46 articles · 4.7K karma · 14 friends · active 6 hours, 58 minutes ago

I'll build anything, but primarily WWII Navy aircraft, with a particular interest in transition aircraft from just prior to the war starting - the stuff that was obsolete but went to war anyway.

"Big John" Phase One

Over the past six years I have been building every 1/24 or 1/25 scale model tractor I could find, and as far as I know have pretty much built them all (and posted the articles here on iModeler). Unfortunately, none of the available kits [...]

Martin BM-1/2 Scratch-build

Five years ago, after I’d completed building the VacWings O2U Corsair kit, I swore that I would never build another vacu-form biplane, because it was just too frustrating getting that top wing aligned properly on homemade wing struts. [...]

Martin AM-1 Mauler in 1/72

The latest addition to my collection of obscure Navy dive bombers is this 1/72 scale kit from A&A Models, the Martin AM-1 Mauler. Like the Douglas Destroyer in my previous article, this was another aircraft that was intended to [...]

Two Destroyers in 1/72 Scale

In my quest to build all of the Navy/Marine dive bombers, I keep discovering aircraft that I knew nothing about. The latest discovery is the Douglas Destroyer, which the Navy requested in 1941, hoping to replace both the Douglas SBD and [...]

First car, First love

Thanks to an article by @moparpep a while back, I was finally able to find a model kit of my first car, a 1969 Pontiac Bonneville, purchased from the MCW Finishes website, where he found a kit for his first car. I bought the real one way [...]

Two Kits for Ron

My neighbor Ron passed away recently. Ron was an interesting fellow - He grew up only a mile or so from where he died in this rural Iowa community, was an engineer in the Air Force (worked on the Hound Dog AGM), collected firearms, read [...]

Brewster SBA/SBN Scratch Build

In 1934, the Brewster company was initiated into the Naval aircraft market when it was invited to submit a proposal to build a new dive-bomber to Navy specifications. Prior to this, the company had been doing subcontract work for Vought [...]

Academy USMC SBD-1 "Pearl Harbor"

After spending three months on the card stock Russian tank, I decided I wanted to take a break and do something simple and easy. This Academy kit fit the bill nicely and accomplished two things: a) I finally upgraded my dive-bomber [...]

Paper or Plastic?

While doing research for my SU-100 project (posted here on iModeler), I ran across an advertisement for a paper kit version of the Russian T-34 tank in the same scale as my plastic SU-100, so I thought I'd give building one a try... The [...]

Last Project of 2022

I'm posting this today, on December 31st, having just finished this project last week. After seeing all the articles on what folks have built this past year, I wanted to get the article finished so I can get "credit" for a [...]