Neal

I think the reddish fine wire is motor winding wire. I was given one from an electronics pal. The spool has quite a bit of wire on it; should last a lifetime. I think I saw some at Fry's.

The car guys told me about that paint trick. Instead of building another Saturn V, just wait until DML does a soviet N-1 moon rocket in 1/72! (Actually, I'd like one in 1/144 - the Realspace Models resin kit is very rough.)

Mikro-Mir Beverley, for all to see: http://hobbyterra.com/product/british-heavy-transport-aircraft-blackburn-beverley-micro-mir-144-008.html Yes, quite weird! It reminds me of the "heavy-ish bomber" that appeared in the satirical book "Zany Afternoons".

When I built Airfix's Saturn V, I used Tamiya flat white primer from the rattle can to get an opaque finish, then topped off with gloss white, again from the rattle can. I sprayed outside in my back yard on my lunch break, then inspected the painted parts in the evening. The flat white (actually the primer dries to a nice satin finish) was easy to spot sand with a bit of 600 grit wet-n-dry. A quick wash and rinse in the kitchen sink, then off to dry overnight. I repeated this process over a period of around a week. I think I applied four flat white coats and two gloss white coats. I did get some dust and bugs in the gloss finish, but they were eliminated with fine sandpaper followed by a quick spot re-spray of the gloss white. Tamiya rattle can paint is great stuff, as it dries really fast (even the gloss colors) and produces a hard surface that takes sanding and polishing well. As an aside, I used Tamiya's masking tape and rattle can semi-gloss black to finish the model. The tapered and corrugated areas just needed some careful pressing down of the tape to get a good seal. I used space Model Systems' decal sheet, which provided corrected markings and a plethora of additional small stencils. The service module had a nice optional "wraparound" decal that included all the tiny stencils in their proper place. I had the older uncorrected undersize CM/SM version of the kit so I had to modify the decal to fit.

With that kind of terrain following system, I'm sure landing would be the least of your problems! I can't imagine dragging a stick behind my plane going along at around 200 MPH and expect it or the plane to survive! What a really weird, wacky,cool model though. Nice job man! Mikro-Mir is the new king of weird model kits,, a title previously held by MPM.

There has to be a chapter first, one would think! I'm holding out for Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico Conventions! A ha ha. Oh ho ho. A hee hee. And I thought MY jokes were bad! B) The Hawaii Mafia has on numerous occasions kicked around the possibility of hosting a Nats here, and the guys get pretty excited whenever the subject comes up. But if we managed to pull it off, it would go down in the books as the Nats with the fewest models per entrant ever. The logistics of hauling a delicate model across at least 2,500 miles of open ocean would make it look like a shoebox model contest (i.e. model has to fit inside a shoebox). Plus we already know that you guys will just dump your entries into the contest room and immediately head out to the beach or golf course! Yes Hawaii is perfectly geared for tourism, and we could put together some really great activities for the whole family, but I feel that the distance will put a crimp on the model entries. 1/32 bombers? Uh-uh. Giant dioramas? No way. Fully rigged sailing ships? Fuhgeddaboutit! And I don't think the airlines will allow U-Haul trailers onto the plane! How about Alaska? It would be nice and cool in August!

The local hobby shop here in the 1970s was Pete's Modelcraft,. But I got most of my kits from Woolworth's, as their buyer seemed to have a better idea of what we kids wanted. The main shopping center in my area had Pete's, Woolworth's, JC Penny, Sears, and Longs Drugs, of which all carried models! I was like a little bee, trying to hit all the stores before my dad told me it was time to go. Heady days. Now the shopping malls don't even have toy stores; We had a Thrifty Drugs and Kress variety store in my neighborhood (i.e. within bicycle range) which also sold models. There was a seedy liquor store that sold "sports forecast sheets" and porno mags that also sold kits. I bought the Monogram Cylon Raider there, and remember seeing the Revell 1/32 Beaufighter. Loved that box art with the flaming inverted He-111. There was even a market that had a small selection of kits. I bought a 1/72 Hasegawa MiG-17 Fresco from there. Back in the day, you could get kits almost anywhere! On an unrelated tangent, I remember while admiring the Beaufighter box art thinking it would have been so cool to have a 1/32 He-111, but it could NEVER happen. Things do change.

