169 articles · 64.8K karma · 197 friends · active 16 hours, 36 minutes 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 600 kits ( of which about 1/4 are built).
Here's an older build of mine. It's Tamiya kit number 35181, and uses the kit decals from an "Unknown" German Armor unit. This model was built using Dragon individual track links and the crew members were sourced from the [...]
It's been a little while since I have posted any of my builds here. I've been really busy with moderating the Midway Group build, while trying to get a few more planes built before the 75th Anniversary of Midway in June.
Here's a little [...]
We have had this Group Build going for a little over two weeks now. The response has been very positive. In June, between the 4th and the 7th of this year, we will be upon the 75th Anniversary of this significant historical event. [...]
We have had some great responses and participation with our Midway Group Build so far. I would like to open it up for even more builds.
Here's how:
Chuck Villanueva and I have been talking about another part of the Battle that is often [...]
Earlier this afternoon my Hien arrived.
Here's a photo of the box end...
Needless to say, I am very excited about it!
This new kit can be summed up in one word. FANTASTIC! Tamiya has produced another 1/48 scale masterpiece.
As [...]
Here's a few pictures of a kit I built as a kid. This model has somehow survived over all of these years...
Here's the background on the build:
Some dates in time, (for some unknown reason), just seem to stick with you. This is one [...]
Here's a few pictures of one of my earlier Tiger builds. This one was built about 10 years ago. I used the available Tamiya brand individual track links for this build, since I'm not a big fan of the one piece vinyl ones that came with [...]
It's official! Everyone is invited!
I received enough interest to go ahead and start the Midway build.
I wanted to give us all a good amount of time needed for our selections, research, and building, so I started it about 5 months ahead [...]
We will soon be upon the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway. The dates of this event will be June 4th, through June 6th, 2017. It's almost 5 months away from now.
I had an idea about another "Group Build" as a fitting [...]
This one is hot off the work bench. It's number two for the year, but I started it last year. I literally just finished it less than an hour or so ago...
I have been posting updates with the build progress here on Imodeler. I would [...]
