12 articles · 1.1K karma · 14 friends · active 12 months ago
I am a retired officer of the Royal Australian Air Force. Flew Avon Sabres and Mirage IIIOs (mostly) when I was young and stupid.
A father of two grown up children, I live in Canberra, Australia with my wife and Golden Retriever Katie, and have been modelling for about eight years. Given my background on fighter aircraft, I suppose it's no surprise that I model WW1 and WW2 fighters almost exclusively, always in 1/32 scale.
It was a sad day when I learned that Wingnut Wings was closing down for good. I greatly enjoyed building those superb kits over the years. Alas, I only had the late Halberstadt in my stash when the news arrived, so this build is my final [...]
Greetings, gentlemen - and ladies if any present. I'm hoping that, just this once, you'll grant me a fair chunk of bandwidth. You see, I hit the big 80 this year, and next year it will be 40 years since I assumed command of No 3 [...]
Maybe I should have titled this submission "Avon Sabre begets Albatros BII". To explain:
In mid-2016 I travelled to the Australian Model Expo in Melbourne, where highly gifted modeller Eric Galliers unveiled his superb 1/32 [...]
A warning, gentlemen: there's some outrageous and unashamed name-dropping in the following piece, so I'll apologise for that in advance.
Imagine that you are a very young man about to graduate from advanced pilot training at RAAF Base [...]
Gentlemen, just look upon this as me trying to get up enough courage to one day attempt the mighty Felixstowe F.2a from Wingnut Wings.
The subject is, of course, one of Wingnut's new offerings of late last year: the Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 [...]
I'm pondering whether I should invest the enormous amount of time that would required to build the Wingnut Wings Felixstowe F.2a. I imagine I will eventually succumb to the temptation. After all, as this collection shows, I have been [...]
In early 1944, No 25 Squadron RNZAF began operational training on SBD-4 aircraft at Pallikulo on Espiritu Santo Island in the New Hebrides. These SBD-4s were ex-USMC aircraft, and in quite poor condition. Operational training included [...]
Not having seen one in real life, I hadn't fully appreciated how big the F6F was until I built this kit and parked it alongside other WW2 fighters of the same scale.
This is from the Trumpeter 1/32 F6F-3 kit. OOB except for Eduard cockpit [...]
It's rather cold, wet and miserable in Canberra at present, but the day was brightened considerably for me when the postman arrived with my Revell 1/32 Bf109G-10 Erla, this being my prize for fooling all you guys with my Roland D.VIb in [...]
The city of Wellington, New Zealand, lays just across the Tasman Sea from my place in Canberra, Australia. And out near Wellington's airport sits the Stone Street Studios established by Sir Peter Jackson, the acclaimed director of The [...]
