I weas cleanin' up the house yesterday and found that other box of old models.

The box was on a shelf up in the laundry room. I took it down and opened it up and there they were.



That's a MiG 17, made to look Vietnamese, or maybe Chinese. Vietnam era anyway.



It's missing a few missiles, and some landing gear. I know where the missiles are. No tellin' about the landing gear.



Late model Stug III or IV. A few parts that need work, and the crew. I know where most of it is.



The turret off of something called a Wirblewind. No tellin' where the rest of it is (Basically a Pz IV body), which tells me that there's another box of models around here somewhere.



A muddy little Schwimmwagen, with three wheels missing. I know where they are.



A Kettenkrad, tracked motorcycle. One of the last kits I started. You can see here that I hadn't finished the driver. That green putty is there to smooth out the kinks where I was makin' things up, tradin' parts and pieces. I was doin'' a lot of that in the old days.



Here's a 4 barrel (No tellin' where 3 of them are) 20m AAA off the back of a half track, and I have no idea where the rest of it is. Again, in another box somewhere.



A late model Stug IV, missing a few parts, including the gun. I know where the parts are. Check out the Zimmerit. I applied that myself, with some of that green putty and an X-Acto knife. I don't think I have the patience to do that any more.

Of course, now they make a kit with special applique Zimmerit that sticks on like a decal. And even if you still want to make your own, they sell the tools. There's no need to carve your own little scraper. No need for skill and patience at all.

Having said all that, I look at this and I think it still takes some skill to install that applique. And you know, that shit looks cool as hell.



On this one, I even painted on the decals. I was gettin' good back then, lets say, about 1986.



On the left here, that' a T-62. The one next to it is a T-72 model that I picked up in Singapore, while I was living and working on the USS Peleliu, summer of 1991. I was amazed when I found it in a store. Brought it and a little tube of super glue (the only kind I could find) back to the room and killed some time between classes.

Thing is, I was livin' with a couple of Harrier pilots who had already completed one tour, during the gulf war, and were now doing a second because some other Harriers had broken down and couldn't come out to replace them. They were pissed, and then I showed up in their life. I got back to the room one day and the tank was sitting on my desk and one of the pilots was standing over it. "What the fuck? You know we kill these fuckin' things for a LIVING? and you dare to bring this shit in here? He was joking. It was hilarious.

That T-62 was the first modern Soviet tank model kit I'd seen when I built it. WW2 stuff had been around for ever, but modern stuff, and modern soldier kits were nowhere to be found. So the T-72 was a shock when I found it. Now, searchin' the web, I see that my favorite model company, Tamiya, makes a cool T-55 kit too (my favorite modern Russian tank). Not only that, but look over on the right and check out the add-on kits you can get. Check out this conversion kit for that T-62 model I built. Amazing. SO much cooler than the stuff they had when I was modeling.

Anyway, I'll get the glue out some time and try to put humpty dumpty back together again', but i can't see myself gettin' back into the hobby. Like I said before, I don't have the patience, or the money, or the time. More important shit to do these days.

Goin' down to Florence today to go through "Substitute Training". We'll see what that entails. Cheers.