Model Airplane Memories

Monogram Piper Tri-Pacer

2012-02-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

I remember building the Monogram Piper Tri-Pacer on the picnic table in my backyard at J-5. It was a typical warm, sunny day. I liked this model because of its opening doors and removable cowling cover. To the best of my memory, the "white box" version I got back then was molded in white, and I attempted to paint the trim in red. I don't think it looked to good, but I enjoyed playing with the model for a long time afterwards.
I found a sealed 1973 "white box" Tri-Pacer on EBay to rebuild. When I opened it up however I found the parts were molded in glossy "Piper Cub" yellow. This presented a problem. If I wanted to paint the model in factory Tri-Pacer colors, I would have to paint the whole model cream white, then apply the red trim. This was not something I was in the mood to do as it would take hours of painstaking masking. So, I did an Internet search for pictures of Tri-Pacers and found many are solid yellow just like their smaller Cub cousins. I decided to leave it the natural yellow with gloss black seat cushions and flat black floor. I also applied the Civil Air Patrol decals in memory of my own service with CAP from 1985 to 2003.
The Tri-Pacer is a really fun model to build, and can be finished in a single day with minimal painting.

Fujimi F4U-4 Corsair

2012-02-06T17:58:00.000-08:00

I only bought and built one Fujimi model airplane kit when I was a kid and that was the 1/72 scale F4U-4 Corsair. I got the one released around 1976 with Navy and Marine Corps. markings. I must have gotten it at Peterson's since he was the only store in Lancaster selling imported kits from Japan. And, I probably got it at the time because "Baa Baa Black Sheep" was on T.V. and I watched it religiously; I don't think I missed a single episode during its first season.
This little Fujimi kit is pretty good; its molded in dark blue and the pieces fit together nicely. Still, it's pretty basic and could be compared to the Revell or Airfix kits on the market around the same time.
I had to search long and hard to get the 1976 version again to rebuild. There had been a few on EBay, but they were over $20 dollars! Finally, I found one around $10 dollars and got it - the one you see here. Rebuilding it was fun and brought back memories of watching "Black Sheep" in my room on my little Sharp black & white T.V. I may have painted a few parts on my original, but what I remember most is the deep, dark blue color of the plastic, and the red & white checkerboard decal for the Marine version. I chose to make the Marine version again, and to my delight the old decals went on beautifully - no deterioration from age. I love that!
It's nice to have this kit on the shelf again after all these years.

Monogram A-26 Invader

2012-02-06T17:42:00.001-08:00

Having seen a couple of privately-owned A-26s at Mojave Airport when I was a kid, I was excited to get the 1973 "white box" Monogram "B"-26 Invader at Gemco. I always though it was a sleek-looking airplane. I can't remember if I got the A-26 before the B-25, but they are two of Monogram's earliest plastic airplane assembly kits, having first appeared in 1955 along with a PBY Catalina. It seems to me the A-26 was tooled before the B-25, because it's a lot rougher; the parts fit together much worse than the B-25.
This kit is in 1/67 scale in order that the pieces would fit in a standard-size box. This was the case for a lot of early Monogram and Revell kits. There really isn't much else to say about this rebuild. I put it together in one day, leaving it mostly unpainted except for what is recommended in the instructions.
At the time I built my first A-26, Airfix already had a far-superior 1/72 scale A-26 on the market, but I don't recall ever seeing it at Peterson's Hobbies. If I had, I most likely would have gotten it. But, the Monogram Invader was just fine for me way back when and I enjoyed building it again all these years later.

Entex "Air Giants" Lockheed C-5A Galaxy!

2012-01-13T17:43:00.000-08:00

Finishing out my collection of Entex "Air Giants" is this little C-5A Galaxy in 1/480 scale. I remember seeing the larger 1/144 scale Otaki C-5A (in Entex form) at Peterson Hobby and Crafts, but knew I could never afford it. It was always one of those special "untouchable" kits displayed high on a shelf behind the counter. So I settled for the next best thing, the "Air Giants" version for .89 cents. This model isn't much of a giant when finished, but it's crisp, accurate, and takes up hardly any shelf space.
The original one I built in '75 was molded in white, and I remember painting the wings and lower surfaces gloss gray. The rebuild shown here however was molded in the correct gray, so all I had to do was paint the upper fuselage white. The decals were barely usable; the thin blue stripe which separates the gray from the white on the fuselage was unusable, but its absence is not really that noticeable at this scale. The original Fuji and Entex versions of this fine little kit include early USAF C-5A markings. If you buy the current Academy version, you get a slightly later version with MAC emblem for the rear fuselage, and no cursive "galaxy" script for the forward section. No landing gear is included for this model, just a display stand.

There were several other "Air Giants" available at Gemco when I was a kid including the XB-70, Guppy, B-1, B-52, P-2 Neptune, B-17, and Martin P5M. I didn't buy any of those, and now I wish I had to complete the set. Entex also had a neat little set of airliners in what was labeled "pocket-pak" kits. These included a DC-8-62, 727-200, 737, 747, Concorde, and Boeing SST. These were even smaller than the "Air Giants".

Entex "Air Giants" Pan Am 747

2012-01-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

Continuing with Entex "Air Giants" is this 1/380 scale Boeing 747. When I built this model first time as a kid, it looked pretty good. I don't remember painting it, but I did a pretty good job on the decals. Like the DC-10, it came with itty-bitty landing gear parts, and I can't remember if I put them on or not. Unfortunately, Entex decals, at least on these "Air Giants" kits don't have a very long shelf life. The long fuselage stripes broke apart and were useless. I had to mask and spray paint a thin blue line to replicate Pan Am's livery. The other smaller decals were okay, but were hard to budge off their paper backing.
As far as I know, the "Air Giants" 747 is the largest model in the set, being even bigger than the C-5 Galaxy which will be covered in the next post. It's highly detailed and accurate in shape with one exception: the glass cockpit windows. Fuji, or whoever engineered this kit back in Japan would have done better to just engrave the windows in the fuselage pieces rather than stick a clear piece in - it makes this otherwise excellent little kit rather toy-looking.
Building this little model again reminds me of the days sitting at my little school desk in my kitchen/dining area on J-5, which is where I built many models, including the four Entex "Air Giants," the Aurora DC-9, and Revell Constellation among others.

Entex "Air Giants" DC-10 Prototype

2012-01-06T16:03:00.000-08:00

Second of four Entex "Air Giants" I built as a kid was the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10. This little kit is pretty detailed for its small size, and accurately shaped. It might be a scaled-down version of the 1/100 scale Nitto DC-10, which Entex also marketed and sold in the U.S., but I'm not sure. It has tiny little landing gear pieces that even a ten-year-old's fingers would have trouble negotiating. I remember not messing with them 37 years ago, and I didn't miss with them again on the rebuild pictured here.
What's neat about this model is the decal set provided - DC-10 "ship one" or demonstrator. This airplane could be seen flying around the Long Beach area in the early 70s, but I don't think I ever saw it flying around Palmdale like I saw Lockheed's L-1011 prototype.
The Entex "Air Giants" are favorites of mine because of their low cost and high quality. I wish I had collected the entire set way back when, but I only had the TU-144, DC-10, 747, and C-5A.

Monogram Wright Bros. Kitty Hawk

2011-12-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in my post on the Revell Sopwith Triplane that I did not like biplanes as a kid - at all. Imagine my disappointment then, when at a fifth-grade Christmas gift exchange in late December 1975, I unwrap a Monogram Wright Brothers Kitty Hawk. Not only is it a biplane, but a really, really old biplane! I was so put out by the whole thing; especially since a couple of my classmates got really cool models like the Monogram F-15 Eagle, and Revell A-5 Vigilante. Why did I get stuck with the Kitty Hawk!
I took it home and figured I'd put it together just for something to do. I didn't care to make the effort or take the time to line up all the struts properly, and the thing came out looking pretty sad. It didn't last long in my collection.
For my rebuild project, I'm not skipping over any airplane kits just because I didn't like them originally. So, I built a new Kitty Hawk and actually enjoyed it this time. Now I appreciate the engineering of this kit, having studied the instructions and followed each step by the letter. I even rigged the thing with original Monogram thread from an old Grumman Gulfhawk. The rigging really enhances the realism on this model, but is also a pain to apply. Only a few parts need painting on this model which is a bonus considering the time spent on the rigging.
Monogram (now Revell-Monogram) has been cranking this kit out since the late 1950s, and I could have easily purchased a new one; but I chose to get a 1973 "white box" version just like the one I had back in '75. There are lots of these available on EBay really cheap, perhaps because many kids like myself weren't interested in antique airplanes, and passed on it. It's a very educational model though, since the builder gets to see in miniature just how the original plane was designed and how it worked. It's still not a favorite of mine, but I like it a little better now than I did before.

