103 articles · 3.5K karma · 13 friends · active 1 month, 2 weeks ago

Building models since age 7 (except for a short respite in my military years). Enjoying it now more than ever. I build across the spectrum but am biased towards towards historical miniatures and military vehicles.

Getting Some R & R, 1/35 dio

This project has been "in-work" for quite some time. I picked up Monroe Purdu's New Paint kit at a historical miniature show back in the late 1990s even though I didn't have a specific dio concept in mind. I was heavily into [...]

Char B1 Bis 1/35 Tamiya

Started off 2023 with ambitions to build some dios and more substantial displays. I began with a real jewel from my stash -- Tamiya's 1/35 Char B1 Bis. As expected with Tamiya kits,this is a real beauty. A flawless kit of a very unique [...]

2022 Builds

For me, scale modeling in 2022 had some highs and lows, but mostly highs. It was one of my most productive years—13 kits (15 if you count some figures thrown in). I finished more kits in 2020 by doing a lot of no-frills Covid shutdown [...]

Eduard 1/72 Avia S-199 ERLA canopy Profipack

I finished out the year with one great kit--Eduard's Avia S-199, Profipack. I've only done a few Eduard kits, though my stash has more than a handful. This one has all the bells and whistles that Eduard can offer; great molding and fit [...]

Academy 1/144 CH-47 RAF

After the challenges presented by my previous Classic Airframes P6E Hawk and ICM Ghost of Kyiv projects this project was a nice pallet cleanser. I saw a great build of this kit at a recent show that inspired me to do my own. This kit is [...]

Facing Challenges

I've heard that there is no such thing as a bad model kit. There are just good kits and challenging kits. I recently built a couple of challenging kits of historically notable aircraft--ICM 1/72 Ghost of Kyiv and Classic Airframes 1/48 [...]

Tale of Two Mossies

The de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito was a WW2 British twin-engined, multirole combat aircraft. In contrast to most other aircraft of that time, its frame and fuselage and wings were constructed mostly of plywood. Fuselage, wings and [...]

Tamiya 1/35 M-51

A few months ago, while visiting family in Joliet and Chicago I paid a visit to Walt's Hobby Shop in Joliet, another really great hobby shop with tons of models and train stuff. I picked up the Tamiya M-51 kit because many years ago I [...]

Great Hobby Shop Find

On a recent visit with my brother we discovered the Hillsboro Hobby Shop a few miles east of Portland, Oregon. This is a great classic main street hobby shop. Their stock runs the gamut...scale models, RC, rockets, doll houses, etc. [...]

France 1940

I haven’t built a diorama for quite some time. Years ago, when I focused on figures exclusively, I did a few one and two-figure dioramas and vignettes. I wanted to create a full-fledged diorama with an AFV and figures packed into as [...]