I am working on a 1/20 Tamiya F-1 car right now, and noticed that the white decals appear to be affected by the underlying blue paint. You could try sourcing a second set of kit decals and double them up, but Tamiya's decals are already kind of thick. Aftermarket sets vary in quality, so you should research potential sources before buying. I am leery of applying tire logo decals to the sidewalls, so I tried using PE templates and airbrushed the markings on. It was a lot simpler to do than I thought; I wrapped the tire tread face with a piece of masking tape, then stuck smaller pieces around the template. The tape on the template made it easy to stay on the tire sidewall. One thing I learned that the white paint does not have to be too heavy, and light overspray (which was very minimal) actually looked like the real thing (1970s era; the more modern tires might have tighter printing). I went too heavy on the front wheels, and the still wet paint was damaged when I put the tires back in the box. The sharp, heavy white paint does not look as "real" as the lighter, slightly fuzzy rear wheels. https://flic.kr/p/wgdyT7 Sorry about the click to link. I still can't figure out how to post links.

My buddy who attended this year's Nats with me had an interesting suggestion - it would have been really cool if the convention decal sheet had markings for the bagged kits. I thought they were all Boeing 314s, but since there were other kits, I suppose that would have made it impractical. But it was a neat suggestion at the time. Perhaps the bagged kits could be included in the "best use of a convention decal" category? Except that everyone has to bring their own decals. :m1helmet:

Are the old model 200s different from newer ones? Just curious. (I have a 200 that was purchased in 1980, but it is still my go-to airbrush - sorry!)

Gil, that is some seriously impressive work! Will you be finished by next year's Nationals? It would be awesome to see it in person! Keep plugging away, you are an inspiration to all us slackers!

Thanks Mark! I picked this version because there is less glass to mask, and it has those cool missiles. Going to try to keep this one as OTTB as possible, funky intake shape notwithstanding.

I am still in London after attending Scale Model World at Telford. Had a blast, thanks guys for the helpful tips! Here's what I got. Trumpeter 1/72 Tu-16 Badger w/ the radar nose and missiles. The kit had a small bonus PE set. Mikro-Mir 1/35 weird German hydrofoil torpedo boat. This was my favorite find at the show. Special Hobby 1/32 Bristol M1.C. I saw a 1:1 replica (?) at the RAF Museum at Cosford. Can't wait to get home and start building again!

I'm still trying to figure out posting an image from Flickr - every time I do, they seem to change it! But anyway, I recently got Eastern Express' 1/144 Antonov An-22 "Antei" (NATO reporting name Cock) and Modelsvit's 1/72 Bartini VVA-14. I was surprised that Eastern Express has upped their game and have produced an entirely acceptable model kit. The An-22's mold quality looks similar to MPM on a good day. The clear sprue looks very clear on first inspection. The cockpit is reasonably well represented, certainly much more so than your typical airliner kit. There is no cargo space interior, but the rear doors are molded separately. The wheel wells are fully boxed in but have zero detail. All in all, I like it! The lack of an interior does not bother me, as I want to build it buttoned up. Two similar decal options are provided, one Soviet-era and one CIS Russia era. The wacky Modelsvit Bartini VVA-14 seems a bit rougher, but is still way ahead of early A-Model stuff. The clear parts are a bit cloudy, but a dip in Future should help. The kit represents the initial VTOL configuration (but the lift jets are not installed, same as the real thing), and only has the two dorsally mounted cruise engines. The later modified aircraft had its forward fuselage extended with two more engines to create ground effect lift ala ekranoplan, plus rigid stepped planning hulls for the catamaran floats. The kit provides parts for the initial inflatable floats, both inflated and deflated. Optional bicycle-type landing gear are also provided, which give this weird machine an even weirder look. The wheel wells are boxed in, but again zero detail. The decals have that dreaded dead flat, shatter into a million pieces look, and an online build reported some cracking problems. A spray of clear lacquer or decal film should help. There are two sets of serial numbers for identically painted aircraft in the typical white over grey Aeroflot scheme. Aside from Burt Rutan's more eerie designs, this thing is quite possibly the most alien looking aircraft ever built by humans. The quality is not Tamiya, but I can't wait to get on with this build!