Monogram U.S. Navy DC-3

2011-12-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

In 1975 Monogram re-released three airplane model kits they passed over in '73 when they reissued almost their entire catalog of aircraft: the Lockheed Constellation, Ford Trimotor, and Douglas DC-3. For all three the markings and box art were updated. For instance, the original TWA Connie became a USAF C-121, the TWA Trimotor was dressed in current Island Airlines livery, and the TWA DC-3 became a U.S. Navy R4-D.
I remember seeing all three at Gemco, but the only one I bought was the Navy DC-3. My original was mostly unpainted and the Navy markings didn't stay on very long.
This rebuild presented the opportunity to dress it up in all the proper colors including white upper fuselage, red tail stripe, and shiny chrome silver to enhance the bare-metal surfaces. I think it turned out pretty good. Monogram's odd-scale DC-3 is I think the oldest plastic assembly kit of the DC-3, having originally come out in the mid 1950s. The basic shape of the airplane looks accurate, but it suffers from poor-fitting parts, and exaggerated rivet lines. It's hard to cover these old imperfections with an updated paint scheme and Navy decals. The kit lends itself better to the original TWA version, which can easily be slapped together in short order without any paint at all. Still, I like this 1975 reissue because it brings back good memories of the summer of '75 on Avenue J-5 in Lancaster. I flew my original DC-3 around the house and neighborhood quite a bit, racking up many hours of flight time, just like a real DC-3.

Lindberg 1/48 Me-262 With All the Bells and Whistles!

2011-12-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

Lindberg's large-scale action model kits were very popular in the late 1950s, and early sixties. By the time I was building models in the mid-70s, Lindberg was still cranking out their most popular kits including this Messerschmitt Me-262 twin-jet WWII fighter-bomber. It has lots of working features such as opening canopy, engine access covers, machine-gun bay access covers, working flight surfaces, and retractable landing gear. The first time I built this kit I loved it! The working parts really made this a fun model to play with, plus, it was very educational. With a model like this, a young kid could have an intimate working knowledge of the major systems of this airplane. Unfortunately, action model kits didn't endure much into the 1970s. By then, the kids who built the first plastic kits in the 50s were highly experienced builders, and demanded better accuracy and detail from model companies. Working parts tended to impede on external accuracy, so things like dropping bombs, retractable gear, moving flaps and such became a thing of the past. Lindberg's Me-262 can still be bought today, but it's nowhere near as accurate or realistic looking as say, Tamiya's or even Monogram's.
But if one wants to build something just for the fun of putting hinged airplane parts together and playing with them afterwards, this is the one!
The Me-262 pictured here is the fourth one I've built in my lifetime. All four I've done are the Lindberg 1974 reissue (box pictured above.)I love the sound of a sealed Lindberg model kit. Almost always the parts are all loose off the trees, and rattle around in the box. Oh, what a sweet sound!
Typical of Lindberg, they don't give much painting guidance, so I left this rebuild in the original green plastic with only minimal painting such as the wheels and tires. All the parts work, but they aren't very durable. The hinge pins tend to break off after repeated operation, so I've left the gear down and panels closed for display.
The decal sheet for this model has always had six German crosses, which of course is total nonsense. But Lindberg, like many other U.S. and European model companies were sensitive to anxiety brought upon by the sight of swastikas; so they substituted the tail swastikas with crosses. I went ahead and put them on in keeping with the original look and design of this kit.
While not a major good-looker, the Lindberg Me-262 still remains a favorite of mine because of its cool action features and assembly fun.

Aurora Hughes Airwest DC-9 'Top Banana'

2011-11-08T09:11:00.001-08:00

The Aurora Hughes Airwest DC-9 was another early model I built while living at J-5. There are some memories associated with it such as hearing Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years" playing on my Dad's stereo, having trouble with my homework, and a new microwave oven not far from where I sat and worked on my models. My parents probably bought it for me at Gemco, or at a toy store during one of our frequent trips 'down below' to the L.A. area to shop. For some reason, I must have picked this one out because I liked the box art, or perhaps because I remember seeing Hughes Airwest DC-9s fly over my grandparents house in Downey on their approach into LAX. For whatever reason, this model has always been a favorite because of its large size, and bright yellow color.
My original DC-9 was put together rather hastily, and while attempting to put the decals on myself, one of the side window strip decals broke, and was ruined. My Dad helped me with the other side, and it came out okay. Isn't that the way it is with all models? There's always a good side and a bad side! I didn't paint my original, and so most of the decals ended up flaking off anyway, until I was left with a plain yellow DC-9.

This rebuild presented me the opportunity to do it right this time. I found one on EBay, with all parts except the display stand, and good decals. The parts are molded in yellow, and I would liked to have left them unpainted like the instructions say, but the yellow just wasn't the right shade - it was more a lemon yellow rather than the correct 'sun dance' yellow. So I sprayed the body with Tamiya yellow which went on like a dream, and is more the correct shade. For the wings I sprayed them Testors primer gray for the inner panels, and tried Testors chrome for the outer strips. The chrome spray paint didn't adhere well to the primer however, so I tried using aluminum foil. The results are better than I could have ever hoped for. She looks like a company desk model. I was worried about the old decals; they didn't looked cracked, but one never knows until soaking and getting them to loosen from the backing paper. To my amazement and pleasure, the decals held together, and slid on perfectly. I didn't bother to use Micro Sol since the plane's surfaces are smooth and glossy. I put clay in the nose so she'll sit properly on her wheels, but if I can find an original Aurora display stand someday, then I might put her on the stand.

Entex "Air Giants" Tupolev TU-144 SST

2011-11-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Supersonic Transports, or "SSTs" were all the rage in the mid to late sixties due to a vision these things would soon be darting the skies carrying passengers at speeds around Mach 2. Plastic model companies were quick to cash in on public enthusiasm for this new form of transportation, and produced kits of the three main SSTs on the drawing board at the time - the Boeing 2707, Tupolev TU-144, and BAC/Sud Concorde. Most of the kits were based on early concept drawings and public press releases, and were not all that accurate such as Lindberg's Boeing and Russian SST. Airfix came out with an early Concorde decked out in old BOAC markings. Revell had their famous Pan Am Boeing SST kit which included two planes, one with wings folded, the other with wings extended and landing gear down. Monogram had a simpler 2707 with wings back and gear up. Nitto in Japan and Plasticart in East Germany released excellent examples of the prototype TU-144 '68001' in 1/144 and 1/100 scale respectively. MZMPI in the Soviet Union had a rather crude prototype TU-144 somewhere between the two popular airliner kit scales.
By the mid-seventies however, the SST program in the U.S. had been canceled; only Concorde and TU-144 went into production. Both went through some design changes which altered their exterior appearance by the time they were ready for passenger service. TU-144's was the most dramatic; it was nearly a different airplane than the prototype. Due to the falling off of public interest in SSTs, model companies didn't take the extra time and money to upgrade their old versions of Concorde and TU-144. There was one lone exception however.
Fuji models of Japan, produced and small, 1:360 scale kit of the production TU-144 in Aeroflot markings. It also appeared on the Sunny label, as part of their "Sky Giants" series. This is, to my knowledge, the only injection-molded plastic kit of the production TU-144. Only recently has a resin kit appeared from Russia in 1/144 scale, of this historic airplane.
Entex marketed the Fuji/Sunny TU-144 in the U.S. under their "Air Giants" series of 'big planes in small packages.' These kits were sold at my local Gemco department store, were cheap, and I loved them. The TU-144 was one of my favorites because it was a Russian airliner, a subject hardly touched by American model companies. It's very crisp and accurate in scale, but does not include landing gear. The interesting thing is, the markings are for s/n 77102, the first production TU-144 that crashed at the 1973 Paris Airshow. The decals even have the number "451" which was the plane's registration number for the airshow. This is not the first time a model company printed decals for a doomed airplane, either before or after the tragedy. For example, Aurora's C-141 Starlifter "38077" crashed in Spain four years after the kit's release. Perhaps Fuji chose 77102 simply because it was the first ship to roll off the production line, and got the most publicity.

There's nothing to building this kit; it only has ten pieces, plus a three-piece display stand. My original looked pretty good back in '76, and this rebuild looks about the same since the TU-144 is all white. I would have left the plastic parts unpainted, but they yellowed a bit after forty years, so I sprayed it gloss white. I thought this might also help the original decals adhere, but they were mostly unusable except for the Soviet flag insignia. I used a set from the newer Academy version, which is identical to the Entex, except the decals are a little brighter and bulkier than the original. Amazingly, this is another one of those old Fuji/Sunny/Entex kits still in production today by Academy.

Entex Convair F-102A "Supersonic Series"

2011-10-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Gemco had a large selection of Entex kits, especially the smaller, cheaper ones such as the "Air Giants" series and the "Supersonic Series." They were all under a buck, which is unimaginable today. The only kit from the "Supersonic Series" I bought was the F-102 "Delta Dagger" because it was featured in an Air Force recruiting pamphlet I had from the early 70s. These were Otaki 1/144 scale kits repackaged by Entex, and included the F-105 Thunderchief, F-111 Aardvark, F-4 Phantom II, F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and A-5 Vigilante. They are finely detailed, and superbly molded little kits. On my original F-102, I left it mostly unpainted except for the black radome which I painted with, you guessed it, Mom's ceramic paint! The landing gear was very fragile, and didn't survive playtime very long.

For this rebuild, I wanted to leave the main surfaces unpainted, but the plastic didn't seem to be the right shade of Air Defense Command Gray. When I started to brush on some Testors ADC gray however, I discovered the plastic was indeed molded in the correct color! I went ahead and coated the whole thing any way, just to make sure the decades-old decals would firmly adhere. They did, without much breaking, but the California Air Guard decals for the tail were slightly too large. This surprised me as the rest of the decals are accurately scaled. I had to cut away the excess around the edges once they dried. It looks okay finished from a distance.
This is a fun little kit to build, and still an easy one to find sealed on EBay. Entex must have made tens of thousands of these.

