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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)
There is a great camera store in Austin, Texas (where my daughter lives) that offers a wide variety of classes covering many aspects of photography. This weekend they offered a class taught by a well-known aviation photographer (Moose [...]
I want to thank Martin & the iModeler team for selecting me to receive the March iModeler award. I know this is a "picked out of a hat" award, but I literally have never won anything in the last 68 years of my life (if you [...]
I have always really liked the naval vessels of the Cold War. I usually build aircraft models, but I got first started building ships with a 1/500-ish Renwal re-release, and I just stayed with the scale. This model hasn't been available [...]
As I have gotten older, I have taken the pledge to avoid all things complicated and small. But sometimes I convince myself that I want to do something that definitely doesn't meet my "keep it simple" guidelines. And so it was [...]
I attended the annual model show (Modelfiesta) of the Alamo Squadron of IPMS today. I don't enter models anymore, but I like to go find good stuff at the vendors and take some pictures of the entries. I get to the show when it first [...]
I wanted to post some of the kits I have been doing, but it is a little intimidating in the midst of the other kits that have been shown lately. After many years of going the extra mile on kits with all the photoetch, resin, and [...]
In the midst of all of the recent posts that showcase some really awesome modelling, I wanted to send out some 1:1 inspiration. I have previously posted on a 1989 cross country trip I took to Harlingen Airport in a T-37 when I was [...]
The subject of these photos is probably a little obscure, but there have been a couple of T-41 models from Minicraft, PM, and others. My wife was a military instructor pilot who was assigned from 1986 to 1990 at Hondo Airfield just west [...]
In 1990, I was an instructor pilot and wing staff officer assigned to Randolph AFB in San Antonio, Texas. At the time, the wing was flying T-37's and T-38's. I was on my way back from a meeting and happened to pass the wing paint shop [...]
In 1992, I was a pilot stationed at McGuire AFB in New Jersey. My wife and I attended a great airshow at Willow Grove Naval Air Station in June of 1992. There were a lot of great displays, both static and aerial, but one of the most [...]
