My Lake Amphibian 270 Turbo

[grwebster]

As some of you know I flew my Lake Amphibian low, slow, and solo around the entire US and its coastlines and Great Lakes over a 5-6 year period. Solo only because I retired early on and all my friends were still working so not available to join me even for short hops.
{One member of this forum, LTC USAF retired Ladd Bovey has flown with me in my aircraft from my lakeside home in central florida.}
Anyway it was a childhood dream and I consider it a great personal accomplishment. I would take off and depending on how the weather looked, head out without a flight plan and just go until I wanted to stop- Sometimes 7 hours, other times 2 hours. I flew almost all of the coastlines at 200 feet high and off the shorelines mostly except on the west coast where some parts of it are protected sanctuaries for wild birds or whatever.
Due to a variety of factors, mainly not being in the USA a lot, I recently sold my aircraft.
But early on I had a contact who made custom built models in hardwood and I commissioned him to make one of my aircraft. It is not one of those cheap 'hand-built' mahogany things you see all the time on ebay from the Philippines as they really are not as well done nor as accurately detailed as I wanted. When you know well a plane or a car any error in a model is irritating.
So here it is in 1/50 scale in I think poplar wood. I had to ask for some minor corrections along the way but he got it right in the end and it is a good memory of my 800 hours flying it.

[grwebster]

While I am posting, I thought I would share some special models I acquired in France over the years. The first one was a Blohm and Voss BV 238 flying boat that was for sale at auction- one of my collecting friends, Barnard Macaire now deceased, whispered to me it was a renovated manufacturers model from WW2. He must have been on special 'medication' as that story was without foundation as it turned out, but in the end it spurred me on to win the bid {about $1,000 as I recall}. Huge, and well done with what looked like internal lighting. The stand appeared to be a part of an aluminum propeller. I am a sucker for flying boats {see my earlier post here } so it fit in my focus.


Well, a few years after I got it I acquired a a Blohm & Voss BV 222, also superbly done.



Finally, Japanese Kawanishi H6K4-L Mavis flying boat. Note the superb metal stand.


At some point I traced down the seller of these models and it turned out to be someone I knew, Alexis, an French, Paris based architect and collector. He openly related that as a hobby while his wife was on a diplomatic mission to Russia, he got the Russian design bureaus to make some models for him. These were some of them. Interesting story and the models are incredible.