36 articles · 5.8K karma · 14 friends · active 17 hours, 20 minutes ago

Retired A&P. My main interest is !:48 WWII and pre-war Golden Age aircraft, but I sometimes build in other scales if the subject matter interests me.

De Havilland DHC-3 Otter

Here’s my build of the Hobbycraft DHC-3 Otter in 1:48. It was a garage sale kit that a friend sent me. I decided to build it as a Civil bush floatplane. The DHC-3 was developed by De Havilland Canada in early 1951 as a larger and more [...]

It's a HEMI!

Here’s my latest build, the Halberd XP-47H conversion. It’s an awesome conversion, the Halberd fuselage and Tamiya wings, spars, tailplanes, cockpit and canopy are all a perfect fit. The recent post by Tom Clever covers the history of [...]

Curtiss CW-21B

Here's my latest Dora Wings build, the CW-21B in 1:48. The CW 21 was an effort by Curtiss pre-war to provide a lightweight interceptor based on their earlier CW-19 trainer with a high rate of climb and decent top speed. It lacked armor [...]

XP-51

Here's my latest build - The XP-51 from Halberd Models. It's all resin, and is probably the nicest resin kit I've encountered so far. A fairly easy build. I used a PE instrument panel from Eduard for an AM A-36 because the instrument [...]

Bristol Bulldog

Being a fan of interwar aircraft, I snatched up this old Life Like kit at a contest a few years ago. A pretty ice kit with good detail, and the decals were still in good shape. I finished it with Tamiya and Model Master paint, added a [...]

Bristol Beaufort Mk. Ia

Here's my recently completed Beaufort torpedo bomber with tropical filters from ICM in 1:48. I've done several ICM builds, and this is one of the best kits from ICM I've encountered so far. No problems at all. the fit was near perfect, [...]

Ki-51 Sonia

Here's my recently completed Ki-51 from Wingsy Kits in 1:48. I was inspired by Wingsy Kits when I did a couple of A5M Claudes a while back. The kit did not disappoint, the surface detail is excellent. My only problem encountered during [...]

Arado Ar 68F

Here's my recently completed Roden Ar 68F in 1:48. A very nice kit compared to my Classic Airframes Ar 68E from back in 2010! I added Eduard steel seat belts, individual instrument decals to the panel, replaced the plastic exhaust [...]

PBY-4 Conversion

I have a couple of PBY-5As in 1:48 and some years ago I came across an old Monogram PBY-5. I got the Belcher Bits #BB06 PBY-2,-3,-4 conversion kit and settled on a yellow wing PBY-4. The conversion set includes a new tail and rudder, [...]

FM-2 Wilder Cat

For some time I've wanted the FM-1 and FM-2 variants to go with my Navy collection, but I just could not get excited about the Hobby Boss and Sword offerings which need a lot of work. Then I heard rumors about Eduard releasing the FM-2 so [...]