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Retired air traffic controller, currently a full time Grand Dad. My father was in the US Air Force and I grew up around all the Korean and Vietnam Nam era aircraft. I was a mechanized infantry officer and served in Germany during the late 70's. My primary modeling interest is aircraft, then armor, science fiction, with a few figures and ships thrown in.
I choose Goofy as my original avatar because it's a Christmas ornament that my 5 year old grandson brought to me with the head broken off and no arm between the hand and the shoulder. After he announced that "Papaw can fix anything" I'd like to thank Drill Bit City, Evergreen round stock, super glue and Floquil Reefer Orange for not exposing my feet of clay just yet.
My new avatar is my two grandchildren and I at our Christmas dinner 2014.
I had originally planned to have this build included in my Battle of Midway Hiryu vs Yorktown
adversaries collection, but never got it started before the Midway GB window had "closed"
Hence the Year of the Cat.
I must admit I [...]
It's been so long ago that I built this kit I can only be sure that it was before Y2K. As punishment for my sins I decided that I would see if I could add enough detail to a Hasegawa SBD to match the out of the box detail of an Accurate [...]
This display represents the factual interception of LT Tomonaga Joichi, commander of the Hiryu's Air Group by LCDR James Thach commander of the Yorktown's Air Group.
LT Tomonaga led the Hiryu's second strike force of 10 Kate's and 6 Zeros [...]
This model is marked as the aircraft of the commander of the dive bomber squadron on the IJN Hiryu, LT Kobayashi Michio. He led the Hiryu's first attack of 18 Val's & 6 Zeros that launched at about 1045. After allowing his fighter [...]
I've decided to concentrate on the history rather than the models in my Midway GB posts.
12 TBD-1's of VT-3 led by LCDR Lance E. (Lem) Massey spotted the Japanese carriers at about 1015. Initially the Zeros were kept at bay by their [...]
This is the Pegasus 1/144 scale Luna Rocketship kit. I has 11 or 12 parts as I recall and no fit issues. I started this kit the same day as the Airfix Stuka I did for the BoB group build and had it built and primed in about a week. And [...]
Finally finished this morning, Not much to tell that wasn't in the WIP blog.except for the propeller. I took Seamus's advice and used the "PropBlur" brass parts to make a mask the
airbrushed the prop on to a clear disk. The [...]
Here's my Stuka 3 days late.
The modifications I made to the kit are:
True Details brass set and other parts used to dress up the cockpit.
Kit canopy cut into sections, windscreen and pilot's canopy used as masters to vac-u-form new [...]
After an emergency canopy repair,(which I will try again later), here's it is. Paints are all Polly Scale acrylics, the decals are from the kit and the weathering is oil washes, Mig pigments, etc.
After seeing the great work Seamus is [...]
Because of Col Fisher's passing I decided to share with you the story of a model I built and the experience I had because of it. I do not tell this story often, it's not really about me but what a very gentle man from Iowa did for me [...]
