Pete J.

The aircraft guys have a similar running joke about the BF-109. Of course it doesn't help that the Germans produced a ton of variants and used them in about every theater of war. Now, we are starting to see the war reparations versions. These are the variants that were confiscated by the victors after the war. Tamiya just came out with the Swiss version(no it is not full of holes!?). When I last counted Tamiya currently has 5 versions in its current catalog in 1:48 scale alone. Ever manufacturer has at least a couple. You go into a hobby shop(yea there are a few left) and you can have a full shelf dedicated to the 109 all by itself.

Pretty much the argument for any builder. You build what you are interested in, but this thread is about the "out of the box" experience and the ease and quality of the build. In ease and quality it is hard to find anyone who does it better than Tamiya. From following your builds, it seems you are focused on 'merican iron.? Tamiya really doesn't have much other than the new Ford GT some old Fox bodied Mustangs and some jeeps. However is you are into american motorcycles, they have a plethora of Harley Davidson bikes. If you have any interest in motorcycles, they are really fun builds and not stupid expensive for a Tamiya model. Just something to consider.?

Ok, this is probably the Goliath of all out of the box automotive builds. Just add paint, glue and a ton of time! Best ever although I have never seen on completed.

Don't forget the kit that was the grandfather to the LFA and NSX kit, the Tamiya Enzo,

Sorry I didn't make the point very well. It was clear in my mind! I was alluding to limited access to the railroad right of way. Pedestrians and other non railroad vehicles have extremely limited access to the land and rails that trains run on. In other words, trains have limited interference from uncontrolled vehicles. Even with that, every year some one manages to be on the tracks when the train comes through. My point was that if you could get rid of everything but autonomous controlled vehicles, then that is far easier to make work than mixing autonomous vehicles with the random driving habits of human drivers and pedestrians.

Ok, here is how the SAE defines the differant levels of self driving. Adaptive cruise control and lane centering puts you at level 1+ to the beginnings of level 2. Each step up the ladder requires a quantitative leap in engineering that just isn't anywhere yet. Yes, we may have self driving cars at some point but we just aren't any where close and there is a lot of tech that needs to happen. I am 70 and think it is highly unlikely that I will see a level 3 car much less 4 or 5 in my lifetime. Actually I think it would be easier to go straight to 5. However you would have to ban all non autonomous vehicles from the road and severely limit the access of pedestrians to roadways. Kind of like what they do with railroads. but we all know that ain't happening!

In that era, a lot of differant manufactures tried multi wheel setups. The P34 was the only one to compete for two seasons and actually be competitive. Ferrari even tried an 8 wheel version. You really have to give them prop's for being open to radical ideas. Having seen the real deal in Tamiya's HQ I was stunned by the small size of the front tires. They were not much larger than a standard go kart tire. I can't imagine the forces on those little bitty tires spinning at 200 mph. It took some superb engineering to just hold them together much less make them work! Oh, and being a fan of the P34 I tried my hand at a custom Acura.

Well said Mark. ?

I pride myself in being able to slam my MR2 into a corner, find the right gear and if necessary double clutch to slide into a lower gear. I love that car and wouldn't trade it for anything. On the other hand twice a month I drive over 300 miles round trip up the 405 to pick up my grandson for a weekend visit. For you who don't know the infamous 405 it is bar none, the most congested and heavily traveled road in the US. 5 to 6 lanes for 80 mph chaos part of the way and bumper to bumper headaches the rest of the way. Look it up- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_405_(California) If I leave at 8 am I will get back home at between 4 and 6 pm. To make that drive I have a 2020 Camry loaded with every option available. I have a full on navigation suite which keeps me apprised of traffic congestion. The cruise control works in bumper to bumper traffic, keeping me progressing without any effort on my part(yes it slows as slow to 1 mph and progresses when the traffic ahead starts to move). It has a heads up display that gives me pertinent date and speed so I can keep my eye on the other drivers. It has a infotainment system that I can play just about kind of music I want or listen to podcast, to keep me from hollering obscenities in front of my 4 year old grandson and lowers my blood pressure. I short, it has a lot of techno gadgets. I wouldn't give up either car. I simply would lose my mind if I had to drive the MR2 on that drive. There also no way I would take the Camry to track day. As differant as a screwdriver and hammer. Tools for doing differant jobs. In may cases I envy people who live in other areas and can have a single vehicle to do everything, but there are those of us who need the old cars for pleasure and newer ones to get from point a to point b. The Technology just works better in the highly congested world I live in.

People wonder why some manufacturers kits are better than others. Quality control lives at some companies and not others. I remember touring the Tamiya plant in Japan and was surprised to see a small room of people grabbing random kits off the assembly line and putting them together. No paint or anything else just gluing all the parts together. When asked I was told that any one of them could shut the line down if something didn't fit. At that moment, I came to understand why their kits cost more! You get what you pay for.

