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Interested primarily in WW II aircraft carriers in 1/700 scale, but branching out lately into some 1/72 aircraft, starting with carrier planes but more recently RAF and Luftwaffe as well. And hoping to get somewhere on my backlog of Star Trek kits. A scratchbuilt launch umbilical tower for my 1/200 AMT Apollo/Saturn V is my white whale.
This little Airfix kit was a Christmas present, and the camouflage intrigued me enough to finish it, even though the kit is not a notable one. But it was well worth it for the lessons it taught me in the mottling effects I can do with an [...]
When I was growing up, my Uncle Harold Taylor was a really big deal to the younger cousins. Not just because he'd been a fighter pilot in World War II and a POW, but because his P-51D Mustang - named for our mother's cousin our Aunt Mary [...]
These two new completions - an AMT SB2C-4 Helldiver and a Hasegawa F4U-4 Corsair - will be significant upgrades from the Matchbox models they replace in the display cabinet. The AMT Helldiver kit is actually older than the Matchbox - it [...]
This is my first completed build since 2021 - a small one, to be sure, but a completed build nonetheless. I have been wanting to learn more about the Bearcat for some time - all I knew about it was that the Bearcats on the old Revell [...]
2021 was such a good year. I finished 13 models – eight 1/72 aircraft, a 1/72 88mm gun, and four 1/700 Essex-class carriers, one a major kitbash.
2022, by comparison saw no models finished. Not one. Instead I started on one 1/700 [...]
I had so much fun with my last Essex-class double build of a 1945 and 1968 USS Bon Homme Richard (CV/CVA-31) that decided to try it again, this time focusing on a better way to convert a model of a straight-deck WW II Essex into a postwar [...]
The first half of 2021 was the same as 2020 - multiple 1/700 Essex-class carrier builds. But the second half was something completely different.
The first several months of 2021 were devoted to finishing a "double build" of the [...]
My latest project is one that I have had in mind for a long time.
When I was about 10 years old, and just starting to get interested in World War II and aircraft carriers, one of the first books I had access to was Barrett Gallagher’s [...]
During the Battle of the Coral Sea U.S. Navy Lieutenant John A. Leppla and Radioman 3rd Class J.A. Liska were pilot and gunner of SBD-3 BuNo 4547 from Scouting Squadron 2 (VS-2) based onboard the Lexington, and were credited with shooting [...]
After a decidedly unsatisfactory 1/72 Spitfire build three years ago I decided to try my hand again. Fortunately, Airfix has a new tool version of their classic kit, so I was able to compare the two.
The kit is really good with the [...]
