I’ve always been a fast jet fan since I was a kid, & that’s what I mostly build now. My eyesight is not the greatest, so 1/48th normally the smallest I will go. The exception is airliners. I flew a lot while I was growing up, having flown on American Airlines 707s, PAN AM & Eastern 727s, 747-200s, L-1011s, & most recently having flown over to Kuwait on an 777. I have a few 1/144 & 1/200 airliners in my stash to build some of these a/c I flew on.
I love the F-4, & one theme I have going is to build at least one of each of the major U.S. versions (Navy, Air Force, Marines, B through S), & display the most prevalent color schemes of the type (SEA camo, gull over white, modern TPS, Compass gray, etc). That accounts for 21 of my kits.
The same applies to the F-8 Crusader, & F-14. With this in mind, another theme I have is to build three of the aforementioned kits from the same unit, whether the markings pretty much stayed pretty similar (VF-111s sunburst & sharks mouth markings is a good example), or change between the aircraft (VF-84 never had their famous skull & crossbones on the tails of their F-8s). To a smaller extent, I can also do the A-7 to F-18, or F-4 to F-18 transition of a few units.
I’m a growing fan of the Century Series fighters, so I’d like to do all the major US production versions of the F-100, -101, -102, -104, -105, & -106. Those account for 10 kits in the stash.
Geographically, the Dallas/Ft. Worth area has a lot of aviation, both military & civilian. A lot of famous aircraft were built in the area, dating back to WWII. As I’m a jet guy, I just want to build the relatively modern era jets for right now (F-111, F-16, A-7, F-8), & build models of the aircraft from those units that have been based or still are in this area (F-8, F-4, F-18, F-14, F-105).
I’m a big fan of Naval aviation, so I plan on building one aircraft from each unit of CVW-1 (VF-33, VF-102, VFA-82, VFA-86, VA-85, VS-32, VAQ-137, & HS-11) right around the time frame of Desert Storm. I’m still waiting for a 1/48 injection molded E-2C.
I came away from the Dyess AFB Open house with a great interest in the B-1. All three of the B-1 squadrons had their respective “wing king’s” bird on public display. I thought that would be a decent (& big) diorama to do. All I need now is the upcoming decals from Fox One with markings for the 13th BS on it (I broke down & bought my 4th B-1 kit at Hobby Lobby’s 50% sale) & about three years of building time to make this a reality.