sometimes. I just had a hankering to do a Panther, out of nowhere. This was reinforced by another Osprey book, in this case Campaign no. 335, Mortain 1944. This was the counterattack to try and stop the [...]
So I always thought the Fiat CR-32 was a good-looking aero plane. Pointy nose, scalloped wings/tail, cool spatted wheels. For some reason I never got round to doing one, most likely due to the limited run nature of the available 1/48 kits. [...]
Yeah the U.S. had another Hellcat besides the Grumman Zero beater. This one remained firmly planted on Terra Firma however. She was the M-18 Hellcat, member of a unique class of vehicles known as Tank Destroyers. In fact the whole Tank [...]
I have always liked light tanks as a type (I don't have to use one in combat), and have built quite a few. Always been a big fan of the little thing named after J.E.B. Stuart also. As soon as I saw this new release from Ukrainian Mini-Art [...]
Way back when I had a book entitled "Tank" by one Kenneth Macksey. Actually it was one of the first books I ever bought with my own money (An 80 dollar paycheck). It was softcover with a combo of line drawings and photos, and it [...]
Got 7 done. That's pretty good for me, guess it shoulda been more since I quit working, but I'll take it. Only one armor in here, but I have got a bunch started so will make more mud this year. Anyways it has as always been great playing [...]
Well, actually the second. The original designation was I (Istrebeitel, fighter) 200, but a new convention using the designer's names was introduced, these being Migoyan and Gurevitch, hence, MiG. The new moniker was MiG-1, but the [...]
Quick! What was the most produced Allied fighter of WW2? Since this is an article on Yaks, I guess I gave the answer away already. Yep, Aleksandr Yakovlev's Yak series, about 35,700 being put together by 6 factories. Now 2000 or so were [...]
Well, the first Allied fighter in European WW2 skies anyway. Contrary to some accounts, the Polish Air Force was not destroyed on the ground early, but their aircraft were dispersed to designated War alert fields, having been on a war [...]
Previously I posted an article about building on vacation, this year's project is ready for inspection. It's Tamiya's newest, a Panzer IV(70) A. That means a 70 something or other long 75mm gun on a panzer IV chassis made by the Alkett [...]