Monogram HU-16E Albatross

2011-10-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sometime in either late 1975 or early 1976, my Mom got a job as a secretary at the Letcher Mint. Al Letcher minted commemorative coins and casino tokens at a small plant in Lancaster. He also collected and flew vintage jet airplanes, including a DeHavilland Vampire Mk3 and an Armstrong Whitworth Meteor N.F. 11. As soon as she started working for Al, he invited my family to watch him fly his planes at Mojave Airport on the weekends. What a magical place for a kid like me at a time when my fascination for airplanes was growing rapidly. In the mid-70s, Mojave Airport was mostly quiet, with lots of derelict airplanes on the tarmac. There were a few small industrial businesses located in hangars along the flight line, including Flight Systems Inc., but it was not like it is today. There was also no commercial airliner storage there either. There were however some interesting artifacts including two Douglas C-133 Cargomasters, a gutted-out KC-97, and two U.S. Coast Guard HU-16E Albatrosses parked next to each other. One day, the airport manager Dan Sabovich, got the padlock key for one of the Albatrosses, and let us take a look inside. I remember the interior being all flat black, which made it very hot inside. What was striking though was the completely original interior, including passenger seats, radar gear, radios, and navigational equipment. I even got to sit up front and play with the controls for a couple minutes.
Around this time I was excited to see a model kit of the Coast Guard Albatross at Gemco, and had to have it. It was Monogram's 1975 reissue of their popular U.S. Air Force SA-16B Albatross kit from the late 50s. The model looked exactly like the two HU-16Es I saw at Mojave.
Putting that first HU-16E model together on the picnic table in my back yard is still a vivid memory for me. As usual for this time in my model making, I used my Mom's black paint for the radome and tires. My Dad gave me some thin purple and yellow pin-striping tape to spice the plane up a bit, but it peeled off not long after application. This first Albatross got a lot of heavy play around the house. I especially liked the retractable landing gear, and I wore it out after repeated operation.
A couple years later, I bought another HU-16E to replace the first one. On the second one, I hand-painted the red and blue Coast Guard colors, but it didn't look very good. I free-handed all of it, and my demarcation lines were pretty rough. On top of that, painting gloss blue and red enamel on white plastic by brush looks terrible.

On this third rebuild pictured here, I spray painted the red panels with Tamiya bright red, and also sprayed the blue stripe with Tamiya French Blue. What I like about this Monogram reissue is they molded the plastic in a thick white styrene that looks like it's painted semi-gloss white. So, I left the white plastic unpainted, which saved a lot of time and labor. Even for an experienced modeler, the Coast Guard red, white, and blue paint scheme is a challenge to get right. I went through a lot of masking tape on this one! But if done right, the results are fantastic. I also painted the interior flat black like I remember in the real airplane at Mojave. This adds some realism to the model when finished, since you don't see a white interior through the clear windows. I was a little disappointed with the original decals. They stayed together in one piece, but were too thick to completely conform over the heavy rivet lines, even with copious amounts of Micro Sol. They were also a bit yellowed from age. I covered them with a thin coat of Testors semi-gloss clear acrylic after they dried just to make sure they stay on permanently.
This is a fun moel to build, but not necessarily a fun kit to paint. The original Air Force version is much easier. But, with patience and skill, the Coast Guard HU-16E is real eye candy on the shelf once she's finished.
Because of the Mojave Airport connection I have with this plane, the Monogram HU-16E is one of my all-time favorite model airplane kits.

Entex Spruce Goose

2011-10-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

Talk about a classic! The Entex Spruce Goose model kit has been in steady production since the early 1970s. It's no wonder though because the real airplane is so famous, and has been a tourist attraction for nearly thirty years. Entex came out with this fine model kit when the "Goose" was still hidden in its corrugated tin hangar near Long Beach harbor.
After Hughes died, and the Goose was brought out of secrecy and put on display next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, one could still buy the model kit at the gift shop; but by then Entex had gone out of business, and the kit was packaged by several companies such as Anmark, Wrather Port Properties Inc., and Craft, which later morphed into Minicraft. If you go see the Goose today at the Evergreen Air Museum, you can still buy the same kit by Minicraft at the gift shop. The box art has been updated several times over the years, but the parts are still the original Japanese molds made for Entex thirty-something years ago - amazing!
My grandparents bought me my first Entex Spruce Goose model in '75 or '76. My Dad and I put it together in short order; it didn't need any painting to look good. The kit is in 1/200 scale, which was an odd scale at the time, but it seemed just the right size to fit on an average book shelf or desk. At 1/144 scale, it would have been a bit big. Being such a large airplane scaled down so small, there aren't many pieces to it, but the propellers are a problem. They're very thin and fragile. The props on my first Goose broke off very quickly due to heavy play around the house. One day I "flew" it down to a neighbor's house to show a man, who was a C-141 pilot based at Norton AFB. I was proud to show him my new model, but I clearly remember him saying, "Hey, it's the Spruce Goose with a bunch of busted propellers!" I was a bit insulted, but he was right. This first Goose ended up suffering even more abuse when I would routinely take it to friends houses who had pools, and I would recreate the famous first flight in the water. It didn't last long after a few summers, but I bought another one in the 80s and did it up right that time with my Badger airbrush.
This newest rebuild is an original Entex version. The decals wouldn't budge from their backing sheet, and I didn't want to go out and spend $25 dollars on a new Minicraft kit just for the decals. So I improvised with some leftover letters and numbers from an AMT Starship Enterprise model. Thanks AMT, that decal sheet really comes in handy in a pinch!
I was tempted to leave the model in it's original silver-gray molded plastic, but there is way too much crazing on the pieces, which doesn't look good when finished. So I spray painted the whole thing with Testors silver, and painted the props flat black with yellow tips to match photos of the real Goose as she was being prepped for flight. The instructions also say to put some weight in the nose, but not how much. This is so the model will rest properly on the display stand. It requires a lot because the thing is so tail heavy. Speaking of tail, one will notice the real Goose has some reinforcements applied around the tail boom. These were added some time later inside the hangar after her one-and-only flight. The model kit doesn't have these, and so is an accurate representation of the Goose as she was originally built.

Recently a resin model company released a Spruce Goose in 1/72 scale! Can you imagine the size of it? Who's got that kind of room in their house? The Entex Spruce Goose is a much better option, being just the right size for display, crisply and accurately molded, and a fun model to build. It will always be one of my favorites.

Aurora Lockheed C-141A Starlifter!

2011-09-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

At last, I've finished the plane which started my craziness for airplanes and models: the C-141A Starlifter! As I mentioned in my earliest blog post, I saw one of these fly over our newly-constructed neighborhood on East Avenue J-5 in Lancaster Calif, as my family and I were inspecting our new home. The Starlifter's high wing and T-tail design really struck me as unique, as well as the TF-33 low-bypass turbofans which had a strange whistle or howl-like sound.
The C-141 was the Air Force's first jet cargo transport; and for as revolutionary and cutting-edge as it was in the 1960s, only Aurora chose to make a model of it in 1/108 scale. It was the only plastic scale model kit of the Starlifter for almost two decades until DML released a very crisp, but small 1/200 scale one in the late eighties. For serious modelers who wished to build a fleet of USAF cargo aircraft in the constant scale of 1/144, the C-141 was a frustrating missing link in the lineup. Only recently has a C-141A model kit in 1/144 scale been released, and it's a resin kit. But that's the story for many other military cargo transport aircraft; they just weren't very good sellers compared to sleek, armed combat planes.
This is my third build of an Aurora C-141A. The first one I built was at the dawn of my modeling days. I remember my Dad helping out on this one. Together we made a nice job of it. I used my Mom's black ceramic paint for the radome, and a few other details. It was one of my treasured models that I flew all over the house, front yard, and back yard. I even "flew" it down to one of our neighbor's houses down the street, who was a C-141A pilot based out of Norton AFB. This model came to a rather tragic end however, when, after a long flight around the house, I left it parked in the garage behind our car. Either my Mom or Dad backed out over it and crushed it. I was crushed too, but I learned my lesson: never leave model airplanes parked in the garage!
I built a second one a couple years later after we moved to another house. That one was done a little bit better, having the wing tops painted white like the instructions say. This third rebuild was a joy to complete, and I tried to keep it "factory display" looking by sticking to the instructions as closely as possible. Like most other model companies of the 50s and 60s, Aurora gives only basic guidance for painting and detailing. It's really all that's needed though for an odd-scale, sparsely detailed kit like this one. I suppose one could dress this kit up with bare metal foil or metalized spray finishes, but I think that would be better suited for the DML, Testors, or resin versions. The Aurora C-141A is a unique, vintage model kit though, probably never to be reissued as who knows where the molds are for it. It remains one of my most favorite plastic model airplane kits.

Lindberg F8U-1 Crusader

2011-06-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

Lindberg reissued a bunch of their classic 50's model kits in 1973. The 1/48 scale Chance-Vought F8U-1 Crusader was one of them. It has lots of moving parts including a rubber-band powered ejection seat, retractable landing gear, moving control surfaces, arresting hook, and removable engine. It was a ton of fun to build in '76, and just as much fun again in 2011. You can see a picture of my completely unpainted original Crusader in the first blog entry (along with my completely unpainted Monogram F-105.)

