77 articles · 38.9K karma · 49 friends · active 9 hours, 33 minutes ago
I am twice-retired. I retired as an Air Force pilot (C-141) & instructor pilot (T-37, C-141) in 1993. I spent the next 20 years teaching high school social studies & also as an adjunct instructor at a local junior college. I retired from high school teaching in 2015 & taught my last college class in the spring 2016 semester. I currently teach two adult education classes each semester for a local school district. I began modelling when I was a kid and continued until the 1980s when my flying began to make my modelling time nonexistent. This trend actually got worse when I became a teacher. Now that I have time to model again, I find myself trying to sort through the many new techniques & tools available now. Over the years I kept buying kits, but not building them because they were easier to move while still unbuilt in the box. So now I have a two-car garage completely filled with unbuilt airplanes, armor, ships, space ships, and a few cars. I am now building my way through this cache of thousands while still selectively buying new kits. I am also two-thirds complete on an HO Scale train layout and I just started a small N Scale layout. :o)
When I arrived at Williams AFB in 1976 for my first day of Air Force pilot training, I was greeted by an immaculate F-86 that was the gate guard at the time. The F-86 has been one of my most favorite planes since then. Spiros (@fiveten), [...]
I don't build models of many modern planes, but Erik (@airbum) asked me if I would participate in his "F-16 at 50" group, so I jumped in with a 1/72 model I had of an F-16CJ. I really had no idea what an F-16CJ was, so it was [...]
Two years ago, I moved from San Antonio to a relatively small town north of Austin, our state capitol. When Cricket (@bikequeen) started the Public Service Vehicle Group, I was looking for something to build. On Ebay, I discovered not [...]
This project represents something I have never done before: building more than one kit at the same time. I tend to be a linear builder. I build one kit at a time, and when it is done I clean up the workbench and start the next one. I have [...]
I think it has become somewhat of a tradition to post our models from the past year. It is fun to go back and look at the models I have produced, several of which I had completely forgotten. I still hope to finish my 3 plane Hudson [...]
I wanted to do one more model for the Sullivan Memorial Group, and a photo in Golden Wings of a US Navy SNJ-3 caught my eye. It was a very weathered SNJ-3 photographed at NAS Moffett Field in 1944. The camouflage seemed to be a cross [...]
This was the 2nd model I have built for the Jim Sullivan Memorial Group. In each build, I have tried to model a plane in a specific photo in one of Sullivan's books, in this case "Golden Wings". The Kingfisher is one of my [...]
Couldn't get photos to upload yesterday. One more attempt today. It took about an hour to upload 20 photos, importing 4 at a time, and somewhere between 1 and 3 actually uploading to the article.
My wife and I decided to go to the IPMS National Convention, which was being held in San Marcos, Texas. I have never had the chance to attend a national convention, but this one was being held just 90 minutes from our house. I don't [...]
I was looking in one of Jim Sullivan's books, entitled "Bent and Battered Wings", and came across an interesting series of photos of an F9F-2 Panther that came to grief in 1952. Apparently the returning Panther failed to catch a [...]
