Greyhound

As a former Army Huey Pilot I would have to say I am sorry that one of my former colleagues would do such a wisecracking stunt. The reality is that we had a lot of respect for both Air Force and Army Air Traffic Controllers [even a few Navy ATC]. The sky's over Vietnam were unbelievably dangerous, not from enemy fire, but from us knuckleheads possibly crashing into each other. Whenever a ACT gave me a instruction or a warning I took it very seriously! Robert, Thanks for your service and for keeping me and other wisecrackers from having a real bad day! Dan King , Greyhound 10, 240th AHC Bearcat, 1969/70, VNAF Contractor 1973

Joe - This is a very good build! It looks dark, dirty and miserable just like a WW-1 scene should look like. These old EMHAR kits are decent kits that cost a lot less than current and expensive WW-1 kits. I have a full set of these kits buried somewhere in the stash and after seeing this it makes me want to dig them out!

Joseph - Here are a few photo's from San Diego Coronado Island Speed Classic Vintage Car Race of a Original Bill Thomas Cheetah. This is a great event held at the Navy's North Island Airbase as part of Fleet Week [ just last weekend]. It is not unusual at this event to be taking photo's and one of the crew members will ask you to put down your camera and lend a hand on a car to get it ready for next race! I have crewed on a Bugatti Type 35, Alfa and a Shelby Mustang [ if you call moving things, cleaning and holding tools etc to be crewing?]. I have a Resin Kit of the Cheetah done by a company called Mini Exotics that is very well done. They give you the basics and you will need to use a AMT Mercedes 300 Gullwing Coupe for the chassis and a lot of parts box stuff to finish it. I did purchase a New Tamiya Mercedes 300 Gullwing with the idea of using it as bases for the resin Cheetah body. The TV program GEARS has been building a Cheetah replica this season with lots of info on the original. If I only had a extra $100k on hand!

The Lower Left Coast NNL is on again for this year. This show put on by Darryl Gassaway and Kurt Wilson is done to raise money for different charities. This year fundraiser is to benefit OPERATION SILVER STAR, to assist wounded and disabled California Veterans. The special theme is "TV and Movie Cars". This is a great show, close to the beach in Carlsbad California, with a good number of venders present [including yours truly]. Since Darryl is Managing Editor of Model Cars Magazine it is a good chance to see your model in print! LOWER LEFT COAST NNL SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 2015, 9AM TO 3PM CARLSBAD SENIOR CENTER, 799 PINE STREET, CARLSBAD, CA. WEB SITE: www.LowerLeftCoastNNL.org

Sorry for the slow reply, I have been to Sturgis [ just to look around], to Nebraska for a 50th Wedding Anv. and a few days in Denver. Thanks for the comments, I have improved over the years in this area due to help from a few San Diego Model Car Club/IPMS Members, including Darryl Gassaway and Peter Johnson.

Ok - last photo's- These are some of the parts used and show how things were cut and fit to build the model. first is the whole Escalade before cutting. Second is what is left after cutting. Third is the cab from a AMT Louisville/LN 8000 cab with the rear of cab removed and fitted to the back of the Escalade.

Here are some more, not sure how many I can attach? On photo of frame you can see the "brake lines" that hold the rear wheels and axle on!

Here are a few more photo's of this project. I will try to explain a few of them.

Thank you Gary and Gill. I thought I had a file with a bunch of photo's of this project, but could not find yesterday. I will try to take more pictures tomorrow and download. Pickup and trailer together are so long it is hard to take photo of them! Dan

