Pete J.

Got my reservations already!

Are you a collector or a builder? That is a question only you can answer. For me, I am a builder with a stash, not a collector with a collection. Difference? I intended to build every one of the 300+ models have when I bought them. Still do!?

Don, these are not models he built. They are cast pieces created for recognition classes in the military and were collected by his grandfather. As such they are quite old and knowing how early rubber/plastic ages, they have probably warped badly and are damaged. I would bet the Lancaster is 80 or more years old so depending on how they have been stored it is even lucky to be around. They are collectible as WWII and Cold war military items.

110 inches. 5280' X 1.5 = 7,920' 7920 '/72 = 110" or about 9 feet. That would work well as a classroom teaching aid. I seem to recall film of a class with the instructor up front flashing the models and the students responding.

Being an old guy has some advantages in strange subjects like this. When I was in college, drafting was a required course. Now this was back when rudimentary computers filled a very large room and were fed punch cards and the computing time was "over night". CAD was still decades away, but back to the story. Long before plastic models, all designs were drawn on large pieces of paper by humans called draftsmen. Because you couldn't make a full sized drawing of something the size of the Titanic or a building, scale was invented. Now the story is everyone had their own scale and to get the huge rooms of draftsmen to all do things the same, they invented a standardized ruler called a "Scale". These were triangular shaped rulers with each side having 4 different graduations on each side(each edge had one scale going from left to right and one going right to left. This allowed you to have 12 scales per ruler. All drawings or "blue prints" then had a legend in the corner that that stated the side of the rule used like 1"= 24" or 1/24 The rules came in two types. An engineers scale and and architects scale. The architects scale was in divisions of 12 to make it easier to design large things like buildings because at the time, large objects were build in feet and inches. Engineers scales were broken down in divisions of 10 because most machine tools made small things that were calibrated in thousandths of an inch. If you are interested, you can still buy these rulers from any drafting supply house or even amazon. They can still come in handy. As to the metric scale, you could use an engineers scale which has 10 divisions but then the drawing itself would be done in inches, so they created a metric scale which was an engineers scale but the base dimension was a centimetre. I hope some find this interesting.

Wow, once again I am way off base. Right country this time. Great story though.

Many of these rules are indeed anarchic carry overs from a prior time. However the FIA sometimes used them to effect who could race. More than once a team was disqualified for not meeting such rules when the sanctioning body did not like the team. This was not limited to the FIA. It has been a common tactic through out the history of racing.

This and other rules of the time always tickled me! Two other rules were the requirement for two seats and a spare tire. Both great if you blow a tire going down the Mulsanne straight. You could toss your riding mechanic out and have him change the tire. ?

Same here. Oh well

There are some really odd styling cues on this one!

AC Gilbert also owned American Flyer trains. I still have mine from the 50's in the original box. I remember coming down Christmas morning and my dad had worked most of the night setting it up on a sheet of plywood and it was running. I spent many an hour playing with it. It had three main accessories. A road sign sign that was a train whistle, a mail car that picked up and dropped of a mail bag on the fly, and a train depot that had a little record player in it that played train stations sounds. I suppose it is worth something today, but it is a part of my past and I wouldn't sell it.

Looks pretty close but the real deal doesn't look to be high gloss. A lot of the race cars of that era didn't have a clear coat on them. Less paint, less weight. Remember a gallon of paint weighs about 8 pounds. Had an interesting discussion with Lee Holman(Holman-Moody racing) several years ago. the florescent pink flashes were hardware store rattle cans, his dad sent him out to get just before the race, so there is no reference for the color.

Randy, I spent many an hour under the hood of my 74 911. It was a later model but I am very familiar with that engine. Superb replica! Hopefully you are going to put that engine on a stand outside of the model, otherwise all that great detail gets lost under the body work. Can't wait to see that rest of it.

Zap Formula 560 canopy glue. Been using it for years because unlike a lot of other glues it gets tacky very quickly, so you are not left sitting there holding a part in place while the stuff dries. It also is not a super adhesive in that if you bump a part off, it is not likely to take off a chunk of paint. Dries perfectly clear and cleans up with water! https://www.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?I=PAAR3300

OOPS, Saw the england, missed the new. ?

Oh, yes! Even schedule 40 is not meant for compressed air. Unlike metal pipe, PVC turns into shrapnel when it blows. Never do that, please! Here is a web site on the subject. Worth reading. https://www.pvcfittingsonline.com/resource-center/using-pvc-pipe-for-compressed-air/

Peter, on this side of the pond to meet DOT standards they have to be coated inside and out to prevent corrosion. When I plumbed it, I stood it vertically so there was a fitting in the bottom. I put a ball valve in that end and drain it regularly. I get far more water out of the pancake tank then I ever get out of the reservoir. What I get out of the reservoir after 30 years is still clear water. The pancake almost always is rusty. If I know the DOT, the replacement is out of an abundance of caution. It is more likely that the fittings would fail because of the vibration of constant use on the roads. At any rate, on the road it would get far more abuse than sitting in my shop. Yes, it was a new one. They scrap them because each truck company has it's own proprietary design. As the trucks age, the NOS is tossed.

