Fixed that.
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I am building the old 1/48 monogram kit. It will be in honor of a friends father whom was a MiG-15 pilot and defected to the west. More on that story on reveal day.
Construction is almost done with lots of ballast in the nose to ensure I don’t get a tail sitter.
More to follow 
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I will probably do several tribute figures fir this campaign. My regular diorama and vignette work usually depict actual Soldiers and Marines, so tribute pieces are pretty much what I do.
For this campaign I will start with a two figure tribute to one of my Army buddies. Paul White served in the Australian Army in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971. He emigrated to the US and joined the US Army serving in Grenada. He eventually ETSed and joined the TXARNG where he served in Iraq. I plan on making a figure of him when he was in Vietnam and one in Iraq. This first photo was taken during a final training exercise before being sent to Vietnam. He is the one on the far left in the second row. In Vietnam he was a scout initially carrying a M16 but then he obtained an XM177E1 from a dead VC and carried that the rest of his time in Vietnam. The other picture is of him in Iraq with 2-142 IN.
I also plan on doing a tribute figure in memory of one of my JROTC instructors who had a big influence on me as one of my mentors, MSG Tony Baker. He joined the Army in 1946 at the age of 16 and served in the 187 PIR in Japan and Korea. He was a MSG by the time he was 19 years old. In Korea he had gotten blown up by a grenade and when he came to the Chinese were all around him with their bayonets about to impail him. He was a POW in Manchuria. When he returned and after medical treatment, he joined SF and was in 10th Group at Bad Tolz until being reassigned to 1st Group on Okinawa. In 1961 he was part of those sent to Laos for Operation White Star. After that, he served three tours in Vietnam. When he retired (as a MSG - he was one for a long time) he became a JROTC instructor and rifle team coach at Robert G. Cole High School on Fort Sam Houston, Texas. I plan on depicting him as he would have looking in Vietnam in 1964. I do not have any photos on my phone, but the Hornet head I chose looks just like him.
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As a 10th Grouper, I’m interested in knowing where he ended up. I assume he’s passed?
Unfortunately we are sending off another one of our 10th Group brothers to Valhalla tomorrow.
Brent Robertson.
Here’s to us and those like us… damn few left!
Or:
Here’s to us; who is as good as us? Damn few, and they’re all dead!
Take your pick.
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He passed away a few years ago. The last time I had spoken to him he was volunteering at the Warrior Transition Unit at BAMC helping and mentoring Soldiers until his last days.
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Damn, just lost another. George Wilson Hunt.
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the version i grew up with is: “Here’s to us, waa’s like us, guy few and their all deid”.
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Well, yeah - that’s probably what my forefathers who painted themselves blue said.
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Very tempting! My grandfather was a radar operator during the Cold War in the RCAF. He worked both in the Canadian arctic keeping an eye out for Russian bombers and in North Bay Ontario at the sister facility to Cheyenne Mountain. Unfortunately he passed away a few years ago
I’ve always wanted to build an aircraft that he would have had a hand in scrambling if things went sideways. I am thinking of a CF-101 Voodo
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Another one today - Rocky Farr. See you in Valhalla, brother!
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Or how about the venerable CF100 “Clunk”? They used to scare the living daylights out of me in Senneterre when they did tree top approaches on the radar station. You could clearly see the pilots they were that low.
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I was thinking of doing a CF-100 instead!
Option 2 is to do something North Africa themed, as my great grandfather, (father of my grandpa) fought there during WW2
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The SF community lost its fifth brother just this week, David Deming. RIP brother, See you in Valhalla.
Yesterday’s send off:
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Well, since started kits are allowed here, and since the Ward LaFrace wrecker kit for my uncle hasn’t been released yet, I dug out the Kinetic 1/32 F-68F off the Shelf of Shame.
I met (then) Senator Glenn during his short-lived run for the Presidency in 1984. I lived in Iowa at the time and worked for the campaign. After the caucuses were over, he had a party for all the workers and I met him and his wife, Annie. Very nice people, said I had too small a slice of cake. So I’m doing his MiG Mad Marine:
Anyway, after a fair amount of clean up and adding a few more bits, time to prep for the bare metal (shudder) finish. Here we are:
Pretty sporty, eh?
I built in the AMS resin cockpit, nose cone, and gun port panels lo those many years ago. We’ll see how this goes.
Michael 
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I think I’ll join in with a tribute to one of my best friends. He went into Panama with the 82nd Airborne and into Iraq during Desert Storm on an M109. His gun is credited with a kill when they used it to shoot direct at an attacking Type 69-II. Picture is of the Type 69-II after the encounter.
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Damn. When I trained on M198s at Camp Ripley, we trained shooting in direct fire mode. The instructors said if you’re close enough for direct fire, the fuze matters very ltitle - the kinetic energy alone is going to destroy whatever has the misfortune of being in your path.
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Progress on the John Glenn F-86. Had a lot of clean up to do before I laid down the bare metal, but now I only have a couple of panels left before I’m ready for decals:
Michael
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Hit a snag. Went to apply the big fuselage stripe decal and it splintered on me. So much for that. I’ve now managed to mask off the yellow part of the bands and am getting ready to start applying white paint. Over bare metal, could be an adventure.
Michael 
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And after many adventures, including using a shade of yellow that was far too light and then finding that even though I’d used massive amounts of Tamiya maskng tape, I still had yellow overspray, I’m back to the point where I can start applying decals. Here it is so far:
Fingers crossed that the worst is over.
Michael
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