Gillespie Field

SoCal is expected to undergo heavy rain this weekend, but in the window between the two atmospheric rivers moving through our area, I took a trip down to Gillespie Field, where the Kit, Model & Aviation Collectible Swap Meet was being held at the San Diego Air & Space Museum Gillespie Field Annex.

El Cajon, CA

The show is held in an old hangar containing some aircraft, various airplane parts, model planes, and memorabilia.

Ryan X-13 Vertijet

Lined up outside on the grounds, mixed with parked cars, are a large number of aircraft on display.

Towering over the front parking lot is a Convair SM-65 Atlas ICBM, which is visible from down the street when you approach the annex.

SM-65 Atlas

Stinson SM-8 Junior and Rearwin 8125 Cloudster

Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk

North American F-86F Sabre

Convair F-102A Delta Dagger

Grumman A-6E Intruder

LTV A-7 Corsair II

Vought F-8J Crusader and AV-8A Harrier

AV-8A Harrier and F-16

General Dynamics F-16

Ryan PT-22 Recruit

Grumman F-14 Tomcat

MiG-21bis

Marsden [sic] steel planking
behind the MiG-21

Bell UH-1 Iroquois

Douglas A2D Skyshark

Lockheed S-3B Viking
modified for use by NASA

MiG-15bis

Spirit of San Diego "flying" Citroën 2CV
and ???

Lockheed P-2 Neptune

Piasecki H-21?

I'll end the post with a picture of my purchases at the show. I know I don't write much about aircraft kits, but I have been known to build them on occasion.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the Citroën, I don't think it really flies (based on what I see from a video I found about an actual flying Citroën).

The Sanctuary of Erechtheus

The Erechtheion is a temple in the Acropolis which is said to have housed an olive-wood statue of Athena Polias (Protector of the City) which fell from the heavens. It is also the site marking the location of the mythological contest for patronage of Athens between Athena and Poseidon.

Harmsworth History of the World, 1908

The structure is probably best known in modern times for the Porch of the Maidens on the south side of the temple.

The columns supporting the roof of the porch are known architecturally as caryatids, though there are those who seem to be pretty adamant that they be referred to as korai.

c. 1860

Regardless, D&D players probably know of caryatid columns as animated statues originally introduced in the Fiend Folio.

A couple of different miniatures of caryatid columns exist, as shown in the following image.

The first figure is a Pathfinder Caryatid Column that I wrote about before. Next are two Reaper Caryatid Columns (Bones 77378), and the Pillar of Good (Dark Heaven Legends 02815). Metal versions of the Caryatid Columns exist, as does a Bones version of the Pillar of Good.

While I really like the Pillar of Good, the Bones Caryatid Columns left me cold. Particularly the animated statue with angry facial expression, that seems to go against the very nature of stone-faced statues (to my mind).

Maybe they would look better painted up, or if I did some head swaps with more proportional noggins that also better reflect classical or medieval style sculpture.

An interesting related item I have is a second-hand souvenir of the Porch of Maidens that presumably came from Athens.

If the 7.5' height of the caryatids that I read somewhere is accurate, I believe this model is pretty close to 1/72 scale. I plan on removing the lettering from the piece sometime in the future.

I imagine that this souvenir can be found in Greece (where I hope to visit one day), but the only other identifying feature on the piece is the copyright mark on the back.

The final miniature I want to show represents the Varvakeion Athena, a small replica of the Athena Parthenos statue from the Parthenon.

The miniature is from the UHA Collect Club Ancient Civilization series vol. II (UHA味覚糖 コレクト倶楽部II【古代文明編】 No.037). If the model represented the actual statue from the Parthenon, it would be 1/144 scale, but many smaller versions of the original sculpted by Pheidias existed (e.g., from temples in Priene, Pergamon, etc).

It seems likely that some of these reproductions may have been used in temples dedicated to Athena Polias. But unlike the more martial appearance of Athena Parthenos, the statue of Athena Polias in the Erechtheion is said to have been adorned in riches, and held a gold phialê in her right hand.

Denyse Le Lasseur, 1919
Les déesses armées dans
l'art classique grec et
leurs origines orientales

This concludes my final post for 2022. It has been an unusual year, and I don't think I picked up a paint brush or did any model building at all (though I did manage some figure conversions).

I barely made my goal of 12 articles this year, but amazingly enough, I actually exceeded my goal of getting at least 10 subscribers to 1/72 Channel. Hopefully I will be less distracted in 2023 and be able to publish more on both platforms.

Best wishes to all my readers, and have a happy New Year!

500,000 Hits

For various reasons, 2017 has resulted in my lowest post output by far. Still, as of today, the blog has received enough traffic to reach 500,000 hits.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading my blog, and to those who've corresponded with me. I apologize for not always being able to respond as I would like to, but events of the past year really took away a lot of my free time.

I was able to get away for a couple of weeks at the end of the year, and now I'm back and ready to write more articles on our favorite scale.

The West Coaster Toy Soldier Show

The West Coaster Toy Soldier Show has been around for 28 years, but I've never had the chance to attend until this past weekend.

I've been aware of the show for a few years, but traditionally it has been held in March, and always conflicted with my schedule.

This year, the show took place in the ballroom of the Wyndham Hotel in Anaheim, and it looks lilke it had a decent turnout.

The primary focus of the show is definitely for large scale figures in metal.

Working toy cannon

There were vendors with vintage plastic figures as well, but very few had anything in 1/72 or "HO" scale.

Bins of plastics

I ended up buying one bag of random plastic animals just so that my trip would not be a complete wash. The figure that really caught my attention was the gray sabertooth cat in the upper right-hand corner.

I have no idea of who manufactured any of these miniatures.

The body is modeled after the much larger Marx figure, but the sculptor got lazy with the head which looks almost like something from a lion dance costume. I'd really be interested in knowing who the manufacturer was, and if they made any other similarly scaled creatures.

Some of the figures are also useful as references for sculpting as well. I don't know what this animal is supposed to be, but the sculptor really managed to convey the poofiness of the fur.

Marmot? Squirrel-dog?

Here are the remaining figures from the bag. I think there are some old Marx and Timmee items in there, but I have no idea of who the other manufacturers may be.

I think that the models that impressed me the most in the show were 54mm metal models made by Bruce Hebron of The Metal Shed.

The models are all hand crafted from sheet metal, and come with many moving parts. I'm not sure how long it took to construct the railway gun, but Bruce estimated that something like a Rolls Royce armored car would take him about 20 hours to put together.

12 inch railway gun

How I wish someone would make a Big Bertha in 1/72.

Big Bertha

Peoria scout car

Gotha G.V

I probably won't attend this show on any sort of regular basis, but I enjoyed my time there. There were a lot of friendly people who like to talk about old toys (and new) as both vendors and attendees. It was also nostalgic to see many of the toys I had as a child, and to see that the mistreated ones were damaged in the same way my own old toys were!