Ron - Thanks for the info, PM inbound! I wasn't aware of the IPMS card thing. Bobmig - I'm from Hawaii, so anything below 70 F is cold! I think the lowest daytime temperature I have experienced was around 52 F. Yeah, I know, we're bad weather sissies. Even the hurricanes are milder here compared to the east coast. Did you guys see our hurricane-smashing volcano in action when Iselle dropped by? Gosh, somebody better get this to the Sci-Fi Channel - "Hurrcane vs Volcano!" Jcorley - We are going to use public transportation all the way, so we don't have to fret about odd stick shift location and right hand drive. (There was this woman with Indian embassy plates driving a huge Range Rover on the wrong side of the street by my office - scary!) My buddy is a huge camera guy and he takes way better photos than I do, so I think photo coverage for the trip has been taken care of. A friend who has been to SMW before also advised me to bring some local food to share, as we know the folks from the Hans Grade Berlin club. I won't be bringing things seen on "Man vs Food" though; heck most of the stuff from the Hawaii episode were super nasty, and probably wouldn't clear TSA & customs anyway!

I missed the IPMS USA junket to Scale Model World at Telford, but I am heading off to witness it firsthand next week! I am super excited, as I have wanted to go since the 1970s. I am traveling with a model buddy and we are on our own, so that means we can dilly-dally to our hearts content when we go to the museums (at least until they kick us out at closing). Anyway, for those in the know, are there any nuggets of wisdom you can share regarding England/Telford? Here's a short of list of things I have been told so far: - England is cold and wet. - The surface trains are less reliable than the subways (tube). - Don't ask for iced tea, unless you want the waitress to laugh at you. - Soda is sometimes served without ice either. - The proportion of competition models pales to the SIG displays. - You won't have enough time to go through all the vendors. - Hannants moves most of their walk-in store to Telford, so don't bother with the store itself during SMW.

Pedro, Aw nuts now I have to buy another one! Thanks for the heads up; I didn't know about the unassembled kits! I may need to buy two to build the flakvierling version as well. I hope i can do them justice like you did!

I love the paint job you have done! I also bought this thing, but was put off because it came semi-assembled, rather badly at that. Did you clean up all the seam lines on the legs? I really wanted a fully unassembled kit, to make clean up easier. I think this design is so far the best looking of the Dust line. Keep up the good work!

I have heard of people using water with a tiny amount of dishwashing soap (to help reduce surface tension). My friend uses rubbing alcohol, the kind found in the medicine cabinet at home, and it worked very well with Tamiya acrylic. HTH

Tamiya brushes poorly, but goes on beautifully when airbrushed. My first experience was when a friend asked for help in airbrushing a model. He used rubbing alcohol for thinner, which worked great. I am an enamel guy, so when I tried Tamiya acrylic on one of my models, I used lacquer thinner with equally great results. My only gripes are that it tends to chip easily and the colors are not all matched to specific military colors. I normally use Testors Model Master enamels more for availability rather than anything else. I'm not sure if this was a fluke or not, but I had unexpectedly good coverage when airbrushing Tamiya Flat Red, so much so that I almost obliterated the camouflage that I wanted to show through on a Fokker Dr.I. I gave the model three highly thinned coats and didn't realize that the paint became more opaque as it dried. A friend also mentioned that Flat White has very good color saturation. For hand painting, my wargaming miniature friend tells me that stuff from Citadel and Vallejo are excellent, and his results are a convincing testimony. A lot of scale guys use them, so it must not be a secret.