A big question to consider for this rebuild was whether to paint it in operational Navy colors (light sea gray and white) or leave it silver like the XF8U prototype. Since the kit is engineered to have the long test probe fitted on the radome, I chose to keep it unpainted silver-gray like the XF8U. Lindberg included rather basic decal markings for this model which do not match the prototype or production versions. So, the whole thing is not really correct. But it's a fun model to build and display. Lindberg moving parts are only good for several "play withs" before they break, so I've put the gear down to stay, and the ejection set installed without rubber bands. The display stand is rather wobbly, but useful if one has crowded shelf space, as it lifts the plane pretty high.
Thinking back, I really don't remember why I got this model the first time. I was never crazy about the Crusader; perhaps it was just an impulse buy at Gemco or Thrifty Drug Store. I do however remember being pleasantly surprised by the action features on this kit, which made for some good quality play time with it before it fell apart into pieces again.

Entex Rockwell B-1 Bombers!

2011-05-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, 10:30am, December 23rd 1974, on the outskirts of Palmdale Air Force Facility, my mother, father and I watched the first flight of the B-1 bomber. I was nine years old and didn't know much about the B-1 yet, but I vividly remember the slender, white airplane taking off with a loud roar. When I returned to school after Christmas vacation, I drew a picture of the takeoff as best as I could remember it. My B-1 didn't look anything like the real thing, but several months later I would become more familiar with the shapely lines of the Rockwell B-1.
Some time after that first flight, my parents and I stopped in to a fast food restaurant in Lancaster for a bite to eat. There are on the ticket counter was an Entex B-1 model. We all noticed it right away and commented to the owner about it. It fueled my perception that the B-1 was a big deal to everyone in Lancaster. I knew I had to have a model of the B-1!
I don't know how long afterwards, but my parents bought me an Entex B-1 at Gemco. It was one of my first models along with the others I've posted on this blog already; I just wish I could remember in what order I built them all. Like some of my other early kits, I painted only a few details on my original with Mom's black ceramic lacquer. The kit's cockpit section is moulded in a smoked-brownish purple color, and requires masking the windows, and painting the surrounding area white. I'm sure I didn't do this on my original, and so I had a B-1 with a purple cockpit!
I wish I knew more about the history of this rather historic model kit. Entex was a company in Carson California that packaged, marketed, and distributed model kits and toys from Japan. As far as I know, they did not design, tool, or produce their own models at their Carson facility. They contracted with other companies in Japan such as Nitto, Otaki, Marusan, Doyusha, and Mania to name a few, to sell their kits in the U.S. Some of the most famous of these were the Otaki C-5A Galaxy, the huge Doyusha 1/100 scale Boeing 747, and the tiny "Air Giants" series of planes from Fuji. The B-1 however seems to be unique to Entex. Even though the plastic parts were made in Japan, they do not appear to be made by Otaki, Nitto, or any of the others. I believe Entex really wanted to be the first to produce a model kit of the B-1, and contracted with a Japanese manufacturer to make the moulds, but only for Entex. They did this with the Spruce Goose kit too (which will be covered in a later post.)

This model is very accurate in scale and shape, even though it's obvious from the box art and the drawings on the instruction sheet that Entex got their hands on early Rockwell diagrams and concept art to produce this kit before anybody else. Interestingly, only Lindberg came out with another B-1 kit shortly after Entex's, and theirs was horrible. Poorly engineered and moulded, Lindberg's odd-scale, pitiful little B-1 didn't hold up to Entex's crisp, accurate scaling in 1/144. It wasn't until the early 1980s with the rebirth of the B-1 into the production "B" version that model companies started to take the aircraft seriously. Monogram, Revell, and Testors started producing large scale, accurate models of the B-1. Entex went out of business in the early 80s, but their B-1A kit lived on with Revell-Germany, and most recently Minicraft. Amazing! This model kit has been readily available on store shelves for over thirty-five years! Entex even had the kit reduced in scale to be included in their "Air Giants" series of mini model kits, and you can still buy it by Minicraft at hobby shops.
But back to 1974 - the Entex B-1 was all the rage and they must have made hundreds of thousands of these things because factory sealed copies are still plentiful on EBay and at model swap meets.
For my rebuild project, I chose to do two of these so I could display them in both in flight "slick" mode, and "on the ground mode" with wings out. For the "slick" B-1 I painted it to look like the one on the box, and the one in the original Rockwell artist's conception photo from 1972, which was actually a photograph of the mock-up at Rockwell's Seal Beach facility, superimposed onto an aerial backdrop. This version is all white, including the radome. The first B-1, 40158, rolled out of the hangar at Palmdale with a black radome, and black test patterns on different parts of the ship. For my "ground" version, I chose to paint the radome black, but left the rest of the ship white. The new Minicraft reissue includes decals to replicate the black areas on the tail, and the belly.
The original Entex decals on both models were dried out and brittle, even on one of the kits that was still factory sealed. A little Micrsoscale Liquid Decal Film helped, but a few of the decals on both ships dissolved and are incomplete. From a distance though it's hardly noticeable. For the "ground" ship, I left the cockpit section unglued to demonstrate it's separability, but on the "slick" ship I puttied and sanded the cockpit section smooth to blend with the fuselage.

This is one of my favorite kits for the sheer fact that the B-1 was an important part of my growing up, and made a big impression on me. You couldn't escape the noise of those first B-1 test ships if you lived in Lancaster. In the evenings Rockwell technicians at the Palmdale plant would run up the engines to full afterburner for what seemed like hours. The noise could be heard all over the Antelope Valley! Some nights it was rather disturbing, and I remember having trouble getting to sleep. But, I loved my old B-1 model and these rebuilds are a nice reminder of those early magical days in Lancaster.

Cashulette Saturn V with Gantry & Crawler

2011-04-09T15:56:00.001-07:00

Here's another space model kit my Dad came home from work with and gave me. Bought from the Rockwell company store at Palmdale Plant 42 no doubt; the store probably had these on sale as this kit went out of production by the early seventies. It was originally produced in Jacksonville Florida by a company named Countdown, and was later issued by Cashulette Engineering. I had the Cashulette version in '75, and I was excited to find an unbuilt Countdown version on EBay a couple years ago. They are very much the same including the box art. This Countdown version I rebuilt however had an unmarked Saturn V rocket, while my old Cashulette one had the black roll patterns and USA markings pre-colored on the white plastic rocket body. I liked the pre-colored one better because this Countdown version uses stickers, and they don't stick very well after forty years. I had to use some Micro Metal Foil Adhesive to get them to stay on.
This model is extremely fun to build because there is no painting, and not much to it. I used Plastruct liquid cement on almost the whole model which was perfect for the kind of joints and attachment points this kit has.
I remember not being satisfied with the orange color of the gantry on my old one, and I painted it red to match the photo on the box. I actually made it look worse! I also remember taking pictures of it in my back yard on J-5 with an old Kodak Brownie camera. Most of the shots I took of it were blurry because I didn't understand the Brownie could not take pictures close up. I still wish I had those old pictures though because a couple were in focus, and in vivid color.
It's nice to have this model again to look at and enjoy. It looks like it could be a toy, but it's really a fine scale model when one considers the challenge of shrinking down such a huge, complex object, and engineering it to be assembled in parts of styrene plastic. I wonder where the moulds for this kit are; hopefully they weren't scrapped and melted down. It would be nice to see a reissue of this model again some day.

Aurora North American XB-70 Valkyrie

2011-04-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

Here she is, the creme-della-creme of Aurora's USAF bomber kits: the XB-70 Valkyrie. Aurora and Lindberg were quick to produce model kits of this experimental SAC Mach-3 bomber, and interestingly, were the only ones available for almost two decades until Italeri released a beautifully detailed one in the nineties. Both Aurora's and Lindberg's were engineered from early concept drawings from North American, and Aurora's came out ahead in accuracy and quality. Lindberg's version was smaller, but did have some cool features such as retractable landing gear, and movable wing tips. It was terribly inaccurate in shape and detail though compared to Aurora's. Aurora's is simple with relatively few pieces, and no moving parts. It's an odd scale, and this frustrated serious model builders for years who were trying to build a fleet of USAF bombers in constant scale. Contrail came out with 1/72 scale vacuform version to fix this problem, but not all us modelers are, or were into vacuform.
I did this rebuild as simple as possible in memory of my original. I left it in the original white plastic, with only a few painted details such as black anti-glare panel, and silver struts and tires. The six jet engines are nicely detailed, but once you glue them into the lower intake assembly, you can't see them unless you peer into the narrow intake openings; and then, all you see are the front fan blades.
Out of the four Aurora kits my uncle Norman built for me back in '75, the XB-70 lasted the longest - well into my high-school years. It's long life finally came to an end one day though, when the lower intake assembly busted off from the wing. It looked to me like the top wing assembly should fly, so I tried throwing it in my back yard. The dang thing flew! Well, somewhat. It didn't fly very straight or for very long, but it actually rode some air for a few seconds before falling to the ground in pieces. The Aurora XB-70 will always be one of my favorite kits from childhood.

Aurora Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar

2011-04-04T10:37:00.001-07:00

This is one of my favorite Aurora models. It's almost toy-like with it's opening rear clam shell doors, loading ramps, and cargo on pallets - I got a lot of quality "play time" with it. It was for many years, the only plastic model kit of the C-119, other than a very hard-to-find version from FROG, which was not widely available in the U.S. As with most of Aurora's other kits, the C-119 was produced well into the seventies. Early versions were moulded in gray, but later ones such as my rebuild pictured here are moulded in silver, which makes for a better, unpainted model. The model has raised lines for decals placement, and I painted in the "USAF" markings with a black paint pen. The stars & bars and other markings are from the original decal sheet, but the stars & bars started curling and flaking off shortly after assembly.
Italeri released a superior version of the C-119G in 1/72 scale in the 1980s. Testors co-released the kit in the U.S., and it is by far the best kit out there of the Boxcar. Italeri converted their "G" model moulds to produce a "C" model Boxcar, which is also a very fine kit. But the old Aurora Boxcar will live on in my memory (and my office shelf) as one of my favorites.