Main reason I buy so much stuff from Hobby Link Japan(other than great prices). Every thing is shrink warped to a flat piece of cardboard and than loaded in a sturdy box that has plenty of space on all sides. Never had anything from them arrive in any condition other than perfect.

I created my own air reserve tank from a truck air brake reservoir. It is a 5 gallon tank and rated at 150 psi continuous. I got it from a neighbor who was a diesel mechanic when they were scraping some unused parts. Apparently they replace these with some frequency and are quite cheap, but you know if they are used on a road going semi they will more than stand up to whatever my compressor can throw at it. Mine has been working with a Craftsman black pancake compressor for well over 30 years. It adds enough reserve to run an airbrush all night long.

The wheels had me going. I would swear that I had seen them before on a Bertone designed car, but couldn't find it. I think I spent way to much time hunting Bertone designed cars. It does have the Bertone wedge shape that was so popular for that time period.

I have an Iwata LPH 50. This is one of the guns that Paul talks about. I bought it when my Badger crescendo died. At the time I was painting a 1:12 Porsche 935 and needed something that could put down wider swath of paint than the largest airbrush. As it happened that there was a seminar at a paint shop that a friend worked in and he talked me into going. The presenter happened to be Craig Frazier! He used the gun to show us how to do art work on cars. Well, I was hooked and got one with all three tips and needles. I've had it for quite a while and use the heck out of it. I like the fact that it works at a very low pressure and puts out a consistent fan pattern. It did take me a while to figure it out though. The trick is that you have to have two pressure valves. One on the compressor and one on the gun. The compressor needs to be at 40 PSI and the gun at 13 psi when the needle is open. The down side of this gun is that it uses a lot of air. A silent airbrush compressor just won't keep up with it. Neither will a small tank-less compressor , thus the reason it is a HVLP(high volume low pressure). The gun can be had with any or all three tips .4mm,.6mm or 1mm. Selecting the right one is dependent on the dilution and type of paint you are spraying. The .4mm tip will spray down to a 1/4" and the 1mm up to 4". To give you an idea for the versatility of this gun, I used it three days ago to paint the trim for my kids house. I was spraying Sherwin-williams Sherwood lacquer for wood. It did an outstanding job. Just to be blunt, it is not for everyone and should not be bought as your only brush. It is great when you have to paint large swaths and can function as at smaller airbrush. I can paint 1:24 scale car bodies with three passes(one across the top and one on each side with overlap) but it takes practice and I would not suggest doing it the first time on your contest entry. It does take a slightly different process but you get use to it. Of course the other down side is that it lists for $500 with one tip. It can be had for less than $350 with careful shopping. FYI I also own a Tamiya HG, and an HG fine and got the old Crescendo refurbish and use all of them for different things. Hope this helps!

Yup, that's the stuff.

On of the main issues that make photos of models look odd is the distortion that you get by using the Macro setting to get really close to the subject. When you get too close the photo distorts around the edge giving straight lines a curve. To avoid that, most photography instructions suggest setting the camera about 3 or more feet away and use the telephoto to get close. A good DSLR will accommodate that nicely. You get far less distortion. Another trick when using a DSLR is to use aperture priority to vary the depth of field. If you open the aperture up, the background will blur and give a more realistic photo. Some of the new phone cameras will allow this adjustment as well, but you are still limited by the size of the lens and sensor. Getting a realistic depth of field is what gives the photo realism. White balance is very important for all model photos. Most DSLRs allow the user to to create a custom white balance by sampling a sheet of very white printer paper and the camera will adjust for any kind of light. I switched out my incandescent lights in my photo booth for LEDs some time back and had to resample for white balance. Interestingly, the LEDs seemed almost spot on to begin with, but setting a custom white balance is not that difficult and most cameras will save several custom white balances. Also a custom white balance workes best if you are using a light colored background. Some digital cameras will assume that the back ground is white and that changes the colors of everything. The other thing to keep in mind is scale distance. Consider this. When you see a car, you view it from "eye" level or somewhere between 5 and 6 feet above ground level. This is what we are use to seeing. To look natural, the photo should be taken from an angle that replicates that "low" angle. In otherwords on a 1:24 scale model no more that an angle that is at about 3 inches above ground level(6 inches in 1:24 scale). This is a "natural" angle that will give the brain the image it expects. I also like shooting very low angle photos of models they look very nice that way.

For me it was the rims and steering wheel that gave it away. Definitely one of the 356 based models . Took me far less time that I thought it would

Bingo!