
Matt Bacon
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Filling And Sanding in Tight Areas?
Matt Bacon replied to impcon's topic in Model Building Questions and Answers
It was those needles I was trying to find! Where are they from, then? bestest, M. -
Not sure what relevance the B-52 has to the discussion -- I didn't say that old technology couldn't be reliable. There are enough 1920s racing cars, 1940s warbirds and 1900s steam engines around in the UK for that to be a given, for me, not to mention the odd 150-year old wooden ship. You're the one who is claiming that NEW technology is bound to be less reliable because it's more complex -- where's the evidence of that from a B-52? Secondly, the 777 is pretty far from all-composite structure -- about 10%, IIRC. I covered aerospace for an engineering materials magazine in the early 90s, and saw the parts being tested at Boeing, so I know what goes into one. You want an ALL-composite airframe, you'll struggle to find one since the Beech Starship -- maybe the Rutan/Virgin White Knight... The 787 is up to about half composite materials. And of course, it's "yet to be seen" how long aircraft with significant amounts of composite material fly for -- they're designed to fly for a lot longer than they've been in service for. What I do know is that all the materials science, all the extensive fatigue testing to get the things certified over the last 20 years, and all the increasingly incredible computer modelling work that's been done on the materials and structures suggests that they have massively better resistance to corrosion and fatigue than any metal. ...and I wasn't thinking of the F-22 or F-35. If the Pentagon wants to procure aircraft designed to "fight the last war rather than the next one" that's its prerogative, and it's up to you as US taxpayers to tell them whether you want them to or not. Anyway, that's a doctrinal problem, not an engineering one. As for "serviced in combat conditions" -- what does that really mean? The track record of serviceability of Russian supplied MiG 29s around the world isn't anything to write home about, let alone in an actual combat scenario (if you can find one...). A Mig-35 is state of the art modern fighter with the latest Russian and Western electronics systems onboard, intended to compete (note, not "fight") with the Super Hornet, Rafale, Typhoon or Gripen. It's hardly an "austere" fighter for lengthy remote deployments in the field. I don't doubt that it's much more easily serviced in the field than an F-22, but then so's the Starship Enterprise, as has been repeatedly proven... Anyway, I'm not saying that older technology is unreliable. You're asserting that new technology inevitably is. None of those points provides any evidence for that... bestest, M.
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Yeah, this new-fangled technology is so unreliable that they're designing airliners that will be flying 100 years after they entered service, and frontline fighter jets that'll operate for the same timespan that separated the Wright Brothers from the Bell X-1. All they'll get is software upgrades in that time. People don't get rid of two year old smartphones because they don't work, they get rid of them because fashion and "look at me" make them want to. You're not going to fix that with engineering, no matter how good it is. For a long time, American cars were designed around bad but straight roads, long distances, cheap gasoline, and the frontier ideal that anything that the good ol' boys at the local blacksmith couldn't fix was a pointless complexity. That past is another country; we do things differently now. And as someone once said, "If you ain't part of the solution, you're part of the problem", and I'm darn glad that Ford has decided to be part of the solution... bestest, M. (and no, I don't spend the whole day with my head under the hood; equally, I don't think that the fact that you guys don't spend your lives designing mobile phones means that you're unable to have an informed opinion about them, either...)
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But the new engines are built with materials, engineering tolerances, build quality and full computer modelling of combustion, heat, flow etc that engineers even ten years ago couldn't dream of. That's why companies are increasingly happy to extend warranties out as far as seven or more years -- you don't think they'd do that if somehow things were becoming LESS reliable as technology progressed, do you? A turbo's not actually a complex device. And my brother in law's built enough of them over the years to know how dramatically things have moved on there, as well. These days, there's no argument for Keep It Stupidly Simple as an engineering principle... bestest,M .
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Filling And Sanding in Tight Areas?
