176 articles · 66.9K karma · 201 friends · active 2 days, 10 hours ago

I'm a retired Lieutenant Fire Fighter / EMT. Prior to working as a Firefighter, I also served in Law Enforcement for several years.

In following with our long line of family military service, dating all the way back to 1776, I'm a US Army veteran (tanker). I served mostly in the M-60A1 and eventually the M1-A1 series tanks. I was a crew member in the Abrams only for a short while.

My Dad was kind of like "Lt. Dan" from the movie Forrest Gump. Fortunately dear old Dad broke our "family curse" of having members killed in every major conflict that the United States has ever had. My Dad was wounded in the Korean War, and thankfully he was not killed. Otherwise I wouldn't be here if he was. I accidentally happened some years later...

My other hobbies include restoring old "Mopar" muscle cars from the late 1960's and early '70s. I also enjoy building aircraft in 1/48 & 1/32 scale, along with 1/35 Armor. I especially like the WW2 stuff. Lately I have been gravitating towards the First World War 1/32 scale aviation kits though...

I built my first model (Revell 1/32 P-40 "Flying Tigers" version) when I was 8 years old. I currently have about 700 kits ( of which about 1/4 are built).

1/28 Revell Fokker Dr-1 Triplane, Prototype “F-103” as flown by Werner Voss, September 23rd, 1917

Well it's done... Finally. My original intent was to have the build completed and an article posted here on the Imodeler website by September 23rd, 2017. But Mother Nature with Hurricane Irma, and a few other bumps in life's road [...]

1/48 Monogram P-51D Mustang, “Petie 2nd” Lt. Colonel John Meyer, 352nd Fighter Group, Bodney England 1944

Here's a short article about a build that I did a long, long time ago... This one was special to me, since it was my very first attempt at using Bare Metal Foil if memory serves me correctly. It's the old Monogram kit that was re-boxed by [...]

1/48 Monogram Messerschmitt Me-262 A1a, flown by 1. KG 51, WNr. 111625, “9K + FH”

This is a golden oldie that I built shortly after my return to the hobby back in the mid to later 1990's. Back then I didn't have access to the internet, and I mainly relied on books that I had gathered. I frequently followed the build [...]

“Year of the Cat” Group Build, 1/35 Tamiya “Panther” Ausf. D, Sd.Kfz. 171, Kursk summer offensive 1943

Greetings everyone ! I finished this one up a few nights ago... when I finished the Russian KV-1 with bolt on applique armor. This Tamiya German "Panther D" tank has a build thread following this link to the "Year of the [...]

1/35 Tamiya KV-1 Russian tank with Bolt on Armor

This KV-1 was a monster of a tank for it's time... and it caught the Germans by nasty surprise when they first encountered them in combat on the Eastern Front. In fact this tank is probably one of the reasons (along with the smaller / [...]

1/48 Pro Modeler P-47N “Too Big – Too Heavy, Short Snorter” 333rd FS / 318st FG, Ie Shima

Having been inspired by Neil Foster's recent P-47 build (which is excellent), and as a follow up on my last two P-47 postings, as promised, here's my rendition of the "Pro Modeler" kit. I built this kit when it was first [...]

1/48 Revell / Monogram P-47D Thunderbolt “Bonnie”, Major “Bill” Dunham, 460th FS, 348th FG.

Here's the mate to my last P-47 article...I built this plane about 10 years ago. I built this one at the same time as "Fiery Ginger" as flown by Colonel Kearby. These two planes were my first attempt at working out the kinks [...]

1/48 Monogram / Revell P-47D Thunderbolt “Fiery Ginger” Col. Neal Kearby 348th Fighter Group

Here's a kit that I built almost straight from the box about 10 years ago or so... The only change I made was with the leading edge of the wings, and how the .050 caliber weapons were oriented along the edge. On a Thunderbolt, if you [...]

1/48 Tamiya Messerschmitt Bf-109 E4/7 “White 12” flown by 7 / JG 26 Staffel Kapitan Joachim Muncheberg

Here is an article on another Bf-109 kit that I built about 18 years ago shortly after it first was released by Tamiya. It was built right out of the box and I used Model Master enamels to finish the plane. The mottling was done with an [...]

1/48 Tamiya Bf-109 E-4/7 Tropical, 8 / JG 27, “StaffelKapitan” Werner Schroer

I little while ago I took some photos of two Tamiya 109's that I built about 18 years ago. (man time really flies...). I had planned on posting them, (along with the other 1/48 Tamiya Bf-109 E-4 / 7 that I built as "White 12"), [...]