Here is my latest model project. The Race Trailer is from Galaxie Limited and is a 44 ft. Tri-axle gooseneck trailer. You have to paint this inside and out. Long seems made the build difficult. Paint is all Tamiya rattle cans, masking multi color paint takes a long time. The Cadillac Escalade Duallie is made from 1. Revel 1/25 Cadillac Escalade is the bases for the build. 2. The Duallie Bed, Back of Frame and Duallie wheels are from the Monogram 1/24th scale Ford F-350 " Duallie" Pickup. The Cab was made by cutting Escalade just in front of the rear wheel arches and grafting on the rear of a Ford Truck Cab. This gave the back of the cab the shape and the small rear window I was looking for. Interior and such was also cut down to fit. The Frame was the tricky part of this build. I used the front "clip" of the Escalade attached to the rear portion of the Dullie. I did a notch cut on the Escalade frame and the dually frame, then fitted the cab and bed on with Blue Tack and slid the frames until correct fit and superglues together. The rear Duallie Wheels were so heavy that I had to use brass tubing to mount on the frame and later added wire around the axle and the frame to hold it in place! I hid it fairly well, but had to tell a judge at one contest that they were Brake Lines [ he did not buy it!]. Project was fun to do [ exept seems on the trailer ], but have storage problem with the trailer. Photo was taken at GSL in April 2015. I will look for photo of full trailer and post when I find one. PS - the words "Galaxie" and " Duallie" are the spellings on the boxes.

Mark - It is great to see this done, it looks like you overcame the difficult paint issues you were dealing with very well! Now to overcome your next great model challenge, where and how to display or store this? I hope to see this at the next OrangeCon. Dan

Alex - Here is another photo from The Dinosaur Museum . These are what Veloceraptors are supposed to look like?

Alex - I recently had the opportunity to visit The Dinosaurs Museum in Blanding Utah. This Museum is dedicated to the idea that many dinosaurs were Feathered, with Bird like characteristics. It is a surprisingly large Museum for such a small town! Many of the exhibits are models made in there shop on site and you can observe the model makers hand sculpting Dinosaurs. Here is a photo of one of the exhibits.

This looks really good Mark - What scale is it? Not your normal subject matter, it is sometimes fun to do something really different. Dan

Larry - Easy Off Oven Cleaner or Purple Power Clean from Pep Boys. The sooner the better. Dan

Mark - Since I paint mostly Gloss Paint jobs on my Model Cars I am all to familiar with this problem. Here are SOME of the things I do to try to keep all the crap floating around out of my paint jobs. On the model itself I use Polly Scale Plastic Prep, a pink antistatic liquid. I stopped using Tack Cloth's as mentioned above as I found that if the tack cloth is not very "fresh" it will sometimes leave little balls of the tacky stuff on the models surface. I also use a antistatic Gun I picked up at Industrial Equipment Sale just before painting. Do not ever use paper towels to wipe down your models as they will leave exactly what you are describing. In the area where I paint, starting with the Paint Booth, I do a lot to reduce dust etc. My paint booth gets wiped down inside and outside with Spic and Spans Cinch Multi cleaner. This stuff dry's fast and leaves nothing behind, I then line my paint booth with fresh aluminum foil on the bottom and sides and cling wrap on top so built in light is useful. I change out the foil and cling wrap after every paint session. Everything that goes in the booth such as paint stand and lazy susan also get covered with aluminum foil. In the area around the paint booth I wipe everything down with Cinch [ I vacuum the day before paint sessions so dust is settled] and using a small spray bottle I spray a mist of water on the floor around the area that I paint. After painting I leave the model in the Paint Booth and close the door while it is still running for a few seconds and this completely seals the model in [ I have silicon seal on the door and the booth to make a complete seal. I also sometimes use a food dehydrator to speed up build process and I clean it in the dishwasher and wipe down with plastic Prep before use. Even with all this I still get crap in my nice glossy paint jobs and therefore have gotten very good with the infamous "Polishing Kit" that is a whole other topic! I hope some part of this long post helps. Dan

Rick - I had a little time to do a more detailed search for Antistatic Gun. If you put in Zerostat on your search engine you will find the Zerostat 3 Antistatic Gun. This is a manual device that creates a antistatic field with Piezoelectric crystals. Price is $97 [ a lot better than $600 to $800 mentioned above], this can be used on all your canopies or entire model before painting to help remove dust particles. There may be even cheaper ones out there, but ran out of time to search.