Aurora Convair B-58 Hustler

2011-04-04T09:54:00.001-07:00

Uncle Norman built my original B-58 with the wheels up, and no decals. I suspect he bought it at a swap meet and it was missing the landing gear and decals. When it was given to me, I tried enhancing the detail on it with my Mom's black ceramic paint by painting "USAF" and the nose cone. It helped a little bit, but remained a pretty drab-looking model. This rebuild is much better because I sprayed it silver, and did my best to use and preserve the original decals. This is another one of those early model kits that have raised areas on the surface for decal placement - I hate that! Even with Micro-Sol, the decals didn't lay down well and I had to coat them with Testors clear acrylic.
The model is good size, but pretty simple. It has a clear windshield piece, but no clear parts for the side windows! The weapons pod is detachable, but I chose not to put it on, because it makes the plane wobble too much on the stand. I did this rebuild gears-up in memory of my original one.
The B-58 was a popular model when the plane came out in the late 50s because it was so sleek and awesome looking. Revell, Monogram, Comet, and Lindberg all had their own versions of it.

Aurora TWA Boeing 727

2011-04-04T09:42:00.001-07:00

The Aurora Boeing 727 was engineered from early drawings and concept art from Boeing before the real airplane rolled out of the hangar. Because of this, there are some innacuracies with it such as the shape of the engine exhaust outlets, and the windhield. There's hardly any detail on the outer surfaces, but with commercial airliner models, that's usually not a big deal since real airliners are fairly smooth and streamlined. The TWA markings on this model are also a little different than what the real TWA 727's ended up having. Aurora released the 727 model in different airliner liveries such as United, American, and Eastern Airlines. The kit was originally released in the early sixties, and soldiered on as late as 1974. It's close to 1/100 scale. It has relatively few parts and is very easy to build and paint. My original 727 that uncle Norman built for me was unpainted, but he put the TWA decals on. They started flaking off shortly after it was given to me, and I tried re-adhering them to the model with my Mom's clear nail polish. The polish melted a few of the decals, and made the thing look worse, but I still liked it and kept the model for a long time. It eventually came under fire from my BB gun in the back yard, and still exists in pieces somewhere deep in a Lancaster landfill.

Four Aurora Beauties! C-119, B-58, XB-70 & 727

2011-04-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

Around the same time my grandparents gave me the AMT Hindenburg model, they also gave me four Aurora model airplanes. It was another huge surprise watching my grandpa open the hatchback of his Datsun 240Z and seeing these four planes laying there in the trunk waiting for me - it was like a dream. But they were already built by my uncle Norman. Norman is my Mom's brother, and he was transitioning from California to Hawaii in 1975. He stayed a while at my grandparent's home in Downey, and must have had some time on his hands. My grandparents told me he got the models at swap meets, and really enjoyed building them for me. Norman also built a Revell Pan Am Boeing SST, and an Entex Spruce Goose for me (which will be covered in a later blog entry.) Even though I did not originally build these four kits back in '75, I though it would be fun to find unbuilt ones on EBay, and do them up right just for memory's sake. All four of my original kits were unpainted, and uncle Normam either chose not to put the decals on the C-119, and the B-58, or they were missing from the kits to begin with. I'll cover each kit separately.

AMT Hindenburg

2011-03-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

Knowing my fascination with airships, my Grandma and Grandpa came over to our house on J-5 one day with an AMT Hindenburg kit. I was ecstatic! These had just come out in 1975, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on one. I don't remember if this was a Christmas or birthday gift, but I remember my Grandpa opening the hatchback of his Datsun 240Z and pulling out the box.
My original Hindenburg was quickly put together, and left mostly unpainted, except for a few details painted black with my mother's paint used for ceramics. I put the decals on, but they did not stick as usual because of my dirty, grimy fingerprints all over the model. I had to use my Mom's clear fingernail varnish to glue the darn things on, which caused them to craze a bit. But it worked. Jeez, when would I learn! I loved this kit though, and flew it all over the house for months doing my best impression of four Maybach airship diesels at full power.
In 2009 I was glad to find a sealed one on EBay for my rebuild project. When I opened the box, a lot of memories came back. The pieces are moulded in gray, which is okay, but AMT should have pressed the kit in metallic gray styrene so that kids like me could have had a more realistic looking zeppelin without painting. At any rate, I sprayed this rebuild with Testors silver-metallic and it looks much better than the original gray. This is not an easy kit to build even though it has few pieces. The two body halves are quite thick, and warped, which makes gluing them together a real chore. They don't line up well and leave a noticeable line running along the top and bottom. This can be puttied and sanded of course, but it takes a lot of work. I filed and dry-sanded the seams to a point I thought looked acceptable. Really, none of the parts fit well on this model, and there are numerous accuracy problems such as wrong fin shape and size, over sized landing wheel and strut, engine car struts too thick, and decals too big. On top of all this, the engineers decided to simulate, or should I say over-simulate the Hindenburg's skin fabric texture. It looks as if the texture simulation is scaled 1/1! It gives the model a terribly rough appearance while the real airship had a nice smooth look to it, even up close. I guess the engineers at AMT were not striving for accuracy on this one as they had on their famous automobile kits. Why this is I don't know; their aircraft kits which came out around the same time were very good. Perhaps the company just wanted to get this model out in a hurry to coincide with Universal's "The Hindenburg" movie. Revell-Germany has made a much superior, but smaller scale model of the Hindenburg and her sister Graf Zeppelin II that fixes some, but not all of AMT's hideous errors. AMT's is 1/520 scale, and Revell's is 1/720th scale.

The AMT Hindenburg remains one of my favorite model kits from childhood because I still had a great fondness of airships, having flown in the Goodyear Blimp only a couple years earlier, and seeing the movie "The Hindenburg."

My First Airfix Kit: Westland Scout

2011-02-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

The 1/72 scale Westland Scout helicopter is the first Airfix model kit I ever built. The first time I walked into Peterson Hobby and Crafts my eyes were immediately drawn to the revolving rack of Airfix "carded" models. These were like candy for the eyes; the brightly colored kit parts could be seen through the clear bubble cover. The cardboard backing had colorful artwork, and an equally colorful and enticing painting guide on the flip side.
There were lots of airplanes on the Airfix rack to choose from, but I think I chose the Scout first because I liked the shape of its cabin. This model didn't last long in my original collection because it's very fragile, and I probably broke it early on.
On this rebuild, I left the green moulded parts unpainted because Airfix matched the plastic very close to the shade of green required for the British Army version. I used Testors Dark Brown for the brown bits. I was pleasantly reminded how detailed this kit is, with its fine rivet lines and antennae; but the biggest drawback is the clear canopy piece - it's horrible! It does not fit correctly at all across the top of the cabin, and gaps occur around the corners of the window frames. I chose to just glue it on the best I could and leave it. I didn't bother painting the lightly engraved window frame lines on the clear piece; it just wasn't worth it. Still, this was a fun model to build again, and I still like the overall shape and appearance of the Scout helicopter.

Crown/AHM Axis Lilliputians

2011-02-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

When I started shopping for model airplanes at Peterson's in Lancaster, my eyes were opened to a whole new world of imported kits, mostly from Japan. Peterson's was well-stocked with all the latest stuff from LS, Hasegawa, Tamiya, Fujimi, Mania, Otaki, and Crown. They were not all that expensive either compared to domestic brands. I usually went in there with only a couple bucks at a time, rather than saving for a nice large, deluxe kit. For a while I got stuck in a rut of buying cheap 1/144 Japanese kits, because I thought I was getting more for my money. The first time I tried this was with a four-set collection of Crown airplanes in 1/144 scale: Ju-87 Stuka, Me-110, Ki-61 Tony, and Zero with floats. The kit boxes were shrink-wrapped together like you see in the picture here. This was serious eye candy for a kid like me. I didn't know what "1/144 scale" meant size wise, so this set looked like I was getting four airplanes the size I was used to - 1/72 scale. When I got it home however, I was a little disappointed that the airplanes were so tiny. I built them any way, and the results were pretty good I thought. I went on to buy a few more models in 1/144 scale, which will be covered in later blog entries.
These little kits were fun to build again, and they took about as long to complete as one 1/48 scale kit! I didn't do much detailing; one could get real elaborate with these, but I stuck to my original project philosophy of "build it like you were a kid again." Standard painting was done in accordance with the box illustrations. The original decals went on well, despite their forty years of age.
My favorite plane in this group was the "Tony" because I thought it was the sleekest, most bad-ass looking fighter of WWII, along with the Mig-3, and the Westland Whirlwind. The minuscule Tony was the only one I ever built as a kid, even though there were larger Tony kits available at the time.

Crown/AHM had a whole series of these 1/144 scale fighters but these four were the only ones I got. The whole series would make a very impressive collection displayed all together. You can still piece together the whole series by finding them individually on EBay.

