45 articles · 15.9K karma · 27 friends · active 1 hour, 48 minutes ago
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.
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 [...]
I don’t do cars. Since I resumed modeling in the early 90’s, I’ve built nothing but planes. Sure, I’ve slapped together a couple of Tom Daniels/George Barris silly cars along the way, but for the most part, strictly the airborne [...]
Yes…another P-51 build and another “Big Beautiful Doll”.
This “Doll” is painted in its last known markings as piloted by Col. John Landers at the time he took over command of the 361FG in England July 1945 after VE day. Landers [...]
Thought you all might find this die cut P-38 kids menu interesting. Printed on both sides with metallic silver ink and dated 11-29-1945, this was an option for families who patronized the Sky Room Café, a restaurant and bar once located [...]
I really like modeling propeller driven X-planes. When Kitty Hawk came out with this 48th scale XF5U-1 “Flying Flapjack” in early 2016, I jumped on it.
I built this straight out of the box as it has everything you need including PE [...]
Here’s what I thought would be an E-Z weekend build: Eduard’s 1:48 He 280 ProfiPACK 2018 re-pop. The molds have held up well considering they date back to circa 2005 when Eduard was just starting their rise to excellence and began [...]
