200 articles · 13.4K karma · 36 friends · active 11 hours, 53 minutes ago

Retired US Navy Senior Chief working as a production supervisor in Seattle.

Bubble trouble!

The Albatross continues. Looking at pictures of Navy HU-16Cs I noticed all but the earliest have observer bubbles retrofitted to the first window aft of the wheel wells. Later Navy birds seem to have been built with these, but the [...]

The chosen scheme, but need more info. Added a couple other pics for intrest

Trying to find more info on this Albatross, would like the BuNo and to know what the emblem is on the nose? Found it on a site about Midway Island, she is a SAR bird from the 60s. I also added some other similar pics, all from near the [...]

The Albatross continues

I think I was successful in splicing the Alley Cat canopy with the Trumpeter nose piece, building up the sides with milliput to get the distinctive curve below the canopy that Trumpeter missed. I also included a picture of the Alley Cat [...]

Me I'm going with this one!

I still love this box top, and built it still looks "good enough". I built one about 43 years ago,and loved it! Accurate, nope, fun...yep! That and the Tamiya 1/25 Tiger I, because sometimes you need to stop being so darned [...]

My first Trumpeter kit, good, bad and ugly?

Started building the 1/48 Trumpeter HU-16A kit, having never built a Trumpy kit before, but reading lots of mostly bad reviews, I dove in. First off, the reviews of this kit bashing it, are well over stated. Yes it has problems, the hull [...]

206 the hard way done!

Well, I am glad she is finished, but what a fiddly kit it was to build. I think I made a few of my own problems by doing some things out of sequence, like adding the landing gear at the end (which requires modification of the mounts early [...]

206 the hard way

Of course Eduard puts out this kit with these markings after I have gotten this far oh well 🙂 It took no less than 4 decal sheets to make the markings for this bird. Some of the font is not 100% exact but pretty close. All thats left [...]

Eduard’s Phantom seats

These things just about did me in, my old eyes did not like all the tiny parts. They are not 100% accurate when comparing them to the pictures on the ejection site, and I am not sure if they are early or late MB Mk7s or a combination, but [...]

Speaking of the Academy Phantom

Here is the cockpit, not the greatest pictures, but you can see how I modified the left hand RIO pit to more closely resemble the real thing, the front pit is pretty close. One thing that I noted and corrected in the back, but not as much [...]

USS Wilkes DD441 Done!

Well here she is completed! Did not add every bit of PE, and since detail shots of Wilkes are hard to find I had to be creative and use other ships close to her configuration for things like the floater net baskets, but I am pretty happy [...]