89 articles · 51.2K karma · 50 friends · active 13 hours, 19 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)
First, some background on the 1:1 Magister:
The Miles Magister (nicknamed "Maggie") was designed to meet an Air Ministry requirement for a primary trainer. There are several firsts associated with the Magister: It was the first [...]
First, a little background.
The Spanish Civil War was fought between 1936 and 1939. The Republicans (Leftists) were supported by Russia and France, while the Nationalists (Conservatives) were supported by Germany and Italy. The [...]
First, a little background:
The Spanish Civil War was fought between 1936 and 1939, between the Nationalists (supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany) and the Republicans (supported by the Soviet Union and Mexico). The Republicans [...]
I like to find things that are just a little different to build, which led me to this Typhoon tactical reconnaissance aircraft. These builds often send me down a rabbit hole chasing information on obscure aircraft, and so it was with this [...]
Background:
The Northrop A-17 was developed from the Gamma 2F cargo aircraft. It was built in 1935 to meet an Army requirement for a ground attack aircraft, and entered service in 1936. In WW2, it was used by the USAAF exclusively as a [...]
I built this kit as part of a IL-2 "combo-build" with several other iModelers in the Work-in-Progress Group. This was a great experience where we were all building an IL-2 at the same time. I had an Accurate Miniatures IL-2m3 [...]
I am always looking for planes to build that are a little out of the ordinary. I came across an article in Aviation Historian about B-17Fs that were used in the Mediterranean as ferrets. A ferret is an aircraft that is designed to [...]
This is a "new" kit from Atlantis, which is actually the 1956 Revell 1/54 model of the "short-nose" F11F-1 Tiger used by the Blue Angels in the 1950s. Atlantis has been re-releasing old Revell kits for a while, at [...]
I was looking for something inexpensive that I could use as a pallet for some painting and weathering techniques that I wanted to try. I found this ancient (originally from the 1950s) kit in my local hobby shop for sale for a few bucks on [...]
I don't normally build airliners, and I never build anything that has a natural metal finish, but I wanted to do something for the SAS 75th Anniversary Group. I had the Minicraft C-54 kit lurking around, and I was able to find some decals [...]
