noelsmith

If building a ship with the sails stowed away all the yards above each of the lower fore main and mizzen are lowered. Look at the photo of the Constitution in Ed's post. Probably this would be common practice with furled sails when in port.

I have not visited this thread for a while. But in the meantime I was looking at the website of a company named RS Components, who supply vast quantities of electronic components to industry in the UK. I do not know if they have warehouses in the States. However, on their site I came across their own powerful 3D CAD program that they have developed and can be downloaded and used for free. I think it is named Mechanical Spark 3D or something similar and can be used to create 3D solids for machining and also a sheet metal development program. I believe that they have a PCB CAD design program available as well. Maybe some of you guys have come across it and used it...……………..so comments please!

Sad to hear about the loss of another long established hobby shop. Same thing happening over here in the UK to the remaining ones. A number of years ago we had at least one good privately owned model shop in each of our towns until a conglomerate named Beatties started buying them all up like there was no tomorrow in the eighties and early nineties and then went bust taking over 50 per cent of the nation's model shops with it in one fell swoop. Most of them employed assistants that did not have any specialist knowledge that did not help either. Another venture by the Amerang group opened up numerous model shops that sold kits and die cast model vehicles named Model Zone. They went the same way as Beatties did before. There are some independents still left that should be cherished but gradually disappearing by attrition. Apart from the remainders we have large warehouse type shops named Hobbycraft that sell limited modelling items along with all the art and craft stuff that is the core of their business. Great for artists materials and other items that could be used in our hobby however. I guess it is the same Stateside, the large warehouse type of operation. On line mail order is OK, but not the same as looking at what you intend to buy for real. Fortunately as the UK is very small compared to the distances you guys have to travel in the states I can get around to a few shows each year that have a fair share of specialist vendors from the cottage industries. I tend to take a shopping list to Telford each year as nearly all the UK specialist traders are there over that weekend...………….Needless to say I have a very dented wallet by the time I go home each year!

I think you may be right Michael. Probab!y the only one is the Airfix Quickbuild kit. I can but still hope!

Well it finally got aired! I was so looking forward to the story being done in period. Unfortunately it nowhere came up to my expectations. Besides running out of steam half way through, it was too much about a love story to me with the invasion theme being of secondary importance, plus the flash forwards made the whole thing a bit disjointed for me. It failed to show the Martians being wiped out by microbes. The three parter looked promising to start off, but when the sphere started to levitate, and giant machine, far bigger then the sphere started to come out of the ground (as in the Spielberg modern setting movie) the original novel plot was completely lost! If we want to see a proper version made, I reckon Peter Jackson who made Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Mortal Engines ad King Kong could do the novel justice. As he is the owner of Wingnut Wings maybe he could be lobbied through his company to get a suggestion through.

Latest is that 206 finally made it to print! A contest issue of just photos and captions I believe. Any auto modeller interested in what has been going down at Model Cars Magazine needs to have a look in the Scale Motorcars website in the general section. Lots of interesting discussion to read up to the point where a moderator stepped in and blocked further posts.

Lawrence, as an addition to your Cutty Sark requests, besides the kit instructions you are looking for there is a fine set from George Campbell from the Cutty Sark itself

Any one know if there is a new Bugatti Veyron kit about to be released? Heard a rumour, but not sure if it is fake news or not. Only plastic kit I can think of is the Airfix Quick Build that goes together in Lego fashion.

WOTW (3 part drama) will be airing at 9PM UK time this Sunday 17th November (immediately after His Dark Materials which is two weeks in and fantastic.) BBC has a catchup service named I player on the web that should be available to the USA. Bear in mind this catchup service only holds a programme for a week after airing. No ads on the beeb so good for a weekly download to make up the series. I will have to look up Stephen Baxter's book that ewahl recommended.......sounds good.

Subscribers can look fooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorward to the next one?

The BBC have recently been running a slightly longer trailer for WOTW. Still no firm aiingr date given, so still guessing this Christmas perhaps,

There have been 3 recent enquiries about issue 206 on the MCM forum, and all were locked very quickly and posters referred to contact the editor Gregg Hutchings directly instead.

