noelsmith

Very nice scratch build project.

The Paasche H appears to be a very good, reliable and robust workhorse for the scale modeller. Over here in the UK, the Paasche company never really bothered pushing their airbrush products, even when Badger was becoming popular and aggressively marketed to the UK model making community back in the 1970's. In my opinion Paasche could have done well at that time and have gained a good slice of the UK market. Aerograph branded airbrushes were made in the UK by DeVillbiss back then. High quality but only pushed toward the graphic design and art markets. They realised a little late and developed the Sprite aimed for scale modellers. Since then Iwata and Harder&Steenbeck appear to be favoured more than most others. There are of course other good quality airbrushes out there, but also a lot of cheap and nasty stuff too ! Lots of suggestions about where to obtain Paasche spares, but no mention of the Paasche Company itself as a source ? I guess they must have a spare parts sales ?

Learned that Model Motorcars Ltd was placed into voluntary dissolution on March 18th. The company traded for more than 25 years supplying CD instructional roms and books and a large range of after market items for builders of the 1/8th scale Pocher brand, both older Rivarossi and newer Hornby kits.I Marvin Meit the principal owner passed away in December 2025, probably triggering the eventual closure by any partners left in the business.

Very nice build Ron.

Any museums maybe in the Detroit area ? There may be archives of factory drawings tucked away somewhere. I would imagine though that it there is as I suspect a Packard owners club, contacting them might be your best bet.

Ward, if you have not got it already there is another old style book published by MAP during the 70's in the UK that might be worth seeking out It is about scratch building Model Aircraft in Plastic by Harry Woodman.

Fascinating reading. IPMS UK has a similar membership and runs as a limited company to protect its members. Comparing the IPMS UK with the USA's end of year statements of expenditure would probably make interesting reading. Both have high budget annual expenditure with Scale Modelworld and the US Nationals to fund as well as a quality magazine to publish and distribute, besides all the other sundry expenses like annual accountancy services etc.

Those kits were marketed under a few names over the years Ward. Firstly Hubley, then Gabriel but cannot remember the third name they were marketed under. Scale Models possibly ?

Might sound too obvious, but have you tried to contact Italeri to see if they could email you a copy ? Some model kit manufacturers have downloadable instruction sheets to access on their sites .

Sounds a bit odd to me that a large plastic kit manufacturing company would be approaching individuals directly ? How would a company like that have your email address anyway ? Don't they have distributors who they are contractually obliged to export to in the US or anywhere else for that matter? To do what is being suggested means that a payment from s personal account would have to be made at some point to purchase said kit(s) ? Hmmm! ??? One should be wary.

Thanks for that tip Ron. Will give Atlantis a try. Who knows as they are certainly hoovering up many old kit moulds to put back into production. Apologise for late reply. Not been on the site for a bit.

Thanks for the comments guys. It's been a while since I checked out my thread.

Nice conversion taking place here. It makes a refreshing change to see a vintage kit bash for a change.

This is where the I in IPMS might be useful. Not everyone is being hit by the effects of tariffs. So members of IPMS in those countries might be able to obtain stuff and post it on. Who knows ?

The new owners of FSM have changed the website completely. Personally I think it is a bit of a mess compared to the original to navigate, although apparently some like the new one. The gallery that so many contributed to over the years has been deleted completely. This was confirmed by Tim Kidwell when I emailed FSM to ask where I could find the gallery on the new site. Thought I would look out FSM at a local bookstore.The paper magazine is but a shadow of its former self. About half the original thickness that I can remember and priced at around £8 here in the UK. It stayed on the shelf ! Wasn't Scale Auto supposed to be 'absorbed' into the FSM magazine ? Seen it time and again when a magazine gets integrated into another, after the fanfare of its integration the old magazine may as well not have existed. Far better for publishers to just come clean about discontinuing a magazine and just put a line under it instead of building up readers expectancy. I certain!y was not aware of any SA stuff ever bolstering FSM content when SA closed !