What I'm doing lately

Bill - I am in the middle of doing a Jimmy Flintstone/Testors Dragon done up in a vignette with a couple of Vikings as "Beowulf and Fafnir". The dragon model is straight forward and nicely molded and the two Viking figures are courtesy of Elastolin. I could have been done with this model earlier, but I got a bug up my ass last week to remove a homemade table in my workshop, move my then- current workbench to its location and bring up a new workbench that has been sitting in the basement for a long number of years to replace it. The last effects of that move should be corrected by this afternoon and I can to some detail painting on the Dragon.

- John Braungart

I have been doing a couple of Otaki/Arii kits lately (Fw-190 A8 and Ki-61) in my standard of 48 scale.

Most effort though is going into an N scale train layout that has a little bit of everything in it. No era, no specific country and the sillier the better. So far I have four seperate tracks on a

1200mmx2440mm board each with own DC controller, an airfield with a crashed 1:144 P-38 nose down in a pond and have started building Dogpatch town. Backdrop has just been ordered and features a draconic theme with space and WW1 peel and sticks to add flavour. Some Dragon 1:144 WW2 tanks have yet to be placed. Nothing like a little craziness to stay sane in retirement

Tony Chch NZ

I've been busy paying the Corvette Tax on a midlife crisis 1/1. I did finally get my hands on the Airfix 1/72 TSR.2 (The original release, not the new one with anime characters). Haven't really spent more than a few hours at the bench this year, but starting to get the itch...

Like The Old Man, model building has been temporarily displaces by workbench retooling.... No building was getting done as "The Bench" was covered hip deep with stuff most of which was not modeling related. Since the bench is a door on saw horses that's a lot of junk... errr, stuff. Hopefully in the next few days we will have all the tools back where they belong and organized(!), and all the junk discarded so I can actually -do- something. The number of started and unfinished kits is truly disheartening.... I hear by vow that nothing new shall be started until something actually get written off as finished. (background laughter) I do actually have a couple of anime kits near completion as long as I don't get ambitious with the paint schemes so hopefully things are back on track.....

Working on the LHA 1/700 kit that's been on the shelf for years and years. As old as the kit is, it's not up to date and doesn't include the systems that it has now or did recently before decommissioning. Researching lots of more current on line pictures to add some of the systems that I worked on. Seems like I'm falling down the black hole of detail - but the final will be doing the best I can. Building/modifying the masts to add new radars and missile systems is a challenge. Still lots of stuff on the shelf.

is this the Dragon LHA? if you could post or email photos, I'd love to see your work. I've had the USS Saipan kit in my to-do projects pile for a few years now.