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This is my first build in more than a year. In December 2015, I lost sensation in both of my hands. After visiting with many quacks , I mean doctors, it appears I will have to learn to live with the fact I have no tactile sensation in my hands, other than a constant tingling like they are asleep. (Goes with my tinnitus from playing with too many things that go boom courtesy of my Uncle Sam). This kit was an experiment into solving the problem of model building without being able to use your sense of touch. I picked a fairly easy kit to build the 1/48 Hasegawa BF 109 E-3. This is a really easy kit to build, goes together well and any problems in the build were most likely cause by me. I had support and great tips from people who followed the WIP, which is here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235015251-148-bf-109-e-3-a-new-beginning/&page=2#comment-2667552. I can’t tell you how much the encouragement and suggestions on how to overcome certain obstacles meant to me. Now, looking at the pictures, I notice a couple of things, like I knocked off one of the wing guns and forgot I was going to replace them with brass tubing. Still need to do that. My weathering seems much too harsh in the pictures, but when you look at the kit from normal viewing distance, it seems about right. Need to figure out the compromise where it looks good in the pictures and good in real life. Here are the pictures. If you guys will still have a septic from the wrong side of the Atlantic, I will continue to post here and keep building mediocre kits for your amusement. As always, all comments are welcomed.

“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend! Come inside! Come inside!” For myself and my favorite all time musical group, 2016 was not a good year. To Keith Emerson and Greg Lake RIP. Your gift of music was outstanding. I have been absent from this fine forum for about a year now (other than occasionally lurking about and being jealous of fantastic builds that happen here every day). December 2015 I woke up with shooting pains throughout my body coupled with numbness in my extremities. Being the ever-diligent person I am and realizing that just ignoring it would not make it go away, (Not that I would ever try that, heaven forbid!) I began a wonderful odyssey of various health professionals poking, prodding, inserting, inspecting and failing to detect why I now had no feeling in my hands. The general pain shooting throughout my body had ceased, but there was absolutely no feeling in my hands. The best I can describe it is they feel as if they are constantly asleep. Anyway, going through a bunch of medical people that suggested everything from diabetes, (nope), carpel tunnel (nope), neuropathy (nope), cancer (not again) to me just being mental I came away with a wonderful diagnosis of we don’t know why you have no feeling in your hands, but we don’t think it is endangering your health. Yeah, didn’t make sense to me either. The best guess for my condition is narrowed to two causes, neither of which, I understand, is curable. The first, and my favorite, is I was exposed to some unknown chemical in Southeast Asia from either the U. S. forces or the communist forces and it is just now showing up. Now I did go into some very interesting areas where I shouldn’t have been, and into jungles that shouldn’t have anything sprayed in them but there was, and I was not privy to what was used, how it was to affect humans, as my chances of surviving the war were minimal. My cheery little group had 100% plus casualty rate. (Never could understand how that could be, except most of us got wounded at least once and foolishly kept returning to fight. Option one then is some unknown chemical has resided in my body for about 45 years and is just now starting to run rampant, cheery huh? The second option and what I really think is more likely is I have had shingles since 1990 when they were triggered by some cancer treatments. Just was told that sometimes as a side effect, you just loose feeling in your extremities, usually your hands. The cure, same as for shingles, just learn to live with it. And, for the last year my brothers in plastic, I have been learning to use my hands without having any feeling in them. You take for granted how much the sense of touch comes into play on a day by day basis. How tightly do you hold a Styrofoam cup? (Okay, I know I shouldn’t be using them, but some places still sell drinks that way!) Most people can feel the cup sidewalls beginning to give in by touch and then just maintain that pressure. By trial and error and many drink mishaps, I learned just how much to think to hold the cup so I didn’t either drop it or squish it. Same for holding eating utensils, cracking eggs (that was a fun lesson, the kitchen was a mess), holding glass bottles over tile floors. The amusing one that still gives me fits is how hard to grip pills when I take them out of a bottle to keep them from falling out of my hand. In regards to modeling, “Hi! My name is George. I am just learning how to assemble plastic kits. Bear with me!” So, from a rather massive stash (more on that later) I chose a relatively easy build to begin the trek back to putting plastic pieces together. The kit is 1/48 Hasegawa Bf 109 E-3. This will not only be a WIP for the 109, but probably, an interesting lesson on how much touch is used in model construction. I really am a newbie. I went to my trusty Photobucket account and can’t sign in. When I did sign in, it wouldn’t let me into my library or download pictures. Once that was sorted out, then I try to upload to Britmodeller and everything has changed with the new software version. ARGGGGHHHHHH. Okay, blood pressure back to normal so here goes. The kit looks very nice. Here is the box cover art and the plastic innards. It has some photo etch and a nice selection of decal choices. The first job is the cockpit. The selection of parts is nice. The seat has some basic seat belt detail, not great, but for me and this build adequate And the instrument panel is nothing to write home about, but for this build, some dry brushing will be enough as the canopy will be closed. Any resemblance to the actual panel instruments and the kit detail representation is strictly coincidental! I now will try to see how well I can botch a kit that should go together by itself. Wish me luck. As always, all comments are welcome.