Types of models (part 1)

My modelling interests are varied.  I like a challenge.  These first few posts will cover the variety of things I make.

This is a Vietnam War M728 engineering vehicle - a conversion involving scratch building from an Academy 1:35 M60.  I followed the build in a Fine Scale Modeler magazine circa 1994 (sometime).

It was my first major armour conversion at that level.

This was my entry in a conversion competition at the newly formed Cairns Games Workshop store (if you click the link, you'll see more of my models on the lower left of the photos)

This is a Salamander Captain with obvious Tyranid war experience.   The banner and base are scratch built.

This is the Reek Arena Battle Beast from Star Wars.  I built it from a drawing.  I'll be talking about it soon.

Arado AR 194A-Italeri 1:48, an out of the box build of this common German floatplane.  I've always liked them and have them in three different scales (but haven't built them all yet).

This was a Christmas present for my wife, the lady in the picture is not my wife, but she wanted a photo with the spider, so what can you do?  That however, is me.

The spider is a female Mopsus mormon - a common large jumping spider of the tropics.  They are not really that large, I did upscale it somewhat.  I think the scale is 80:1.  I built it out of urethane foam, fibreglass, plywood, balsa and daspronto clay.  I have to date completed four oversized spiders.  I like spiders and have always taught children to respect them.  We keep large golden orb spiders (Nephilas) around the house (outside) to keep down the March Flies, which we catch for them, so they are very fat spiders.