PeteJ

Ok Rick, I will keep the offer open and am still trying to get setup to go. I have a couple of health issues that should be resolved soon that have nothing to do with the current pandemic, but we will see. Hope to see you there.

Well, that is hard to give you an exact number but pretty quickly. I did a demo at our club meeting and within a few minutes the other members were handling it with no problems. Now that is the top coat only. I had presprayed the base coat the day before. I've never tested how quickly you can get the whole package with base and top coat. Personally I generally leave each coat in the food dehydrator over night, but I apply that to every paint I use.

I did the same thing and still have most of it. Now that was their Mirrochrome product. This one is new and can be applied with a brush! It is kind of fun to do to. You smear it on and watch is go "Chrome" as it dries. Also more durable. I never could mask over the Mirrochrome. I have masked the heck out of this for a couple of aircraft projects. Works better than the original. Oh and it is water based.

For a beginner this is not the best choice unless you have deep pockets. https://alsacorp.com/product/easy-chrome/ It is a chrome product that was formulated for the 1:1 market. They do entire cars but mostly rims, so you know it is durable. It also has a bit of a learning curve. Two bottles of paint and two of base coat along with 4 speed shapes to practice on are included for $140. The primary advantages are 1)it is tough and won't rub off but you have to follow the instructions and lay down the base coat first. 2) You can mask and paint over it. No masking tape that I have used will damage the surface. 3) You can brush it on after the base coat and it will give you a good mirror finish. 4) you can also dip small parts and get the same finish. Having said that the price is steep but you use very little and it will last a long time. Oh and it is water soluble.

Thanks Rick. My camera uses an SDXC card and I think I will get a separate one for the event. Other than that, nothing here I didn't expect. I assume that you have a tally sheet to match photo numbers to model numbers? Oh and by the way, how does one go about volunteering for this. My preference would be to assigned to category V(automotive) but if I volunteer will go where needed. Thanks for the reply.

I just go a new camera and was thinking of volunteering for the photographing crew in San Marcos. Before I went to all that trouble I thought I would ask what format the contest prefers and how they want to download them. I have a new Sony Alpha 7II and wanted to practice before hand if they accept me as a volunteer.

Mark, so far nothing is proven about this virus. Although other forms of Corona virus do become less virulent in warmer months, that has not been proven with this particular strain. Witness the fact that as of yesterday Australia has reported 130 cases. Right now they are in the heart of a very hot summer. There is no hard evidence that this will go way as things warm up. It is a wait and see thing and not something you can plan on. I do agree that it is way too early to cancel now, but not too early to have a backup plan.

Len, Thank you. That is the type of information I wanted to hear. Keep us updated.

👍 .....But isn't is up the the club putting it on? Just saw the Texas state is monitoring 10 people but has take no steps to close school.

A lot can change in 4 months, but since I was considering getting my airline tickets, it would be nice to know.

I am interested in entering a model for a good friend who recently passed away at the age of 93. He was a highly skilled modeler, but to my knowledge ever attended a national convention. I can find no evidence of his membership in IPMS, but if my memory serves me he had been. He was certainly a member in good standing of our local IPMS club. I would like to bring one of his models and enter it in a regular category to honor him. It there any way to do this?

It is the lacquer. I decant it out of the rattle can to spray it through an airbrush. I prefer lacquer because it drys quicker, polishes up well and sticks to plastic better than water based paints. TS-13 is the clear in a rattle can. You can also get Tamiya lacquers in bottles. LP-9 for the lacquer in a bottle. The stuff in the bottle is thinned 50/50 or more with thinner. Highly recommend that for thinning, use the Tamiya lacquer thinner that was designed for it. Too expensive to use for clean up, but good for thinning to spray.

Tamiya clear over Tamiya primer. Two very light coats followed by a heavy coat. 🤣

This is a two part automotive urethane heavily thinned with reducer. No interaction with either the decals or the Tamiya primer.

Len, how about this one? It might even make an interesting sub-theme. Big Bend Open Road Race. https://www.facebook.com/bborrace/

Well, if your going to get that specific, Laughlin AFB birds. T-41s, T-37s, T-38s. Class 74-02 September 1972-1973!😉

Tamiya white primer with automotive two part clear coat over it. Decaled and then another coat of clear over the decals. Chrome done with Alsa easy chrome.

"Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance". George S. Patton. Personally, I feel that the world would be far better without war, but to ignore the significance and level of commitment is to fail to understand history!

I also find this an interesting discussion about the shade of paint. Considering that most of what we model is kept outdoors, I honestly doubt that "scale effect" is really the culprit, although I won't suggest it doesn't existence. Having spend many years on a flight line, paint fades with exposure to sun and weather. In a row of aircraft, each painted the the same FS code, you can easily spot the newer painted aircraft in any color. You could also see where repairs had been made by the splotches of dark paint. Often hatches were cannibalized from other aircraft and they would stand out as differant shades. This was especially true of the birds in Vietnam. They got pretty beaten up. The only time they looked "correct" was straight out of the paint shop and then only for a month or so, until the sun did it's work. Even the grays painted on the tankers and some of the naval aircraft had amazingly different shades.

Really? I've been using real car paint for 30 years. Not because it is "the right color" but because it is much cheaper and easier to work with. I have a quart of DuPont acrylic lacquer clearcoat that I have had all this time and it is still good. It is just getting harder to find the real deal lacquer thinner to thin it with. Last gallon of PPG thinner that I bought cost me $85 and I had to go to Arizona to get it, but it is still cheaper, per ounce, than those silly little bottles of "model" paint you buy in the hobby store.

pee pull sea wat tha xpect two sea, knot wat is.😆

I just did searched the word craftsmanship and found some very interesting commentary on the subject particularly the bastardization of the use of the word craft in marketing today. To craft, now implies something made with craftsmanship, such as craft beer, or hand crafted salads. This lead to other discussions of craftsman and craftsmanship. There are some parts I agree with and others I did not. Generally, a craftsman is someone who has mastered a craft. Often this means to make something with skill and artistry. Having said that I do not find craftsmanship and accuracy to be mutually exclusive terms. A craftsman will find a way to build accurately in such a way that it is pleasing to the eye. This then comes down to a basic tenet of our hobby. Is accuracy measured by the eye(does it look like the real thing) or buy calipers and micrometers. A long time ago, one of my mentors told me that our hobby was all about fooling the eye to believe that it was seeing a shrunken version of the real deal. I believe that this is where reality sets in. We are taking plastic, glue and paint and making it look like metal, wood, concrete, and other materials that it is not. The only true thing that may be accurate is measurements and shape. None of which makes a good model. It takes craftsmanship(mastery of the subject) to create a model that looks real not accuracy. The kit creators know this and adjust things to accommodate that. In his book "Master Modeler" S. Tamiya discussed this at length when Tamiya started making model cars. He was meticulous in measuring and got the details correct and the kits looked horrible. This turned out to be a matter of perspective. When we see the real deal we are most often viewing the car from a perspective that is slightly above and to the side of the vehicle. When we view a model car it is most often from above, which is a perspective we almost never see the vehicle from. The issue is that when viewed from above, models done this way seem to be way to wide because when we see them from our normal perspective this decreases the visual width of the car. If you measure out any Tamiya car model you will find it slightly narrower to account for this. So to me craftsmanship incorporates the skill of accurately replicating the viewing positions so the proportions look accurate. After all, we are building something to look like an accurate representation of the real thing and that includes how it looks when we see the real thing.

Logged in promptly at 1 PDT and had all the room options available. Got one of the premium rooms at a standard rate. That may have been a function of my Hilton Honors membership. Not that I need snacks and beverages, but it is nice to have. Just went on line today and it seems the block is gone. That was quick.

A simple question. Of those participating in this discussion do any of you actually build OOB? I do. I prefer the non-OOB method for most of my models, but from time to time I like to test my basic skills with OOB builds.

Say what you want about OOB but I contend it is the most difficult category to win. Yes, kit selection is quite important, but the fact that you can't wow anyone with the extra effort and still have to nail your basic skills on every aspect of the model is a challenge all unto itself. Yes, models have evolved and so have modelers. It is no longer about building a crappy model to perfection, it is still about a very level playing field. Everyone has a shot at any kit and is limited to what is in the kit. The only way to make it more fair would be to select a single kit for all.