Monogram Mitchell

2010-12-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I only remember building Monogram models in my backyard on the picnic table. The 1973 B-25 Mitchell reissue was one of them. This was another early Gemco purchase, and built with minimal painting. I may have met my friend Phil by this time, and he had already been building models for some time. He would often come over to my house with his model building supplies, and we would build kits together. I remember he let me use a lot of his paints before I started buying them myself. Thank you Phil!
This was also another early model I kept in my collection much longer than others. In fact, when the original plastic gun barrels on the turrets broke off, I replaced them with toothpick ends painted black!
This was a fun model to rebuild after all these years. It's very simple, and although the box shows a nice chrome-silver sprayed factory model, the instructions say to leave it unpainted, since it's moulded in a brilliant natural color. It's not a very accurate model of the B-25J, but it was one of Monogram's first three plastic model airplane kits. The other two being the Douglas B-26 Invader, and the PBY Catalina.

One particular annoyance with this model however are the raised outlines for decal placement. This was a popular method model companies employed to help kids put the decals on in the right place. The problem is, decals adhere much better to completely flat surfaces. With the Microscale system though, this can be overcome to some extent without filing and sanding the outlines away, thereby preserving the original look of this historic model.
This is also another one of those early odd-scale kits designed to fit in a standard size box. I don't know how accurate the 5-inch rockets hanging under the wings are for a B-25J, but Monogram included them also in the B-26 Invader.
This is one model I remember with great clarity, and I'm happy to have it again on display in my office.

Look Mom, Moving Parts! Monogram's T-28D Trojan

2010-11-05T16:25:00.001-07:00

Another early Monogram kit I built in '75 was the 1973 reissue of Monogram's T-28D Trojan. I'm pretty sure my Dad helped me pick this one out at Gemco because it was a North American aircraft. I remember building it in our backyard on J-5, on a picnic table we had. Lancaster had great weather almost year round for building models outside, and I remember building many of them in the warm sunshine.
This was one of the first kits I built that had lots of moving parts such as retractable landing gear, and sliding canopy. I remember always being pleasantly surprised in discovering these action features during assembly, because I never bothered reading about them on the box.

Building the T-28D again was a real joy. I followed the building and painting instructions to the letter, to enjoy the full 'vintage Monogram experience' as it were. I left the upper surfaces unpainted. Decals are all original and applied with the Microscale system. I chose the South Vietnamese Air Force markings, because these were the ones I chose back in '75 on my original. All the moving parts work, but the front landing gear is a pain to pull out of the wheel well. Best to leave it alone any way, since plastic parts don't stand up well to friction and repeated stress.
While not one of my favorite airplanes, Monogram's T-28D still holds a high place in my memory because of the neat moving parts and ease of assembly. In 1975 Monogram reissued the T-28 again, this time as a Navy "B" version. I remember seeing it at Gemco, but passed on it because I already had the "D" model.

Enter the Monogram Kits: F-105 Thunderchief

2010-11-05T16:01:00.001-07:00

The 1/72 scale Republic F-105 Thunderchief had to be my first model airplane kit from Monogram. Like the Revell kits, Monogram's were plentiful and cheap. I liked the F-105 because I had seen an old desk top model of one in my friend's garage. The sleek shape of the 105 really appealed to me. My original Thunderchief was completely unpainted because I didn't have any paints yet at the time. You can see a picture of me and this model if you go to my earliest blog entry. I kept her for a long, long time; longer than some other models I built later and finished with paint!
I decided to do this rebuild in the spirit of my younger days by hand-painting the camouflage scheme. It was very time consuming, but worth the effort. From a foot away or more, she looks great. It's a very simple model to build, heavy on the rivets, and not a whole lot of other detail. There are much better 1/72 scale F-105s out there, but this one was one of the first. Revell had their own version around the same time frame - late 50s, early 60s - but theirs was a tad smaller at 1/76 scale, or something close to that.
I've always liked the crew ladder that came with this model, but not the crewman. He doesn't fit well onto the ladder, so I left him in the spare parts bin. I would have preferred to leave out the pilot figure as well, but on this kit, he's mounted to the seat, providing the only detail to the cockpit interior.
The 1973 reissue of Monogram's F-105 Thunderchief remains as one of my all-time favorite plastic model airplane kits.

Revell Goodyear Blimp Columbia

2010-09-21T10:37:00.001-07:00

Christmas 1975 brought a lot of great presents: a Steve Austin Six Million Dollar Man action figure, a Crossman air pistol, a Yamaha motocross bicycle, and last but not least, a Revell Goodyear Blimp.

Revell produced the blimp model specifically for the Christmas '75 season. It was available only at Goodyear tire shops. My first Revell blimp was bought for me by my grandparents for Christmas.
I should mention that only a couple years earlier, while we were still living in Cerritos, my Dad got me, my Mom, and my grandpa a ride in the Goodyear blimp Columbia. At the time I was hooked on blimps and zeppelins, having seen the Goodyear blimp fly around the L.A. area, and also having seen the movie ZEPPELIN with my Mom. That amazing ride in the Columbia was the capstone to my fascination with airships, and is one of my fondest memories.
In the early 70s I would have gone ape for a model of the Goodyear blimp, but no such thing existed. The old Hawk Graf Zeppelin, the Strombecker U.S. Navy blimp, and the FROG R-101 airship kits were all gone from hobby shop shelves by the time I started building models. By 1975 however, airship model kits were coming back into light. AMT, who produced mostly model cars and STAR TREK kits, released a very nice, and extremely popular Hindenburg. This may have been prompted by the release of Universal's THE HINDENBURG movie, but I'm not sure which came out first. Then came Revell's Goodyear blimp at the end of '75, then AMT followed up their Hindenburg with the U.S. Navy Akron/Macon kit.
This rebuild is the third Goodyear blimp I've put together. After my first one died, I got one of the 1977 general release versions which came in a slightly bigger box. According to Thomas Graham's REMEMBERING REVELL MODEL KITS, the blimp model was in such high demand, Revell decided to distribute the kit to all stores. I've also seen pictures of a larger scale blimp model Revell released in the 80s perhaps.
The model itself is more like a toy. The picture on the box shows a nice silver colored blimp, just like the real ones, but when one opens the box, he discovers the blimp halves are moulded in dull gray. The box says no painting required, but the dull gray just isn't very exciting. Painting it silver is a solution, but a silver painted blimp would be prone to fingerprints, especially on this model where one has to manhandle it to change the batteries, message paper, and operating switch. At any rate, it's a fun model to build without glue and paint, and brings back a lot of good memories. On all three of the ships I've built, I used the stickers for the Columbia, since that was the ship based out of Carson California, near my home in Cerritos. Stickers were included however for the America, Europa, and the Mayflower. I believe the actual Mayflower blimp was a bit smaller than the Columbia, America, and Europa. All four of these airships have been retired.

Revell Sopwith Triplane

2010-09-14T16:50:00.001-07:00

My piano teacher gave me this model either for my birthday, or Christmas 1975 - I can't remember which. It's not that I wasn't appreciative of the gift, but I really didn't care for WWI biplanes, let alone triplanes. It was a plastic model kit at any rate, so I did enjoy building it to some extent.
Model airplanes given to me as gifts were a hit-and-miss affair. Some of them I liked; most of them I disliked. It was a rare occurrence when someone bought me a model kit that I would have picked out myself. Most people probably figured I'd like anything as long as it was a model, but I had pretty specific tastes. No cars, no ships, no tanks, and no biplanes. If there was any pre-war airplane I liked, it had to be a monoplane. Biplanes just all looked the same to me.
I was please to find a sealed one of these on EBay. It's the same one my piano teacher gave me: the 1975 "Collector's Choice" reissue. I had forgotten what a delicate little model this is. I do remember however how much difficulty I had putting the three wings together when I was ten. I experienced almost the same difficulty doing it again thirty-five years later! The wings are definitely a pain to get lined up and glued on right. So is the landing gear. I didn't paint my original, but I chose to paint this rebuild exactly per the directions.
Even though I didn't care much for this airplane when I was a boy, I had fun building it again in middle-age, and it brings back good memories of building up a good size model collection at J-5.

The Ole Revell B-29 Superfortress

2010-09-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

By the mid-seventies model building was such an insatiable hobby for me, I just had to build airplane kits wherever I went. One Saturday, my Mom and I drove up to Oxnard to visit my Aunt Doris. I guess I didn't have an unbuilt kit to take with me, so my Mom said we would stop somewhere in Oxnard and pick one up before we got to her sister's house. We ended up in a small discount store that had only a few model kits; the Revell 1974 reissue Boeing B-29 Superfortress being one of them. I chose it, my Mom bought it for me, and I slapped it together in short order at my aunt's house. At the time, I did not know this kit had been around since the mid-1950s.

The B-29 "Dauntless Dotty" was one of Revell's earliest model airplane kits. It was part of a series of Air Force strategic bombers including the B-36, B-47, and B-52, all odd scale to fit in a standard size box. The B-29 and B-52C kits soldiered on through the 70s, and the B-29 even went on to be reissued again in 1980. It is very basic; no landing gear, over-sized rivets, over-sized propeller blades, and other numerous scale inaccuracies. This was not meant to be a precision scale model however, but a good-looking model a kid of the 1950s could build in an afternoon, without any painting.
On this rebuild, I hand painted the black de-icer boots, prop blades and tips. The canopy section has framework lines engraved on the inside, which make them look painted - almost. I chose not to paint it, but leave as is.
This is not one of my favorite models, but it is a rather historic kit in the Revell Catalog, and brings back good memories of that visit to Oxnard.

Revell Apollo-Soyuz!

