Super models
Intricate and detailed creations are a labour of love for many
A model-builders show and competition highlighted some amazing works that reflect the devotion of their creators.
ere’s no mistaking the F-14 Tomcat.
e iconic jet – the same one used in the Tom Cruise lm Top Gun – was one of many intricate plastic scale models on display at Bible Hill Junior High School, at the Central Nova Scotia Modelers Scale Model Show and Competition Saturday.
“I wanted to do something special,” said its builder Mitchell Lepine. “We lost a couple of very special people over the last couple of months. One was a 28-yearold young lady who succumbed to leukemia; she was one of our model builders. “My best friend who I had stand by me for 34 years passed on at the beginning of August, so I wanted to do a memorial ight aircraft in their honour.”
It took Lepine months to put together his F-14. is included gluing its wings, fuselage, landing gear and other plastic components. Its missiles were xed onto its underside.
Next, he had to paint it, using his own unique greyish camou age scheme – quite di erent to what the U.S. Navy used on real aircraft – and nally, apply the markings.
Better quality F-14 sets have become available in more recent years, but Lepine said this model kit was the best available in the late 1980s when the movie Top Gun was released. e lm made the F-14 and its fighter pilots a pop culture icon around the world.
e F-14, deployed in the 1970s, remains well known today, even after the U.S. Navy retired its Tomcat eet in 2006.
“Everybody that wanted to build Tomcats wanted to build this,” said Lepine of his creation. “ is one is nostalgic for me, I’ve built four of them in my lifetime.”
However, ghter planes were just one of many di erent types of scale models on display. Others included antique cars, Star Wars spacecraft, tanks and armoured vehicles, historical and fantasy character gurines and dioramas. One of the biggest dioramas on display was that of a burning factory with a reboat trying to put out the blaze.
Also among the model-makers were 14-year-old Jayden ParsonsDauphinee and his father Mike, who together built an entire eet of battleships and carriers. Jayden started modeling in 2012 for the Titanic sinking’s 100th anniversary, when his parents bought him model sets of the doomed ocean liner.
“Jayden’s probably got about 50 or 60 models at home that he’s built, a lot of them plastic kits, some of them he’s built from scratch, which is out of his own imagination with whatever materials that he has around,” said Mike.