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)
I haven't posted anything for a while because I haven't built any models for a while because I was involved in building some buildings and scenery on my N Scale layout. Sorry, poor excuse. After I got to a stopping place, I really had [...]
Sometimes I feel like I am the last one to arrive at the dance. It always seems like when I get my hands on something new that many of you have not only seen it, but built it. So I was a little surprised when I came across this Bf-109 [...]
I have built a bunch of the "toon" tanks, planes, and ships over the last few years, usually as a way to decompress from some of my more intricate builds. I had previously built four Meng "toon" ships before and really [...]
When I finished my last build, a 1/72 F-4J, I said that I wanted to do something more simple, like build a sailing ship. I thought I wasn't serious, but the more I thought about, the more I wanted to do a sailing ship. I don't have a lot [...]
I was just looking at a great build by Ramon Lomeli of an AH-6J from Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia in 1993 ((link)) It really brought back some memories. I spent several months in Mogadishu in 1992 in support of Operation Restore [...]
I was reading some of the comments in an article on iModeler and the discussion of mistakes and ham-fisting during a build came up. We have all made errors during a build, some more obvious than others. I suspect that mistakes that I [...]
Well, there I was waiting for decals to arrive from Hannant's for my Monogram Fw-190 when I came across an old Hasegawa Ki-43 sitting in the consignment section at my local hobby store. I remember these early Hasegawa kits were simple to [...]
I wanted to do something relaxing, so I grabbed this old Monogram FW-190 from the stash in my garage. It also fits my keep-it-simple modeling philosophy. My plan is to build it mostly out-of-the-box and just concentrate on a decent build [...]
I have a lot of modeling vices that seem to have no bounds on time and money, such as building planes, ships, armor, and the occasional car. In addition to this, my dad got me interested in model trains many years ago. Now that I am [...]
Every once in a while I stray from my "keep it simple" path and travel down the less-traveled road. Bear in mind that I have reached an age where I got rid of most of my 1/72d scale kits because I could neither see or accurately [...]