2010-09-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Revell Apollo-Soyuz kit of 1975 was the first U.S. manned spacecraft model I ever built. My Dad, having worked on the Apollo program from the early test days to Skylab 4, had recently started working on the Space Shuttle Enterprise at Palmdale Plant 42. He came home one day with this model, bought for me at the company gift shop. I immediately slapped it together with glue and a few basic paints I had at the time. I was very excited; there hadn't been a new model of any space program vehicles since Monogram and Revell competed with all their Apollo kits in the late 60s. Skylab was a disappointing no-show - neither Revell nor Monogram chose to produce a model kit of America's first space station. When this Apollo-Soyuz model appeared, it was a revitilization of space-themed kits. Two years later Revell would release another fantastic new space program kit, the Space Shuttle Enterprise and NASA 747.
Revell chose their popular 1/96 scale Apollo spacecraft as the centerpiece for this new kit. Originally, it came with a lunar module that could be hooked on and detached. The engineers at Revell tooled a new docking module, and a Soyuz 7K-TM. Both the Apollo and Soyuz are sparse on exterior detail, especially the Soyuz, which in real life has all sorts of little boxes and protrusions all over it. Both spacecraft also have semi-detailed interiors, which end up completely hidden after assembly. Perhaps Revell thought there was educational value to this - "Here kids, this is what the spaceships look like inside and here's how the men sit in them!"
On this rebuild, I chose to fill in the windows/portals with Micro Krystal-Kleer. The rest of it was finished per the original instructions. The exterior color for the Soyuz had to be done by mixing blue and green. It was a guess to get it right, but I think it looks pretty close. The real thing may have been a bit darker. The instructions said to paint the display stand black, but that didn't seem right. Revell also did not include any decals for the ASTP logo, so I hand painted it. That and the Micro-Kleer were the only deviations I took from the instructions.
Revell reissued this kit in 1996 packaged in a slightly smaller box than the original. This caused Jack Leynnwood's box top painting of the link-up to be scrunched. Serious collector's should look for the original 1975 version.

Revell Hughes OH-6A Cayuse

2010-07-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

One of my all-time favorite model kits: the Revell 1/32 scale Hughes OH-6A Cayuse helicopter. This is my fourth build of this kit since 1975. The first time I saw this model was at a toy store in a San Fernando Valley mall. The box art really appealed to me (it still does) and the sleek, but egg-shaped look of the OH-6A has made this helicopter my favorite over all others.

I don't remember painting my first one, but I bought another one a couple years later - 1977 perhaps, and painted it according to the directions. I built a third one about two years ago, straight from the box, and it looked exactly like the fourth one pictured here. I enjoy building this model a little bit more each time. Perhaps I'll build another one; but next time I'll do the civilian Hughes 500 version with red seats and tan interior.
What I've always liked about this model is the detailed interior. The military version has drop down canvas seat packs moulded into the rear bulkhead piece. An ammo box is glued to the rear floor, and some sort of fake-looking gun sight is glued onto the center bulkhead, between the two pilot seats. I don't know if this model was based on an early concept or prototype drawing of the OH-6A. It wouldn't surprise me since the 1/72 scale OV-10A Bronco kit, released the same year of 1970, is based on the early Marine version. I searched for photos of early OH-6As on the Internet, and I did see a few showing the external Gatling gun in an aerodynamic enclosure, but I couldn't see any large sighting devices between the pilot and gunner's seats. At any rate, I chose to glue it on, since I was sticking to the directions as closely as possible.
One liberty I did take was to paint to canopy framework olive drab, where the directions give no guidance on this. The Hughes 500 and OH-6A have a large panel on the front windshield bubble, with what looks like an air vent and a landing light mounted into it. To leave this large panel clear on the model just doesn't look right. I left the rest of the model in its correctly moulded olive green color - although the plastic is glossy. Color pictures of early OH-6As reveal a semi-gloss olive finish, so leaving the model glossy isn't that big a deal.
The decals are original to the kit, and went on nicely using the Microscale system. MicroSol is necessary to get the "U.S. Army" decal to conform to the plethora of rivets on the tail boom. This is the dilemma one faces when building model kits straight from the box, without any super-detailing.
The parts fit together pretty well on this model; but the biggest weaknesses are the clear window pieces. They are crazed pretty badly from the injection moulding process, and distort the interior when viewing any closer than one foot from the model. They do not fit well either. There are no alignment pins or grooves - they just lay into the window hole from the inside, and the builder is expected to glue them in somehow. Although I'm sure I used tube cement on these windows for my first two models, I used liquid cement on the later two. This works much better, but one has to be careful not to get one iota of glue on the clear pieces, or else the error sticks out like a sore thumb. One could also use Micro Krystal Klear to cement them in, but I would be afraid of accidentally punching them in with the thumb or fingers during handling of the model.
The kit comes with a pilot figure, but he is terrible looking no matter how well you are at painting figures. His arms are moulded along his side, and there is a huge seam that runs around him that must be filled after gluing his two halves together. It ain't worth it! On all but the last three kits I've built of this one, I let the pilot figure go into the trash can still affixed to the runner.
This is a great companion model to Revell's other 1/32 Vietnam U.S. Army helicopter kits such as the Huey and Huey Cobra. Too bad Revell didn't just carry on and release the whole set of Army choppers in 1/32 such as the Chinook, Sioux, Skycrane, and Choctaw, among others.

Revell OV-10A Bronco

2010-06-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

I think my Dad picked this model out for me when we were at Gemco or Peterson's Hobby & Crafts. He probably liked it because the box said "North American-Rockwell" on it. Dad was working for Rockwell at the time on the space shuttle Enterprise.
This is a frustrating little model to build, especially if you want to paint the wing and undersurfaces white. The wing is moulded in two pieces which, according to the instructions, look like you can paint them white, glue it to the fuselage, and you're done. If you do that however, you discover a small area forward of the wing, centered on top the fuselage, which needs to be filled in with white. To do that requires a lot of precision masking to get it right. The undersurfaces also need to be carefully masked to replicate the wavy demarcation lines. Being a 1/72 scale model, I chose a sharp, masked line against the moulded olive green surface. It looks good from at least a foot away or more. Closer examination however reveals a lot of uneven joining surfaces. The wing fits horribly onto the fuselage, and most of the other parts don't fit that well either. This is typical Revell quality from the 1970s. Good subject, excellent packaging, but poor fitting parts.
My original try at this model revealed a lot of glue smudges and decals that flaked off days after completion. I may have had one or two colors of paint to use as well. I think the first bottle of model paint I ever bought was Testors gloss gray, and the OV-10A was one of the first kits I tried painting a few pieces on. I distinctly remember painting the interior gray as per the directions.
On this rebuild, I chose to stick by the plans, but with a lot more precision. The wings and undersurfaces were spray painted with Tamiya gloss white. Everything else was hand painted. Not enough nose weight can be added to the tiny front section to keep the model sitting on all three wheels, so Revell included a spike to prop it up. The problem is, the spike is not long enough, so the front wheel sits up off the ground. Serious modelers would have passed this one up in the early 70s and prefered Airfix's OV-10A. At any rate, this one was fun to build again, and brought back some good memories of my early collection of model airplanes.

Revell B-52C Stratofortress

2010-06-10T10:11:00.001-07:00

Next in the series of Revell model airplane kits I've built is this odd-scale Boeing B-52C Stratofortress. I originally bought this kit at Gemco, probably because it was cheap. This is Revell's 1970 reissue of their B-52 kit from the 1950s. Revell updated it in Vietnam era Strategic Air Command colors. It's a very basic little model, with no landing gear, sparse detail, and a couple of decals for the top wing. The parts are moulded in black, which makes painting easy.

The box shows the factory display model painted in some odd colors, while the instruction manual says to paint the camoflage scheme with dark green, medium green, and tan. I chose to use Testors dark green, SAC camo green, and SAC camo tan. While these colors were not available in stores when I first built this kit in 1975, I chose to use them on this rebuild for improved appearance. The camoflage pattern is hand painted, using the picture on the box as a guide. To help hide the brush stroke pattern, and minimize decal silvering, I sprayed the top of the plane with Testors gloss, then flat after the two decals dried. This went a little above and beyond the "out of the box" method of construction, but I felt it was necessary to give the model a much more improved look over the first one I did 35 years ago.
When I built this kit back in '75, I didn't paint it. It was all black with some glue smudges and lots of greasy fingerprints. This new one looks much better, and while it's not exactly an accurate model of the B-52C, it looks nice on the shelf. After all, this was one of Revell's early model kits, intended for young boys of the 1950s to slap together with glue in short order, and build up a collection of current USAF bombers and fighters Revell had to offer.

SR-71 Gone But Not Forgotten!

2010-06-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

There are no more SR-71s flying, but one can still enjoy building a model of it, even if it is forty years old. This is the Revell 1/72 scale Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. This kit was originally produced in 1967, just one year after Revell released the 1/72 scale YF-12 interceptor. Most SR-71 kit boxes have the year 1969 printed on them, however Revell continued to produce the kit with the same box art well into the 70s.
Straight from the box, the Revell SR-71 is pretty rough looking. It's as if the engineers at Revell were in a hurry to get this kit on dime store shelves. The fuselage and wings are basically two large flat pieces that fit together, rather poorly. A large gap runs around the bottom fuselage edge. The engine cowlings fit poorly as well. The verticle fins don't fit too well either. It's sparse on detail, although there isn't much detail to see on the real plane either unless you get real close to it.
Revell made the obvious choice to mould the kit in black styrene; that way inexperienced modelers could built it without painting. I didn't paint my original one back in '76, so I left this rebuild in the original black as well. This time however I ran a Dremel tool with a polishing wheel over it to rub out scrathches and marks. The orginal decals went on well using the Microscale system. Micro Sol was necessary for the wing markings to conform to the ribbing on the wing panel.
This is a pretty simple model - not much to it. Interestingly, the YF-12 kit is of much higher quality.