Matt Bacon replied to impcon's topic in Model Building Questions and Answers
There are some options: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234971934-ultimate-sanders/ http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234971924-moulding-flash-sanders/ http://www.artcotools.com/sanding-sticks.html http://www.riogrande.com/Product/Half-Round-Sanding-Sticks/337593?Pos=2 http://www.ratomodeling.com/reviews/flory_sticks/ or even: http://www.walmart.com/ip/BMC-9pc-Assorted-Sized-Mix-Ombre-Colored-Glass-Manicure-Nail-Buffer-File-Set/39323720 With the nail tools, they are usually a sanding grit surface on top of some foam on top of a hard polythene base. You can cut and shape the ends to any size/width/point you want... In general a visit to the "Nail care" section of your favourite local chemist/druggist/pharmacy/superstore often turns up useful modelling tools! bestest, M. -
Money's no object, eh....? In no particular order: 1. Series "1.5' Jaguar E-type coupe, "fine-tuned" by Eagle 2. Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato 3. Ferrari 250 SWB 4. Alfa Romeo 6C 1500 5. McLaren F1 6. Jaguar XKSS 7. Avro 720 Mirage 8. Lotus Elan S2 9. Audi RS6 Avant (gotta have at least one "practical" car) 10. Ferrari 458 Italia Speciale (honorable mentions to the Eagle Low Drag GT, 240Z, Triumph GT6 and Alfa Giulietta Sprint GTA) bestest, M.
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Real or Model #230 FINISHED!
Matt Bacon replied to Harry P.'s topic in Real or Model? / Auto ID Quiz
I'm saying model. But probably not the one that's sitting in my cabinet... bestest, M. -
This is it - The all new Ford GT
Matt Bacon replied to carsntrucks4you's topic in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
...straight six sounds a LOT nicer than any gnarly old V8, anyway... just sayin' ;-P I'm not sure why there's such a fuss about "the last Ford V8/Ferrari V12/whatever"... Technology moves on. I doubt they sat around for long in the 20s lamenting the "last 12 litre four", or the "last of the real two-cylinders". Personally, I think it's staggering how quickly over the last ten years the power and performance of small turbocharged engines and hybrid drive systems have developed. No one's repeating Clarkson's claim from a couple of years ago that "the supercar is dead", are they? The P1, LaFerrari and 918 are the vanguard of a new kind of supercar that the new NSX and GT are following, and I say "more power to them!". I expect most supercars in the future to have small, high-revving fossil fuel powered generators driving electric powertrains with KERS and batteries, and if one day Jaguar manage to build one with microturbines instead of reciprocating engines, then "Allelujah" say I. The big difference from the 90s and earlier is that today, the things (power/weight, battery technology, energy recovery and management, maximum fuel efficiency, aero, active electronics...) that people learn about from building these hybrid hyper cars have direct relevance to mass market mainstream cars as well. You couldn't really say that about a carbon-tubbed wedge with a V12 that runs to 9000rpm, or an unaerodynamic lump propelled to stratospheric speed by a 7-litre V8... I think if you base your judgement of the quality/value/importance of a car largely on what the engine sounds like, you're missing a few other important points... bestest, M. -
Assembly more or less finished (though I mustn't forget to add the little front quarter indicator repeaters or reflectors). The sharp-eyed will notice that I've turned the wing round, thanks to a timely heads-up from a fellow modeller. And yes, the doors do open, and stay open. Now to find out if they close! Clean it up, touch up the paint, and then time for decals... bestest, M.
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Definitely Hasegawa. If you have luck, and the $$$, you can get this one: Otherwise, the standard curbside "early production" is still on sale in some places, and there's another curbside race version around that appears every now and then on auction sites. None of them have an LH drive dash, but at least the dash top is symmetrical, so the surgery to "flip it" is probably do-able, but certainly not easy. bestest, M.
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Thanks, Jon! Now the doors are on. The first thing I did was to apply silicone "Plastic Parts Grease" (from the bike store) to the hinge pins on the door arm, and the inside of the socket on the car body. This lubricates the mechanism and, more importantly, stops any kind of glue capillarying inside the hinge and locking it up. After some trying and cursing, I discovered the best way to deal with the door struts is to pop them into the hole in the body, and hold the body shell at angle so you can slide the relevant slot in the door over the hanging strut as you manoeuvre it into position. Once the door was solidly in place, I taped it shut and did the next one. There's a square cover that holds the door hinge in position inside the car. I'd scraped the paint off the plastic around the hinge, and left the cover unpainted, so we had a good plastic to plastic contact all around. I then used plastic cement to stick the cover in place, and left it overnight. I figure that sometimes you can get a lot of leverage on doors like this that might pop a superglued cover off, and I wanted to be sure that once the body was in place it wouldn't need to come off again to retrieve a tiny scrap of plastic. The extension of the strut inside the body makes it harder to put the body over the chassis, and you need to flex it rather more, which I also didn't want to have to do too often. Which leaves us here: The last thing I discovered was don't try to put the front wing on when the instructions tell you! I could NOT get it to fit properly onto a bare shell, but for some reason if you attach it last of all, with the chassis in place, it fits perfectly and attaches to the front edge of the chassis plate very nicely. So the body isn't coming off again. Acid test on the doors still to come, but at least the engine cover opens and closes perfectly! bestest, M.
