89 articles · 51.2K karma · 50 friends · active 14 hours, 28 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 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 [...]
This was a really fun build of one of the most detailed Revell kits I have seen. As I was researching info on F-86D's in the Hellenic Air Force, I discovered that F-86D's sold to foreign air forces were equipped with Sidewinders. So I [...]
This kit called to me from its shelf in the garage, and I wanted to build something different. I sometimes build a kit in a paint scheme that never actually existed, and this is what happened here. To make it more plausible in my mind, I [...]
The Lorna was an anti-submarine aircraft used by the Japanese in WW2. Obviously a close copy of the Ju-88, the Lorna could be equipped with both radar and MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detection). This is a great kit that was a dream to build. [...]
Well, there I was, 6 weeks into a really bad case of cabin fever. I was waiting for some add-ons for a Lorna that I wanted to build for the WW2 Japanese group, and I was reading a book on the Skyraider in Vietnam. Of course, I decided to [...]
This was a quick build that I wanted to use to fill the time while waiting for some masks and paint for a Japanese plane I wanted to build for Works in Progress. Of course, I always seem to pick things that have some challenges. This is [...]
Before you read any further, I have to admit that this tale of woe really has very little to do with the Life-Like Naval Cannon. It has more to do with proverbs like: "Measure twice, cut once.", "Look before you [...]
