whumblez

Note: I hoped to attend the Reno Show on the 21st, but I can't get the event info to download on my laptop, and the messages I left haven't had a response yet, and time is running out for reservations, registration, etc -- for my being four hours away by car, and nearing 80 years old. Could anyone email me the specifics on this event, etc. RHR has been unresponsive. Thanks, Wick

I have a '51 Ford Crestliner, '71 Datsun 240Z (restomod; fun but drive it little), and a '61 Pontiac Tempest coupe with stock Buick aluminum V-8 (hald restored) right now, and am finishing up Dad's '51 Chevy Styline (also restomodded) for my son. I wrote the book 'How to Restore Your Datsun Z-Car' back in the 'eighties, and it's still in print, now with Car Tech -- hopefully a new edition. I wrote for a lot of old car mags, and once for Street Rodder before they folded. Also have a set of novels/novelettes on Kindle, the A Place On Mars Series, but not sci-fi, historical fiction/nostalgia. All full of cars, and in the first one of the 15-year olds complains that for the price of a ticket for their Sophomore Hop, he could by an AMT kit! All for fun.

I'm Wick Humble, old to modeling (1953, Aurora Famous Fighters series, and Revell Highway Pioneers, etc.) but new to this forum. I've been on the Model Cars site for some years, and was on Scale Auto before it folded. I do mainly automotive subjects, but due to interest at the Dragon Lady chapter January show, have gotten back into aircraft. In the fab fifities I also did ships, military, space, and a lot of whatever a kid could afford. When the 'customizing kits' appeared for cars (first I had were the Revell '56 Ford ragtop and '56 Buick; still have parts and some bits of decal for those) I was hooked, and gave up the others! The AMT/SMP 3-in-1 kits, plus the JoHan similar ones were my food and drink, using mostly Duco Cement and Duro Plastic Aluminum. Kids in our family were expected earn their own spending money -ha- and save a good portion of that! I did a 7-days a week paper route, babysat, mowed lawns, and other jobs not so glamorous for the $1.39 for the AMT -- and 88-cents for the JoHan, at the 88-Cent Stores. Brush and rattle can paint, silver Testors for the chrome (you can get pretty good at that precision, if motivated!), and lots of very tired sandpaper. Now I am mostly just finishing up my long-stored stash of kits from 1960 through 1965, but have bought a rash of newer issues (still old subjects, tho) including building models of my first cars: '55 Chevy 'post' rod, '51 Ford club coupe, '65 Pontiac HT 'The Tampax', and also kits for my bro's cars. I'm getting into dioramas, but not figures yet, and have several finished, which are really fun. I did Lumpy's '40 Ford ragtop from' Leave It To Beaver' when Wally and Eddie chained his axle to a tree, and a c. 1955 '40 'hardtop racer' much like those that we attended in our little N CA town, with the track fence and billboard behind it, plus a modified '53 Stude Starlight (not plastic; 1'/18 die-cast) with McCulloch blower and local Stude dealer billboard behind it (with CHP speed trap car showing behind the base), and a Pontiac Tempest 'Monte Carlo' show car on a 'Motorama-style' raised roadway -- begun in 1961! My aircraft dio is a Kyushu Shinden and Curtiss Ascender (both pushers with swept wings, but shown as if WWII had not ended with the Big Bombs, and both converted to jet propulsion! Not finished yet! Well, lots of kits to complete, and two 1/1 restorations to finish. Oh, I just turned 79. Wick