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Alcohol! Two parts single malt scotch to 1 part water chilled to 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thank you all for the positive feedback. Gill my coffee intake was severely limited to decrease "Shakes" 😎 Cheers Bill

The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) - used to rotate their Nationals every year. It got harder and harder to find suitable venues to host all the different flying events, so they now hold their event at Muncie, Indiana, every year. They made the change in the late 80s, IIRC. When they made the change, they did the necessary change to have the National Organization take over managing/running the event..... Their models are a lot bigger than ours...! It CAN be done. Whether it SHOULD be done is a matter for debate. The AMA was forced to do it by outside forces (flying site issues)- they adapted, the membership adapted, and the event continues annually, 30 years later. Absent the external pressure, I don’t see the Society getting the necessary consensus to make such a dramatic change.... Personally, I’m ambivalent. As a New Englander, the Nats is almost always too far away to drive to. (Virginia being the exception.). So if I’m flying anyways, it doesn’t matter where to as much. - Bill

This past weekend was Hobby Day weekend so, combined with what I got done during the week, I managed to make quite a bit of progress. I didn't work on too many models so in that respect, this is a short update. It's gonna be long update because of all I did on each one I worked on. Okay, enough chit chat, on to the tour of the plant.... I'll start with a couple shelf queens I've had sitting for six months to five years. This first one is my Israeli F-16I Sufa. I finally painted the pilots, closed up the fuselage and added the wings and horizontal stabilizers: After that, I added the vertical stabilizer with the spine and then went to close up the cockpit with the canopy so I could mask it and have it ready for paint. That's when I found this: numb nuts in the rear seat was sitting too high! Hasegawa is notorious for molding seats that are too tall for the cockpits they go in. So, I pulled out the pilot and seat and cut 1/8" off the bottom of the seat: Once I replaced the seat and pilot, I test fit the canopy again: Success! Here is the plane with the wings, tail, conformal fuel tanks and canopy on: I then turned it over and added the underwing pylons: Once I sand smooth that goubash on the intake, this bird will be ready for paint. Moving on to the next Shelf Queen (and yes, it is capitalized because this beastie has been sitting on my bench for three years!) I finally did what I've been needing to do for awhile. The booster rockets needed to be masked so the stripes on them could be painted. I also needed to paint the tail, so that got masked too: I used up all my Tamiya 1/2" tape on that. Using my trusty Sotar 20/20 airbrush, I painted all the black, red and yellow stripes and the yellow boxes at the top of the boosters: While that was drying, I decided to assemble all the possible payloads for the shuttle. I am hoping to put down a full display with labels showing everything the shuttle can carry in front of the model itself. Here they are all assembled. Gotta look them up to see how they should be painted: While that was drying, I also painted the grey on the leading edge of the shuttle wings and then removed all the masking on the shuttle itself and snapped the tail in place. You can also see a preview of the lower sections of the boosters with their masks removed: Here are the boosters all unmasked: But wait, I still needed to paint the vertical channels as well, so I masked off the channels for paint: ...and then painted them, removing the masks when they were dry: Then I finished the boosters; assembling them fully. These things are tall! Finally I cemented both booster assemblies to the main fuel tank, completing that whole portion of the model: That box fan behind this assembly is a 24" box fan so you can get a general idea of how huge this beastie is. Now all I have to do is decal the shuttle and then it will be ready for mounting on the fuel tank. Only one problem though: the forward bracket that holds the front part of the shuttle to the fuel tank broke off and went missing. It is a V-shaped part that I need to find. If however, anyone has a 1/72 scale Monogram Space Shuttle they don't intend to mount on the boosters and fuel tank, I'll be willing to buy that part from you. Please let me know. Moving on, I managed to get some painting down on a couple of my armor models. I did this in between assemblies and painting on the Space Shuttle to give myself a break on it. First I painted the Russian BREM so that godawful white is now all covered up: Just gotta detail paint that and then add clearcoat so I can attach the decals to it. Meanwhile, since I had the green out, I also sprayed the T-28: Finally, I started adding the wheels and tracks to the SG-122 gun. I got one side done and even started the other side with the tracks added to the drive sprocket for the other side, but I decided to stop here: Yeah, those tracks were tough, I'd had enough that day. I might get the other side on later this week. After all that struggle with those tracks, I wanted something easy to build. So, I pulled out one of my three Trumpeter SA-6 Gainfuls and got started on it. This is after five minutes of work: I found out later that the elevated piece on the back should be flat. I found that out when I finished building the launching assembly and missiles and added the whole assembly to the hull: Once I paint this, I'll be marking it in West German markings to signify a vehicle that was added to the Bundeswehr after the unification. The other two I will make Russian and either Syrian or Egyptian. The last update I have is out at the shipyards. I painted all the detail parts that I had added to the Izumo earlier: Here's a close up shot of the island details: After that, I clearcoated this for decals. You can't really see it too clearly in this pic, but it is shiny and ready for decals: Okay, that's all I got for now. I hope you enjoyed the tour. Stay tuned, there's more to come; especially since it's supposed to rain for the next three days! Yay!!! Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.