can the project be in the collection in spirit ?..........
some 8 years ago and the only time i could bring myselves to work a project for someone else was a 1/72nd B-24D i built for a close friend's father. He flew them in '43 / '44 in the CBI and at the age of 25 after his last mission, according to what the friend's mom could glean from her husband........the aircraft was parked in some field at or near a maintenance base in Burma and he and the crew walked away and never lookked back.........
all the information provided for replicating the aircraft was the tail number......a vague recollection of the nose art and model type "D"........at first i hesitated but, succumbed to the challenge and with one paperback book of the CBI in hand i poured my heart into the build.............
i managed to compete the task.....parked the aircraft in a case (with a plexiglass top), in a barron field and placed an arm patch representing the 10th AF and offered up my rendering to the son who promptly drove the assembly from Dallas to someplace in W. Virginia to present the offering to his father for his 70th birthday.........and the first time his dad had seen the aircraft since he parked it in the field that long time ago..........
Apparently his father broke down and wept as what was presented to him WAS his aircraft, exactly the way he'd last seen it.......to everyone's surprize the sum total of the information i had to work with was all that there was......the nose art in particular, being so obscure that in my replication of it from vague memories, i'd accidentally hit the nail on the head..........( a red bird in flight spitting bullets)
His father called me to express his undying gratitude and profound thank yous..........and not long after the presentation, pictures arrived of the final resting place of his aircraft (he'd a cabinet built especially for the case & model......with his wings & squadron patch placed next to the arm patch i had placed in the case for him............
Anything i ever do in modelling will pale by comparison to the feeling of satisfaction and pride at listening to that man's voice on the phone as he tried to thank me while choking back tears of his pride and sentiment......
(i wish i could share the pics he sent me but at present i am unable to)