- 16 replies
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Thanks! Now for a couple of updates in one, since I've been moving along but haven't got around to posting the pics. This is the insides coming together. It's great to have a separate headliner, which can be painted independently. The real thing is more grey Alcantara so this is Vallejo German Grey, heavily drybrushed, decals added and then matt varnished. The silvering on the decals is a lot less obvious when it's the right way up! Back end going together. This is where reading the instructions carefully at the start of the build to figure out all the parts that could be joined to the body and painted yellow at the outset. The instructions would have you add the extreme lower rear of the body shell at the same time as the wing. This way you can glue them on unpainted plastic for strength, prime and paint all together, rather than trying to tack them on at the end. The headlights are very neat, though you do have to wrangle some pretty tiny parts. My "dopping stick" (a cocktail stick with a very small blob of Blu-Tac on the end) came in handy here. It's best to open out the holes for the head light locating pins slightly, and also check the stalks on the back of the lenses for flash that might get in the way. Another mock up. The small "quarter-light" windows behind the doors are a bit tricky, and the instructions don't help much. If you look inside the car, on the interior roofline of the window, you can see a small tab and slot into which the projection on the top of the window fits. You need to engage these with an "up and under" that leaves the bottom edge of the window INSIDE the car body, and then swing the bottom edge out into position. You can't add the windows purely from outside, as the instructions seem to show... The engine completed. There are some wires UNDER the Y-piece that comes out of the back and around the exhaust box, but you can't really see them. The only wires that really make a difference are the two pairs coming from the front of the rocker covers and disappearing back under the intake manifold. I decided to go for raised inlets -- anything that separates the parts a bit will make it harder to spot the slight differences in colour between parts that were sprayed separately. The mirror close up is here for two reasons. First, it's really not so easy to see how the two parts of the mirror fit together in the instructions, and it's slightly counterintuitive when you are telling yourself that the "legs" need to mount onto a flat surface ahead of the door window. This is how they should look. The second reason is that the seam between the small leg of the mirror housing and the main part is the ONLY place on this entire model where I have used any filler at all. The fit is extraordinary. The second picture neatly demonstrates that if you put the mirrors on before fixing the doors, a dispenser of Tamiya 6mm masking tape is exactly the right thickness to prop the doors up with the mirrors vertical while your glue sets. These are attached with "Serious Glue", which takes about 3 minutes to "grab" and a couple of hours to set. But it's a lot tougher and more resilient than super glue, so if you knock a mirror it's not going to "ping off" taking some paintwork with it... Next -- putting it all together. bestest, M.
- 16 replies
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I think one of their flesh tones is more or less bang on: If that's the "tobacco" colour you're thinking of, of course... I think that's "golden flesh", IIRC. bestest, M.
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The Fujimi, Heller and Union kits are all pretty easy to find, certainly this side of the pond, and they all have Gulf livery boxings... if you want one, they are out there. bestest, M.
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Can anyone identify this car/kit?
Matt Bacon replied to Matt Bacon's topic in Model Building Questions and Answers
I guess it isn't, strictly, a Ford. It was designed and built by Alan Mann Racing, with aerodynamics by a guy "on loan" from Ford, and a Ford 3 litre DFV V8. So it's really it's no more a Ford than the Lotus, Brabham, Matra, Tyrell, Lola... etc, etc. F1 cars that were built around the same engine... Maybe that's why... bestest, M. -
Odd to see this one pop back to life! Thanks for the kind words, all. Gerry, the interior is done with Vallejo Model Air colours: yellow and fiery red mixed to give the orange, then it's slightly "toned down" (believe it or not) with some of their "medium flesh tone" which is more of a golden brown... bestest, M.
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...errr, did you miss the LaFerrari? I don't think there's ANY evidence that Tamiya is losing interest in the plastic car market... bestest, M.
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There's a great article on the collection and the "discovery" in the latest "Octane" magazine. One thing to remember is that when he was buying these cars, there was no "classic car" market. Those were the days when a five year old Ferrari 250TR racecar was pretty much worthless after it had been through a couple of privateers' hands. He bought "old" cars, many of which were in pretty dodgy condition when he bought them. It's only following the establishment of the "investment" classic car market that it's become rational to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a restoration of the basket cases that many of them are... bestest, M.
