[eibwarrior]

I've been away much too long. And to my great shock, I found out today that we have lost a great friend and great designer, Barry.

I'll have to say Barry meant a lot to me. I used to keep regular contact with him, but over the last year or so we hadn't emailed much. I've been involved in pursuits outside of card modelling and I'd been remiss in keeping up with Barry.

My heart is heavy tonight with much sadness. I'll will greatly miss my ship enthusiast friend from across the pond.

I had helped him with many project (Big E, Agano, LSM 156, Richelieu). Actually the LSM was a favor Barry did for me. He was very reluctant to take on the project, but I had helped him with so much photo / drawing reference for his projects that he felt he owed it to me to design that old pig. :-) I can only smile at that thought. Barry really enjoyed designing that old pig once he got into it. It just goes to show how truly selfless and generous he was. He brought great joy to the veteran that we designed and built that LSM for.

Any way, I've not kept up with his recent work so I'm not real sure what was closest to completion in his designs. I know Agano was something Barry was really interested in finishing, so I suppose Agano would be the most up to date. I had sent him a long time ago lots of detail drawings and designs.