Rick - When I worked at Sony we used to have Antistatic "guns" or Deionizing "Guns" that we used on complex prototype Circuit Boards. I did a little web search and found several, but they were commercial grade and expensive [ around $600-800]. But I am sure that there are Hobbyist versions available much cheaper. Check in your local phone book for "electronic equipment suppliers" and you may find cheaper unit or track down on the Internet.

Pete - Glad this worked out. I am surprised there are not more readily available 1/24th scale items like this available? I read somewhere that there is estimated to be 40 Million AK-47's in service in every part of the world today! I carried a Chi-com AK-47 in Vietnam as a "personal Survival Weapon" with the theory that if you had to use it when escape and evade it would not attract as much attention, it was a very flawed theory and I later changed to a Grenade Launcher that created a lot of havoc so you can run like hell and hide as long as possible! Hope to see your finished project soon. Dan

Pete - There is a company in England called Kit Form Services that specialize in 1/24th scale military subjects. While most of their kits are Multimedia Military Vehicles they do make some figures and misc. they have a web site - www.kitformservices.com . Phone # 0 1205 480766 email - kfs1@btinternet.com. Be very careful with this info, their products are truly unique, fascinating, high quality and expensive, in other words it may be hard to resist spending some real money! Dan King

Al - Great Diorama! I would say that your customer earned the right to display the flag that way-The hard way!

Oleg - Sorry I did not reply sooner. I am not sure how to do the actions you requested? I did go to your web site, but is all in Russian. Here is a photo of me in Vietnam, picture taken around September 1969. Aircraft is a UH-1D model Huey set-up to do Combat Assaults. Uniform is Nomex Flightsuit with a ceramic Aluminum Chicken Vest, Pistol is WWW-2 era Smith and Wesson Model 38 caliber revolver. I found your web site interesting despite not being able to read it.

Oleg - I have very much enjoyed your how-to on a interesting Diorama. Carving Plaster Board and your weathering/painting methods are very useful. In 1970 when I came back from Vietnam I was stationed at Camp Carson [uS Army} with the 283rd Assault Helicopter Company. We were working with the 10th Mountain Division to do high altitude cold weather Combat Assaults with the primary target area in Russia! We received a lot of training in how to identify and destroy Russian Armor and Soft Skin military vehicles. It was very difficult and interesting training. So in December of 1970 I was in Vietnam in Combat against North Vietnam Soldiers [ not many VC by this time] in 100deg F. and 100% humidity and 2 weeks later flying at 1 mile high in 30% F. snow blizzard conditions. I am very happy I never had to use my Combat training against Russians because the World would be a very different place and I would probably not be around! Dan King

Gary- This is truly a Fantastic build! My wife and I will be in Salt Lake this year for the GSLIMCC, so we hope to see this work of art at the show? Dan King

Robert - I found your post very interesting in terms of trying to quantify the statistics of Model Prices on a US and Global scale. Many Model companies such as Tamiya are in fact truly pricing themselves out of the market. But the problem is that I believe that the purchasing of Model Kits is more of an Emotional issue and not a purely a financial one. I cannot speak for all modellers of coarse, but speaking for myself and most of my modeling friends we tend to find and buy the models we want/need no matter what it takes! I have almost 3000 unbuilt kits and when I walk into a Hobby Shop I still get a rush of excitement if I find I a kit I really want. I believe I have gotten more patient and careful in trying to find the best price that I can, sometimes waiting for a future swap meet or event where I might purchase the kit at a better price, but honestly if that "got to have it" factor is high enough I will buy it no matter the price. Fortunately over the years the number of kits that fall into that category has been reduced. Incidentally I am also retired on a fixed income, but spend all my available discretionary income on models and hobby magazines. I do think that ultimately most of the model companies will realize they have to lower there prices to stay in business but that may be in the distant future.