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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.

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 [...]

Skybow 1:35 General Patton's Command Car

Wanting a break from tanks and planes, I pulled this from deep in my stash. As I've said before, I have a love/hate relationship with soft skin military vehicle kits. Love the interesting subjects. Hate the fiddly parts. Happily, this [...]

Tamiya 1/48 Tiger 1

If you’re familiar with my previous articles, you'll know about my affinity for Tamiya 1/48th scale military model kits. Despite their low parts counts they have just about all the detail of 1/35 scale armor kits. There are no flash or [...]

Tamiya 1:48 Jagdpanther Late Version

This is part of a long term project of mine to build iconic fighting vehicles in the three most common scales; 72, 48 and 35. This kit fills the 48th scale slot for the Jagdpanther having previously built a 1/72 Dragon Jagdpanther and the [...]

P-51B/C 1/72 ARMA Hobby

Another fantastic kit from ARMA. The molding quality and level of detail rivals that of 1/48th scale kits. The cockpit detail in particular is outstanding. The kit offers parts and marking for seven very diverse Mustangs, including a [...]