Mark and Ron, Thanks for the feedback. Kind regards Noel

As for lightening up colours, maybe the paint manufacturers should be taking this into account for scale realism. As a car .modeller plain real car colours are ok to use by me straight from an aerosol, they go off hard quickly and I do not have to mess about with an air brush and all the after care clean up.

Views about paint shades and colours can go on ad infinitum. Why? Because this is so subjective to each and every user. Methuen values ,modulation techniques, air brush mixes, it goes on and on. There has been a bit of discussion on here about using auto.motive paints and whether the shade should be lighter to be 'in scale'. Well, I have used automotive rattle fans for years, and no one has ever said to me when exhibiting my models about my plain colours being too dark! My take is who needs to mess about with an air brush to lighten a colour? Guess I am getting lazy in my old age! Metallics however can look like scaled down metal flake on a model so one needs to be aware of this. Great for customs though!

Another question about writing for the journal. Do authors get paid for their work like IPMS UK magazine writers?

The BBC have still not given a firm date for airing war of the worlds just yet. My guess around Christmas. Incidentally, they are running a series based on Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. It is going to air on Nov 3rd in the UK. Do not know what is planned for US tv. But the BBC has an internet 1 week catchup named IPlayer, so you guys may be able to use broadband to either watch on a smart tv or a pc and either stream of download each of them within the week they sit in the UK.

Interesting views on this thread, including Dak's tongue in cheek mis spelling of accuracy in the title.

If you want to see the epitome of craftsmanship, aesthetics and accuracy look no further than the late Gerald Wingrove's Workshop website.

It is imminent! The BBC are running trailers, so it will be aired this Autumn (Fall) of near Christmas. Someone has put the trailer up on the Britmodeller forum in the Science Fiction area of anyone wants to get a glimpse of what to expect. At last of will be shown in keeping to the period and location in HGWells original novel. Spielberg I think missed a trick with his modernised version. It would have been interesting if he had made it ' in period'' and perhaps the BBC may not have considered it for production it he had done so.

Thanks for the update. I learnt that Harry Pristovnik passed away some time ago and he was MCM's main layout man. Harry I believe did most if not all of the work to put that magazine together when he was alive. I think that this is manifesting itself in the magazine's failure over the last 2 or 3 years and subscribers have lost confidence as deliveries have become all but non existant.

Dak, the Telford method works quite well as all the entries have been logged onto a laptop by the entry date of at least a couple of weeks before the show. We have dedicated helpers to log on the winners on competition day, 1,2 and 3 in each class plus any odd commendeds and is done as the judges results come in. It is both efficient and quick. All the judges get together at the end to choose the overall best of show. The method of registration is about as anonymous as possible. I do take your point about us old timers who have been around IPMS a long time getting to recognise certain modellers own individual styles over the years. Unfortunately there is nothing any one can do about this, and the competition can only be made as fair as is humanly possible. Anonymity will I think remain a contentious subject judging by the differing posts on this thread.

At SMW Telford all competition models have to be pre registered by a certain date and are issued a competition number that is logged on to a computer with the builders name. Only the entry number appears on each entry card on the table, so the person"s name remains anonymous even to the judges. When the awards are given it is a simple matter for the Competitions Secretary to cross reference the entry number and match it to the entrants name on the computer.

I think that this discussion has wandered a bit. OOB should be ONLY about how well a kit is built and finished by the modeller as the manufacturer intended. Whether the kit is a 60 years old Airfix bagged kit or new state of the art kit with all bells and whistles is irrelevant. It is the skill of the builder we should be judging. OOB should be a leveller to assess modelling skills and nothing else.

The movie industry unfortunately generally takes too many liberties with history as more interested in box office takings than facts. Sad thing is that many movie goers have little history knowledge and simply take the films at face value. The Enigma movie is a prime example of liberties being taken and really distorting the facts. They do the same when they make a movie from a novel. Jurassic Park was a typical example. I read the book 2 years before JP 1 was made and boy did Spielberg distort it! If indeed the movie had stuck to the book it would have been rated 18. For example, in the book it described in graphic detail how Nedry the computer nerd was having his intestines ripped out by a dinosaur whilst he was still alive. Maybe if Tarantino directed it instead of Spielberg it may have kept better to the original novel. But of course, Hollywood toned it down to satisfy the desire for multiple marketing spin off toys, tee shirts etc. Whoops again. Still straying from the PR thing!!!!