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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)

1931 Pitcairn PCA-2 Autogyro

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 [...]

From the Vault: 1986 Aerial Refueling in a C-141B Starlifter

I have been slowly scanning my old slides and negatives so that I can have digital copies that can be enhanced in either Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. (Those of you who have grown up in the digital age with cameras that create digital [...]

Taking a Break: Building Meng's Warship Builder Series USS Lexington

I was in the mood to take a break from the more complex models I was building, so I was trolling through the hobby shop and saw Meng’s USS Lexington in their Warship Builder series. If you aren’t familiar with these kits, they are [...]

Time Capsule: 1989 Visit to the Commemorative Air Force Museum

In 1989, I was an instructor pilot flying the T-37 trainer at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Although I had a previous assignment in Oklahoma teaching basic students to fly in the T-37, this tour was different because we [...]

Borrowing Your Spouse's Stuff: Using the Silhouette Cameo

I am sure it’s no secret that there is a great deal of overlap in the tools and techniques used by various hobbies. For instance, scenery and weathering techniques and tools designed for model railroading work equally well for our [...]

Going Backward to Move Forward

I have a short tale of woe and misery, but this story does have a happy ending. I think some of you may identify with this tale. I started plastic modelling when I was a kid in the 1950’s. I remember buying the box-scale Revell B-47 in [...]