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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).
Here are some photos of my version of the "Beetle Bomb" Blue Angels plane. The original "Beetle Bomb" was a North American SNJ that was painted to resemble a Japanese Zero.
Beetle Bomb was incorporated into the Blue [...]
Tonight as promised are the last two models from my "109" assembly line. These are painted as Bf-109 G's that were flown by the all time highest scoring ace in the world... ever.
Erich Hartmann was credited with 352 kills. No [...]
As promised from last night here's another one of my Bf-109's from a Luftwaffe Experten. This time I chose the Ace Gerhard Barkhorn who amassed 301 kills. I have attached photos that I used as a reference. I found the black and white [...]
Here tonight is my Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat which was modeled in the markings of the US Navy Ace Alex Vraciu. Sadly this hero passed away on January 29, 2015.
Vraciu ended the war with 19 aerial victories and 21 more planes destroyed on the [...]
Here is plane for you since I've been posting pictures and writing articles on Armor recently.
This is how I think that Gunther Rall's BF-109 should look based on some research I did online and through some of my books. This was when he [...]
Here's another later war German AFV for your enjoyment.
It's built almost right out of the box. I used Tamiya individual track links and photo etch set for the Commander's MG gun sight, fan towers and rear upper grill deck plates. I [...]
Here are some pictures and another short article for you tonight. This is my rendition of the Porsche Jagdtiger. This one was inspired by a video I saw online showing the German's surrendering vehicles to the US forces in Southern [...]
Here tonight is another set of photos and a small article for your enjoyment. It was inspired by an artists rendition shown in the second photo.
My Dad was a Korean War combat veteran. He severed with the 6th Medium Tank Battalion, 24th [...]
Here's one more Armor model for tonight. I built this King Tiger without zimmerit and its painted in the "Ambush" tri color scheme. The German tank manufacturing companies discontinued the use of Zimmerit paste in September [...]
Here's one fresh off the work bench. I just finished up the pastel weathering. It has been built for a little while, but was lacking the final details.
It has Fruilmodel tracks, and I fabricated tow cables from copper wire. I used [...]
