176 articles · 66.9K karma · 201 friends · active 2 days, 8 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).

“Wings of the Emperor”…or “The Empire of Japan” another thought for an upcoming Group Build

In addition to the "Korea the Forgotten War" group build that will last during the exact time frame as the war did, (only 70 years later), here's another one I was thinking about. This Group Build would be called "Wings of [...]

Idea for a new Group Build. “Korea, the Forgotten War”

I have several ideas for future group builds. This is one of them. I will post a different article for each one soon. It will start on June 25th, 2020, and end a little more than 3 years later on July 27th, 2023. This will follow the [...]

MiG Group Build, Tamiya 1/48 MiG-15 bis, People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Korean War

This model was built after I was inspired by a fantastic MiG-15 that was built by Tzigkounakis Tasos @t-tasos I saw the splendid camouflage pattern he painted on his MiG, and I knew that someday I would be building one like his. Along [...]

MiG Group Build, Tamiya 1/48 MiG-15 bis, Major Nicolay Shkodin, 147th GIAP, 5 victories Korea July 1953

This kit was finished last night, and it was part of the MiG group build. It went together very nicely, and no filler was needed during construction. I had originally painted it and used a hard edge camouflage pattern, but later I [...]

MiG Group Build : 1/48 Tamiya MiG-15 bis, Captain Pavel Milauszkin, 176 IAP / 324th IAD, Korea 1952.

This model was built as part one of a project that I have been wanting to do now for a very long time. The recent MiG Group Build was the perfect opportunity. This is the first half of the project...Please follow along and I'll explain. [...]

MiG Group Build, North Vietnamese MiG-17, 1/48 Hobbycraft / War Eagle

Our MiG Group Build is underway, and there are a lot of great builds happening right now... I have several MiG-15's that I'm about to wrap up. I built this one on a whim, and had not originally intended to do so. This model was based off [...]

R.I.P. Mrs. “Billie” Bailey… beloved wife of our good friend Jeff Bailey

Hello everyone. I have some bad news to share with you. In case you have wondered why Jeff has not been posting on Imodeler recently over the past few days, this is why. Jeff is one of our "regulars", and a very good friend of [...]

On this Day, Oct. 3rd, 1944. A tribute to Staff Sgt. Thomas J. Bricen Jr. 445th Bomb Squadron, 321st Bomb Group Revell B-25J 1/48 scale

Exactly 75 years ago today, while flying over Italy in the top turret of a B-25 J-1 named "Evora", this young man was killed. This was his 58th Mission. He just had his 22nd birthday a few weeks earlier on September 14th, [...]

Random thoughts on Japanese colors. The Japanese A6M Zero…Part 1

Japanese A6M Zero Colors... Part 1 I recently posted a similar article to this one about WW2 Japanese Aviation colors. It was not completely prepared so I removed the original posting. This is along the same line as my original [...]

100 Years of the RAF, Spitfire Mk Vb, 81 Squadron RAF Hornchurch, June 1942 “FL*A” / BM-461 Tamiya 1/48

This one is hot off the press... I finished it up just in time to make the deadline for the 100 Years of the RAF Group Build that was the brain child of Paul Barber. @yellow10 Thanks Paul ! I also want to take this opportunity and thank [...]