Greetings,
Thought I'd get in the spirit here and recap my year. I got back into the hobby last January after being away for more than three decades. I'd been building an N scale model railroad, but found my interest starting to wane. I'd picked up a couple of old Monogram airplane kits for 5 bucks each at a train show and decided to give the SBD a try. It was a decent first effort, but a rough, pebbly finish means it's definitely a three-footer.
Next was a Revellogram P-47, a present from my son, done up with the kit decals for "The Bug":
My first Tamiya aircraft kit, the A6M2 Zero, first experience with pre-cut canopy masks (yay!) and first experience with Tamiya decals (ugh!):
After this, I got ambitious, my first shot at NMF on Tamiya's wonderful P-51D. It's the kit decals for Short Fuse Sallee, but these are Cartograph's excellent sheet. The invasion stripes gave me fits, but the end result was pretty darn satisfying:
Next, I went all Battle of Britain with Tamiya's Spitfire Mk I, adding Ultracast's seat, prop and spinner. Learned how to use paper masks for the camo. Another lovely Tamiya kit, but that wrinkle in the left wing roundel still bugs me. Gotta get that fixed one of these days.
My fastest build of the year, two weeks from sprues to completion, on Tamiya's BF109-E3. A joy to build and fun to finish:
Not that there weren't setbacks. I finally abandoned the Monogram Kingfisher, largely because a disastrous attempt at using rattle-can auto primer gave me a nasty, dusty, pebbly surface that I couldn't smooth out. After masking all those canopies, I just couldn't face the prospect of stripping the thing and starting over. It sits on the shelf, perhaps to return someday:
Needing a restorative break after that debacle, I spent a week or so on this blast from the past. Anyone remember Big Daddy Roth and Rat Fink?
I returned to the Pacific theater with Tamiya's F4F-4 Wildcat. Loved this kit. Absolutely wonderful to put together and I was thrilled with the end result. My best of the year:
My wife was getting pretty tired of my modeling stuff taking up permanent residence on the kitchen table, so I finally sent the model railroad to storage and built myself a proper workbench in the basement. Doesn't look quite so pristine now, though:
I finished the year with a tribute build, for my late mother, of Francis Gabreski's P-47D. It's the Academy kit, which I had some definite issues with. It's far from a perfect build, but I'm happy enough with it:
Adding it all up, it seems like a pretty productive year. On to bigger and better in 2013!