Revell SR-71 Blackbird!

2010-06-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

In the backyard of our new home on J-5 in Lancaster, we had a redwood fence surrounding it. The back part of the fence faced directly towards Palmdale Air Force Facility to the South. I could stand on the lower cross brace of the fence, look over the top of it with my arms hanging over, and watch the various airplanes take off, make a right turn, fly right over our house, and make another right turn to land back at Palmdale for another go-around. It was truly amazing as a 9-year-old kid to see this going on all day long. One day, I saw a strange black airplane take off from Palmdale, and when it made it's right turn towards my house, it looked like a bat, or a kind of strange winged creature. I was actually a bit frightened by it, at the same time amazed by it. It flew by with a loud jet noise, and I ran into my house to tell my Dad about it. He said it was the SR-71.
A few weeks went by, and I saw the Revell SR-71 model at a toy store in some mall we were at in L.A. I had to have it. The box art reminded me of that day when I first caught glimpse of this amazing airplane.

Eye Candy! Revell DC-7 Completed

2010-05-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

When I built this model the first time in 1975, I did a pretty good job on the assembly, but a horrible job on the decals. The decals are what really make this kit shine, and credit must go to Revell for producing such high-quality, colorful decals for both this kit, and the TWA Connie. Thankfully, the decal sheet in this old kit was still usable; I only had a couple break on me during application. Revell included all the decals necessary to "paint" the aircraft with the deep blue parts. All one has to do is paint the upper fuselage gloss white, and everything looks good. As a kid, wrapping these blue decal panels around the nose was a fruitless endeavour; it was totally beyond my skill level. This time however, I used the Microscale decal system. Micro Sol was the key element to get these decals to form around the curvatures of the airframe for that 'painted on' look. The stuff really works good, and I'm thankful such a product exists for modelers.

I left the natural metal parts of the aircraft in its original moulded silver-gray. Dark gray was used on the area behind the nacelles, and part of the cowlings as per the instructions. That's about it. The decal application is what took the most time on this one. I applied them slowly over time, putting a few on, letting them completely dry, then applying some more. This prevented over-wrinkling and movement, since many of the blue panels overlap.
This DC-7 was more fun to build than my first one. Painting the top white and applying the decals properly sure made a difference.

Revell United Airlines DC-7

2010-05-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

I decided to build this 1974 reissue of Revell's old DC-7 on the heels of the TWA Super-G Connie. 1973, and 1974 were golden years of reissuing old kits for Revell, Monogram, Lindberg, and Airfix. In '74, Revell chose to update and rebox the old Eastern Airlines Constellation, and the American Airlines DC-7. This was a surprising move by Revell, since commercial airliner model kits were dipping in sales by the early 70s (according to Thomas Graham's REMEMBERING REVELL MODELS.) At any rate, the TWA Connie and United DC-7 appeared in the 1974-75 and 1977 kit catalogs. Were they good sellers? Who knows; there are still lots of them, even sealed ones available on Ebay. I bought both of them in 1975 at Gemco, in Lancaster, and they are still two of my favorite model airplane kits.

Revell Connie Finished!

2010-04-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

When I built this kit for the first time in '75, all I had was a tube of glue; no paints, and no tools. At the time, I didn't know decals don't adhere very well to plastic covered with greasy kid fingerprints, dirt, and glue smudges. In fact, I completely gave up on the TWA decals, and asked my Dad to paint "U.S. Navy" on the fuselage with my Mom's ceramic paints. 35 years later though, things are different. In keeping with the spirit of revisiting my childhood model airplanes, I built this Constellation with a minimum of tools and paint. All I used were the recommended items in the "tips and building" section of a 1975 Revell kit catalog: knife, scissors, tape, surfacing putty, 500 grit sandpaper, a couple of jewelers files, tube glue, liquid glue, Micro Set, and three paint brushes. The instructions called for white, silver, light gray, and black colors to be used. I had to take the liberty however of using an additional product. In order to ensure the original beautiful TWA decals adhered to the surface, I used Micro Sol for that "painted-on look." In rebuilding these old kits, the Microscale system is crucial if one wants to use the original decals. Fortunately, I did not have to use Micro Liquid Decal Film, even though a couple of the decals broke apart during application.
For a beginners model, this is a very easy one to build. However, if one wishes to paint it, that's another story. A fair amount of masking is required to get the silver and light gray panel effect on the wings to look right, along with the black de-icer boots. And there's the white upper and silver lower surface on the fuselage. I spray painted most of these surfaces and brush-painted the black boots on the tail pieces.
I enjoyed building this kit again; it brought back a lot of memories, mostly of the days when I would rush through building a model so I could immediately play with it outside.

Revell Lockheed 1049 Super G Constellation

2010-04-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

When we moved to Lancaster in late 1974, our house on J-5 was not finished yet. So, we lived in a motel on Sierra Highway. It was only for a few weeks, but it seemed like months to me. The school year had just begun, and I was in the fourth grade at El Dorado school on Ave J and 5th Street East.
One day, in class, I could hear the rumbling of some large, propeller-driven airplane getting closer, and closer. I couldn't stand it; I just had to run out and see what it was. As I got up, my teacher warned me to stay in my seat or face the consequences. But I didn't listen. The plane was so close, and I couldn't control myself one second longer. I ran out of the classroom, looked up, and saw flying at treetop level, a Lockheed Constellation! It had some funny-looking bulges on it, so it was probably an Air Force EC-121, or a Navy WV-2 (or something of that type.) It was late 1974, and there were still a few of these flying with the reserves. Perhaps I saw one of the last ones before it was sent to pasture.
What does this have to do with model airplanes? Well, I'm sure this sighting was the reason I got the Revell TWA Constellation at Gemco.

The Lancaster Years

2010-04-29T13:53:00.001-07:00

This picture represents a turning moment in my life. My Dad snapped this photo within minutes of me gawking at the first C-141A Starlifter I had ever seen fly overhead - real low. It was shooting touch-and-go's at Palmdale Air Force Facility a few miles away from where we were standing. The house in the background is our new home on East Avenue J-5, in Lancaster California. Dad was transferred from Rockwell Intl. Space Division in Downey, to Palmdale to begin work on the Space Shuttle.
There were other airplanes flying overhead that day too: a Flying Tigers DC-8-61, and C-130s. I was hooked on airplanes from that day forward. As soon as we moved into that house, I started building models. Most of the kits I got were from Gemco, the largest department store in Lancaster at the time, and a pretty good one too. They had a great selection of model kits, mostly the 1973 & '74 Revell and Monogram releases, plus some Entex, and Aurora kits as well. Thrifty Drug and Discount Store had the Lindberg kits, and K-Mart had mostly Revell and Monogram kits.
I don't remember what the first model airplane was that I built when we moved, but it was either the Revell TWA Super-G Constellation, or the Aurora C-141A Starlifter. I guess I'll start with the Revell Connie.

My First Model Airplane

2010-03-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

The very first plastic model airplane I built was the Aurora 1/48 scale Nieuport 11 WWI French bi-plane. The year was 1974 (I think.) I was eight years old, living in Cerritos, California. At this time of my life I was crazy about zeppelins, dirigibles, and blimps, not airplanes. I think the box art of this kit must have appealed to me after having seen the 1971 movie "Zeppelin" with my Mom a year or so earlier. The box showed a German blimp-like balloon going down in flames, with a Nieuport victoriously wizzing by. My first attempt at modeling was horrible. Glue all over my fingers; glue all over the model. And the complexity of assembling a biplane, with its struts and wing alignment was too much for me. The model survived in pieces for a long time afterwards in my room, as a monoplane with no landing gear. But, it has a special place in my heart and mind as being the first of hundreds of model kilts I would build. The model you see here is a 1976 reissue, Aurora's final version of this kit before going out of business. I built it straight from the box with no painting, in homage to my original one back in '74. Decals were applied using the Microscale decal system, to ensure adhesion.

Welcome!

2010-02-27T17:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog on building model airplanes from my childhood. I made this blog so others can follow along with me as I build over one-hundred plastic model airplane kits, most of them from the 1970s. My plan is to build them a little bit better than the first time. It's also a fun trip down memory lane. Here's the short history of my model building:

1974 - Built my first model airplane - an Aurora 1/48 scale Nieuport 11
1975 - Kit building really takes off after moving from Cerritos to Lancaster, California.
1975 - Purchased most of my models from Gemco and K-Mart dept. stores in Lancaster.
1975 - Met Phil Landon in the 5th grade; he turned me to shop at Peterson Hobbies & Crafts in Lancaster. Almost all models I built after that were purchased at Peterson's.
1978 - Got my first airbrush, a Badger 350 for my 13th birthday.
1983 - All model building comes to a halt when I enlist in the U.S.A.F.
1986 - Start building models again for display in my work center.
1988 - My model building skills finally reach peak quality with the help of newer airbrushes, hi-tech add-on parts, and professional techniques.
1995 - Model building comes to an abrupt halt again for the second time in my life due to purchase of first personal home computer, and marriage.
2006 - Model building starts again; revisited some older kits from the past purchased on EBay.
2010 - Found and purchased almost all model airplane kits from childhood on EBay. Started building them with the very first: the Aurora Nieuport 11.