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I’ve been building models since a wee boy, minus a long gap between 18 and 40, thanks to my late uncle Paul who worked for Revell in Venice, CA in the 50's - 60’s and, later, AMT models. In those days, the family Christmas tree was always loaded with kits underneath much to my delight, but it drove my mother nuts who viewed them as dust collectors, sadly enough.
I used to be a self-employed graphic artist/writer who has always been a fan of aviation art. I’ve designed logos and images for air museums all over the U.S. as well as illustrated a line of WWII warbird t-shirts that made the rounds in air museum gift shops and aviation catalogs. Many of my built models provided the inspiration for those designs.
I laid myself off a couple of years ago and decided to call it a day and enjoy life and build models for fun. My wife and I are proud parents of two adult daughters, both married to Costa Ricans (!) so we spend a fair amount of time there. Our home headquarters are in Santa Cruz, California.
DISCLAIMER: I’ve never piloted a plane but I have sat in a P-51.
I may as well jump in on this bandwagon honoring the 75th anniversary of VJ Day that marked the end of fighting in the PTO. Here's my tribute to Ike Kepford who was the Navy's highest scoring WWII F4U ace with 16 victories. I built this [...]
The P-51H was the last and a completely different version of the Mustang, redesigned in an effort to reduce weight and increase speed. Tom Cleaver built this Modelsvit kit back in January and has the P-51H’s history down plus some good [...]
For my second shelter in place build, I decided to go with George Welch’s P-40B Warhawk.
I presume most of you iModeler flyguys have already built squadrons of early Warhawks or Tomahawks by now and/or are familiar with the history of [...]
Here’s my first shelter-in-place build:
This P-51D (Eduard’s “Frenesi” boxing) represents the very first marking of “Big Beautiful Doll”. There were six different “Doll” schemes painted on the two Mustangs flown by Col. [...]
The Battle of Britain proved that the Hawker Hurricane Mk.I’s days as a front line fighter were numbered. Along came the improved Hurricane Mk IIA series in 1942 with the ability to use newly developed interchangeable wings. The [...]
A lot of us styrene addicts have purchased models with the intention of building them right away that end up sitting on the stash shelf for years - even decades. That’s been my relationship with AMtech’s Ta-183 Huckebein, the one and [...]
This sortie worn Spitfire FR. Mk. XIVe is modeled after one assigned to the 28th RAF Squadron in Kuala Lumpur, British Malaya mid1946. I used Hannants Xtradecals, sheet X48127 for the markings.
Much has been written about this latest [...]
This past March I was browsing around a LHS in Hong Kong and this kit leaped off the shelf at me. The Hondajet is Ebbro’s first venture producing a plastic airplane kit and first time I had seen it. Until that moment, I had never heard [...]
Here’s my grimy looking Blue Angels’ F8F-1 “Beetle Bomb” Bearcat circa late 1949 as it might have looked after a hard weekend working an airshow. Note the attached photo of the actual plane.
By early 1948 the Blue Angels were [...]
Now this was one blast of a car to put together! Brought back high school memories when my pal took me out for a weekend pre-rally warm up drive in his mid 60’s S when it was almost new. I was his navigator. We went around a hairpin and [...]