My favorites used to be Model Graphix and Hobby Japan, but they became increasingly expensive, and I started to run out of space to store them. HJ began to go more heavily into toys and dolls, and became larger in size and weight, with most of it taken up by advertisements. Plus they switched over to cheaper newsprint-like paper for the back half of the mag. MG has always run a comic, but the current one has absolutely nothing to do with modeling, and it's been running a really long time. And I thought MG's slew of Russia vs Finland-based WW II comics in the 1980s was weird - at least they had modeling subject tie ins. My favorite MG comic was the one with the Ki-108 with the radar equipment that used a human brain(!). I occasionally pick up issues of the various Tamiya mags, MMiR, and others, depending on what's in them. If I could read French, I'd probably buy Replic. There's some fantastic builds in there, and the paintwork is always amazing. The only mag I currently get on a consistent basis is FSM, mostly because I enjoy the review builds, although I don't always agree with their assesments. And of couse, I read the Journal, which has dramatically improved in recent years. My only gripe is that I think the paper it's printed on feels pricier than necessary. Not every issue has stuff that interests me, but hey, it's all good! I recall someone saying that the M60-A2 article was too long, but I really enjoyed it even though I have no intention of building the Tamiya kit. (And even more so after reading about what needed to be done to bring the model up to snuff!)

Gil, I really like your F-84! Vac-form models are a dying art, so it is always nice to see that some people can still build them. I don't like to think of all the vacs I trashed trying to build, and all the ones that got tossed because of the appearance of an injecton molded equivalent. I started my Luft '46 phase just before Huma and MPM/Special Hobby started cranking out plastic kits. I sure wasted a lot of Airmodel vacs...

Thanks Gil! To be honest, most of my entries were last minute substitutes. I seem to have this problem with deadlines and finishing stuff on time, so the Oskar and Dr.I were the only ones that were intended for the Nats. I seem to do better when I am in no hurry to finish a model, but then that leads to 20 year old unfinished projects like the ADP Heli. Kelly, I got to see your USS Truman at Columbus, and I thought it was toally insane! Terrific work, and congrats on getting the best of show.

This is Modelkasten's 1/20 "Oskar", which took a first place at Phoenix 2004. This was my first National Convention, so it was very exciting coming home with an award. The kit comprised a mix of Nitto injection molded Neuspotter parts and resin + vac form plastic by Modlekasten. Note absence of scratches and paint chips - I was in such a rush to get the model finished that I didn't have time for the weathering process. Hopefully Hasegawa will tool an all-injection kit in the near future. This is Roden/Encore's 1/32 Fokker Dr.I, in the much cliched all-red Richthofen scheme. This model took a third place at Phoenix in 2010. This was my first 1/32 scale WW I aircraft model, and it proved to be a finicky build. I'm glad that I didn't choose a British two-bay biplane to build! Decals came from Cutting Edge's "The Baron's Tripes". I tried to replicate the translucent effect of the red paint by painting a standard color scheme with green streaks and white backgrounds for the crosses, but the Tamiya acrylic flat red I used had an unexpectedly dense coverage and nearly obliterated everything under it. Again, note the lack of dirt on the wheels. Same excuse as for the Oskar. This is the ancient Emhar 1/35 British Mark V Male tank. It took a second place at Ohio in 2009. The first place slot was taken by a goregeous Mark IV that completely blew mine out of the water. The name of the builder escapes me, but I got a chance to talk with him during the mad rush after the awards ceremony- he was a very nice fellow. The kit's dreadful tracks were replaced with Panzer Shop's resin ones, which were not all that great but at least were a reasonable facsimilie. I think punched styrene rivets were the only other item that was added to the model. This is Pit Road's 1/20 Jim diving suit. It took a second place in the miscellaneous category at Anaheim in 2007. I found this resin kit in Japan right after I visited the Tokyo Maritime Museum, so I was thriled by my lucky find. The windows were molded solid, so I ground them off, hollowed the head, and added styrene windows and rings. Vac-formed truncated cones simulated the thick walls of the suit. The stand came with the kit, which was a really nice touch. And finally, a scratchbuilt 1/72 ADP Helicopter from the Japanese anime "Bubblegum Crisis." It took a first and best sci-fi award at this year's convention at Orlando. Materials used include sheet styrene, Miliput epoxy putty, and blister packaging for the canopy and patrol lights. The model was started back in the late 1980s and sat mostly dormant for 20-odd years before being dusted off and finished. I think this is one of the few times I took a photo of a model with its awards - they were so pretty I just had to.

I don't recall the total number of entrants and their entries being announced at the awards ceremony. Does anyone know what they were? Inquiring minds want to know. BTW, a big "Thank You" to all who made this year's Nats happen!