85 articles · 47.4K karma · 50 friends · active 5 days, 16 hours 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)
This is a model that was built from a kit from 21st Century Toys. In case you have never heard of them, this company made "die-cast", already built and painted model aircraft in 1/32 and and 1/18 scales in the 1990s. They later [...]
I don't normally build 1/72 models, but I was inspired to build this kit by the cool photos posted by Spiros (@fiveten) of Greek F.1CGs. I happened to have this model in my stash, but I added some XtraDecals for the HAF markings, as well [...]
I actually started this model around 5 or 6 months ago for the De Havilland Group, but life jumped up and bit me on the backside. The virus got bad here in Texas and really slowed things down. Then my daughter had a baby (our first and [...]
Background:
When a twin-engine plane loses an engine, it immediately turns into the dead engine. This turn or yaw is especially severe when the engines are at a high power setting, such as takeoff. The pilot controls this tendency with [...]
I built this Mosquito for the De Havilland Group Build. There are a lot of great choices of planes to build for this group, but I wanted to be a little creative in my choice. One of my favorite flying movies is 633 Squadron, which is [...]
This model was built for the Desert Storm Group, but I wanted to post a few pictures here. The model was built basically out-of-the-box, but I added a resin ejection seat from my spares box. I doubt the seat is correct for the Jaguar, [...]
I built this kit for the Korean Conflict Group Build. The B-45 was the first 4-engine jet bomber in the Air Force, as well as the first American jet bomber shot down in combat, namely during the Korean Conflict. The bomber was deployed [...]
I was recently reading about the hunt for the battleship Bismarck during WW2, and came across an interesting connection between this plane and the final demise of the warship. The Martin Maryland was never used by the USAAF, but was sold [...]
I found some really interesting decals for a Romanian Me-109E-3 that led to this build. These planes were former Luftwaffe planes that were handed over to the Romanians. They repainted the planes in their own colors and markings. I used [...]
I built this kit for the Empire of Japan Group. I had discovered some diagrams of a Shoki with an all-black paint job. Although the prospect of an all-black plane was daunting, I decided I would give it a try. There are no photos of [...]
