Born in Bath, New York State, in 1943, grew up in New Mexico, now live in Vancouver and have dual American/Canadian citizenship. Married, one son, retired in 2000 after various careers — teaching, journalism, photography.

My hobbies include stamp and postal history collecting, specializing in the philately of the as well as building scale models. Like most guys, I build models in my teenage years, quite to pursue girls, then started again in the summer of 2019.

My model building reflects experiences, which include surviving the wilderness crash of a Beech T-34B Mentor in New Mexico’s Gila Forest in 1962 and being seriously wounded in South Vietnam in 1966; as a Navy hospital corpsman, I was seconded to the U.S. Marines in 1965. My Vietnam War models include a Lucky Red Lions UH-34 D helicopter liked the ones that flew my company into combat and evacuated me the next day to a field hospital and then to the hospital ship U.S.S. Repose, where I had surgery that saved myright leg from being amputated.

I am also interested in the Second World War, and have built models of a British Hampden bomber and a Grumman TBM-3E torpedo bomber. including the Battle of the Atlantic, the Channel Dash. My postal history collecting led to research about the death of a young Canadian observer when his Hampden bomber crashed in Denmark. Building a model of the Hampden, with correct markings and registration numbers, was a natural follow-up. I have build two models of the the TBM-3E, one in its late WWII livery and the other as the repurposed aerial tanker that I photographed in action, dropping fire retardant on a small wildfire.

Finally, sci-novels and movies provide me with the motives for other models. I’ve built the Pegasus model of Jule’s Verne’s submarine Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and an Atreides ornithopter from Dune.

I have had custom-made display cases made by a small company in Montreal, and I’m lighting them with under-cabinet LED, battery-powered lamps. They’re not ideal — Chinese-made crap, actually — but they’re the best I’ve found. Now looking for better rechargeable lamps.

Bob Ingraham (Bobstamp)