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Thanks, Mike -- I expect to have this done by the weekend so you can see what the "vanilla" version gives you. If the HD stuff fits (always a question mark, in my experience) then I think it'll certainly benefit the grilles etc, though as you can see there are some reasonably complex shapes to form around the back end. If you do that, though, you will be able to see into the rear suspension structure and engine, which might lead you more towards the full engine kit. BUT... the kit as it stands is very well engineered to give you good replicas of the parts that you can see, but also to have a strong and easy to build chassis/suspension set-up, and a simple and painless way of attaching the body to the chassis. If you open out the back end, you'll be needing to scratch build a lot of more "real-life" structure under there, not just the engine, AND find a way of mounting the rear end of the body to the chassis sturdily. I've looked at a lot of photos, and the engine really does have some sort of "box" around it, and the photos I've found online don't make it at all clear whether that box really has a "floor" around the engine block -- which means that it's really not that easy to see.If you are convinced that the engine sits in the middle of an open bay, then the simpler solution would be to paint the floor black instead of silver. And if you have some good, well-lit overhead pictures to work from that I haven't found, paint some "fake" detailing on that floor in dark shades of grey and silver. You'll only ever see it by looking in from directly above with the engine cover open, so there's only one viewing angle that it needs to look realistic from... See what you think come the weekend... bestest, M.
- 16 replies
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Aoshima Countach and Aventador for 2015
Matt Bacon replied to martinfan5's topic in Car Kit News & Reviews
Well, here's the 650S at the same kind of resolution: And here's a Huracan: I know which one I think it is.... Much as I'd love a 650S from Aoshima, I think the wide black "smile" and the contrast colours of the scoops along the sides would be more visible in the "teaser". Either way, though , I'll buy it, since I think the Huracan is super cool as well... bestest, M. -
Aoshima Countach and Aventador for 2015
Matt Bacon replied to martinfan5's topic in Car Kit News & Reviews
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Thanks, Dennis! Something that I only just noticed, looking at those last two pictures, is how much of the "design DNA" of the original Countach is lurking there under the 21st Century aero that will be added soon... bestest, M.
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Thanks! The engineering and fit of this kit continues to impress. The red and orange transparencies are provided pre-tinted, which removes one irritating task. I scraped the plating off the top edges of the one-piece light bar, and attached the clear pieces with Formula 560 Canopy glue. The untinted thin pieces at the bottom are handed and need to be checked carefully before applying. They form a < joint with the red parts that fits perfectly. I wish more car models came with a proper headlining piece -- so much easier to paint. This is grey Alcantara, so it's heavily drybrushed, decalled, matt varnished and detail painted. The rear engine bay liner is a neat single piece moulding that responds well to some detail painting. I'm still not quite sure what holds the engine cover hinges, but it won't be long before I find out! Couldn't resist trying it for size. Very thoughtful engineering helps here, too -- the chassis simply clips into just flexible enough retaining brackets front and rear, so it's easy to clip together and take apart. Aoshima provide excellent masks for the clear parts -- just beware that the number and letters of clear part and masks for the three octagonal windows in the engine cover are mixed up (it's obvious which mask really fits which window) and more importantly that the windows fit with the clear edges to the rear, not the black borders as shown. Lots of small bits and pieces still to do, but I really like the way it's coming together. bestest, M.
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Interesting tech from Airfix
Matt Bacon replied to Bennyg's topic in General Automotive Talk (Trucks and Cars)
I think they're pretty good. And although they don't state a scale, it's pretty clear that the Aventador is 1/24; It took my son (an 18 year old Lego expert) about 20 minutes to build and sticker. It went together pretty straightforwardly, and as you can see, compares pretty well shape and detail wise with the Aoshima model that I have on my shelf. If you want a 1/24 McLaren P1 on your shelf in 2015, this may be the best way to get it! bestest, M. -
Thanks -- he's an owner with taste and money, you see... Slow but steady progress... A real symphony of black on black, hence the fact I've 'borrowed" the orange e-gear and paddles from a non-SV Murcielago special edition to brighten things up a bit... A lot of the cockpit is black or grey Alcantara, so I've tried to mix up the textures somewhat. The engine out of the box. I'll busy it up a bit, but you really can't see the plug wiring under the intake manifold/airbox... ...and I couldn't resist a little test to see how it all goes together... bestest, M.
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