by Bob Bendorf
Model photographs by the author
Bob Bendorf is a 56 year old Vietnam Vet, working a very busy practice as an adult nurse practitioner. He enjoys building vintage card ocean liners at 1:600 scale, and has completed most of the American and Russian space program at 1:144 scale. He's now occupied with card models of airplanes at 1:120 scale. This puts most WWII fighters in the 3" to 4" range, and one can get a sense of how small these models really are from the photographs in this article.
Bob prefers to work with models distributed on CD-ROM, where he finds it easy to reduce parts sheets to the smaller scale. When it comes to companies that distribute models only in printed form, Bob says, "I am forced to scan the original; I then put the scanned copy through an extensive procedure to reline and recolor using the Printshop Program. The final copy rivals the original - and in some cases is better." Given the concerns many of us share about the impact of card model "piracy" on the health of our hobby, Bob notes that, "I absolutely do not allow any of the finished disk data to be given to any other individuals."
The kits shown here include the GPM Blenheim in 1:33 scale, Geli 1:33 Ju-52 Luftfansa, CFM's Do17 (by Dr. Emil Zarkov), the FlyModel Bf-110 in 1:33 scale, a Maly Modelartz Mosquito in 1:33 scale, Wilhelmshaven's Ju-88 at 1:50, the Geli He-111 in 1:33 scale, and the 1:50 Hurricane and FW-190 from Models by Marek at 1:50. The rest were scanned and reprocessed in reduction.
Bob says, "I hope you enjoy! They were a joy to build!"
Bob Bendorf lives in Clarksville, Tennessee.
NOTE: Click on a small image to view the full-sized picture.
