Author Tom

Blogs. So hot right now. 

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  • Bulletted lists. Always hot. 
  • Johnson isn’t a name that lends itself to any clever wordplay, unless you like lame entendres. My family name was apparently Tappenin (sp?) before coming to America. Why change that? It sounds cool. You can have a newlestter called “What’s Tappenin?”
  • There was a coach in my high school (or was it middle school? Too old to remember) with the last name of Ong. “Ong My Way.” “Ong My Own.” “What’s Going Ong?” See? So much better than Johnson. 
  • There are news stories covering “how to talk to your children about Trump.” We have a president whose unsavory behavior needs to be explained. This is what America is in 2016. 

Moebius Space Clipper

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This really isn’t a great kit. It has all kinds of accuracy issues, and plenty of issues with fit, but with 2001: A Space Odyssey being one of my favorite films of all time, I had to have it. It’s far from perfect – the overspray from a bungled experiment with my neglected airbrush is obvious, and the twin tail booms broke off and were lost rather quickly after it was built – but it’s the first model I finished in close to two decades, and even so, a year later, I’m still rather proud of it. Life is busy so my time to build models is limited, and in the past year since the space clipper was completed, I’ve only finished two other models. I’ve got a big stack of kits begging for attention, however. Continue reading “Moebius Space Clipper” →

Zvezda Boeing 777-300ER, part 1

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I found myself torn between projects I could start after finishing the A320, going so far as to post a picture of my kit stash on Facebook for suggestions of what to tackle next. I’ve got a bunch of the amazing Star Wars kits that Bandai’s been releasing for the past couple of years but nothing was calling to me. I started considering the Polar Lights Delorean Time Machine, but as I began looking into it, I found that there were so many little details that I’d want to get as correct as I could that I needed to put that on the backburner for awhile and do plenty of research in the meantime. So I came back to my small stack of airliner models and picked another Zvezda kit, this time Boeing’s huge 777-300ER. In short, my brain is in airliner-mode and I’ve already done a bunch of research and photo gathering. Continue reading “Zvezda Boeing 777-300ER, part 1” →

Building the Zvezda Airbus A320

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Of course, only after I finish and take these photos do I realize

that the nose gear is a little “knock-kneed.”

I received Zvezda’s gorgeous A320 kit for Christmas. The apparent onset of old age prevents me from remembering if it was Christmas 2015 or 2014. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it sat around for a while as I finished up other projects. With as slowly as I build now, I’m lucky to finish four models a year, but I take my time and enjoy it much more than I did when I was younger and didn’t care much about making things the very best that I can. Now, if I get frustrated or bored, I just stop. Sometimes I completely stop, box it all up, and put it away while I move on to something else that piques my interest. Continue reading “Building the Zvezda Airbus A320” →