From The Archives

Old photographs from my modeling archive:

A scratchbuilt model of a Japanese Baka rocket-propelled suicide bomb, shown here moving out with considerable delta-vee (well, considerable delta-vee for an A engine, anyway). It flew pretty well, but it took so much weight in the nose to keep the CG ahead of the CP it came down like a brick and destroyed its parachute every time. This whole dry lake area is now a housing development, and the home-made launch pad was in the toolbox of my truck when someone stole my truck out of the parking lot at work. Grrrr.

The Screamin' Pinhead. Big model, but paradoxically easy and fun to paint. It came with the Altar of Souls and two puzzle boxes. I added chains and actual fishing hooks to one of the puzzle boxes, with super glue used to stiffen the chain and made it stand straight. This is almost all craft store acrylic paint, by the way, as enamels seem never to fully cure when applied to vinyl.

DML's 1/35th scale North Vietnamese Army set. I like painting these things and plopping them on a common case, even if the setting makes no particular sense. I wish I had known about horse hair before I did this; it's much easier to work with than the stuff shown here, grass from Woodland Scenics.

Tamiya 37mm FLAK-37 and "German Infantry At Rest" in a revetment made out of Celluclay, painted sawdust, and a whole lot of strip basswood, origin uncertain (I tend to buy bags of scale wood whenever I come across it, but I can't begin to remember the brand name, or where I bought it). This was my one experiment with Gunze Sanyo paint; they offered "field grey" and I thought I'd give it a try, but it's very glossy and I had no luck achieving any kind of respectably flat sheen. I later discovered that Delta makes an acrylic craft paint called "Hammered Iron" that is a dead ringer for field grey, and it's flat, and it's easier to use. There's a fourth guy, sitting in the corner of the revetment on the far right; you can just barely see a scrap of his helmet and the toe of one boot. Also note that they have a frying pan, but no stove... Hmmm....