89 articles · 51.3K karma · 50 friends · active 18 hours, 44 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)
I am always looking for something a little different to build, and I was pleased when Special Hobby recently released this new model. The new Special Hobby kits have a very good reputation, so I was eager to build this plane for the [...]
I had heard great things about this kit, and I was looking for something a little different to do with it. When you search for P-40s on the internet, one of the first photos that comes up is a P-40CU that was used as a trainer at the [...]
Hello everyone. I built this unusual plane for the Luftwaffe Group Build. This plane was designed from the start to break the speed record, which it did in 1939. The Me-209 held this record until 1969. As the war progressed, the [...]
I wanted to find something a little different to build for the "Imperial German Air Service / Luftwaffe Group Build May 1st, 1910, to Present Day", and I discovered the Nike Hercules (MIM-14) surface-to-air missile was used by [...]
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, [...]
