Second Childhood

As a kid, I started modeling at about age 5, started painting them about age 8. and by the time I was 12 or 13 I’d been introduced to liquid cement, putty, aftermarket decals, Krystal Kleer, Maskol, etc. I’d also dropped from a kit a week to one every few weeks, and most kits that I built I got in swaps with pen pals in Poland and Czechoslovakia. At about 14 I got my first computer, and over the next couple of years, it pushed me out of modeling altogether. When we lost our house a few years later, all the models (everything from about age 9 to the very last kits I’d built) were left in the attic - I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out, and the last dozen or so I’d built had stayed on display in a bookcase in my room right until the end.

I started modeling again in 2001.

The projects included in this collection are part of an effort to rebuild that bookcase, albeit in 1/48. They’re not all there yet - some just don’t exist (why no C/S-199 alongside all the 109s, Eduard? Why does nobody do a Yak-17?) or are resin only (L-29, Iskra) but even at my current glacial modeling speed, I hope to get a fair proportion done before failing eyesight and neuropathy stop me for a second time.