Far and away the best discussion of were we are with self driving cars. https://www.thirteen.org/programs/nova/look-whos-driving-preview-yhrhty/

Very nice Mark! Tamiya does a good job on everything but the darned Phillips head screws! I will never understand why they can't come up with little hex heads. I it's just so jarring to my eye to see everything so well executed except that and they do that on every bike!

I just had an amazing experience. I knocked a tire and rim off my work bench. I saw it roll under the bench and immediately bent down to retrieve it. My initial inspection resulted in no site of it. Then out of the corner of my eye, I caught something rolling out the garage door! It was my tire and rim and was headed down the drive way(slopping down away from the garage) toward the street. I managed to head it off just before it reached the storm drain! I wonder how many other parts are in the storm drain??

By the way, his evil cousin haunts my garage and does the same thing with tools and car parts! Both have become more active since I retired too!

Yup, that shadow you saw out of the corner of you eye? That was the gremlin! Strange sense of humor too. Not only steals parts and hides parts and gives them back long after you have finished the model but does the same thing with kits! I have hunted for a kit I know I have in my stash 'cause I want to build it. It is gone! No sign of it! I go buy a new one and Presto! It is sitting on the shelf over my desk, plain as day! Little bugger is evil I say! Evil!

I do two things. I use super glue and I pin the part in place. Super glue is great for this because you can break it loose with some heat. A quick heating with a propane torch will destroy the glue bond in a matter of seconds. There is a third option that I have just discovered and it could work as well. See Mark Jones Lola T-70 build. He uses miniature rare earth magnets. I'm excited to give this a try.

I remember this from some time ago and wondered where it was. Thanks for posting it.

I have two Iwata/Tamiya brushes, an Iwata HVLP mini gun, and a Badger 175 Crescendo that I use currently. I have owned old Badger single action siphon feeds, Aztek and Testors dual action and a Paasche H. Of all of those, the most versatile brush in the Badger 175-7 kit. You can pick it up for about $100. What makes it so flexible is that that kit comes with three tips and needles (Fine, medium and wide). It also has sipon feed jars, a gravity feed cup and hose. The brush is designed to use the standard friction fit bottles(which you can get cheap on line). The plastic bottles come in a wide range of sizes/ 1 oz. and up. This one brush will give you the ability to experiment to find what is best for you and how you paint. Like most "Jack of all trades" tools, this is not the best at everything, but it is good enough to teach the basics. At some point just know that you will want to get another specialty brush but for a beginner it really covers all the bases. It also has a very fat body which is comfortable in my hand. ?

I like that for general lighting but I needed something different for my lathe. My old gooseneck magnifying light when out after 20 or so years of faithful service. I tried a lot of LEDs lights and really found most of them to harsh and they really created a problem with shadows. I found this one on Amazon and was truly blow away by it for the price. Being just of 30" long really meant that it put out a lot of light. It is also adjustable for brightness and color of light from a cold blue to a very warm yellow. I would buy one again for close in work if I needed it. Nice well made piece. https://www.amazon.com/PHIVE-Architect-Bright-Drafting-Brightness/dp/B07MHH9Q7B/ref=pd_bap_rp_25?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=1XWTXNS5ZXS6Z5R9F72R

There is a lot of good advice here from people with experience. However here is a suggestions for you. Go to the dentist! No, I'm serious. Paul Budzik is a dentist who builds amazing models and is a meticulous technician. He has several videos on his web site that go into the whys and where as is of airbrushes. They are great tutorials and can give you a better idea of what may suite you best. Here is the link to his site. https://paulbudzik.com/scale-model-workshop-videos/scale-model-workshop-videos.html

Hey Kenny, this question come up here often and it wouldn't be a bad idea to search this website to see what everyone is saying. I have been through the same thing you are about to get into. I started 50 years ago with a very cheap plastic siphon feed Badger with canned air. You can still buy them. However over the last 50 years I have owned at least 6 other, more expensive brushes, that I can remember. So here is my advice. First off, you need to define what you are going to do with it. Do you build a lot of models and plan on using it for years or do you just make an occasional model and you just want to see if you like an airbrush? If you don't plan on building a lot of models and you are just experimenting, a cheap brush is an option, however keep in mind that a cheap one may cause you some frustration and make you give up on airbrushing without giving yourself a fair chance to learn how to work with the tool. Second, if you are going to jump in with both feet, then you need to define what painting you are going to do and pick an airbrush that does that well. For example, if you spend a lot of money, get a fine line brush and you plan on painting 1:12 scale bodies, you are going to hate airbrushing. An expensive brush or a cheap one won't do any more than it was intended to do. You need a brush with a large tip and spray pattern for larger areas. There are some brushes out there that have a reasonable cost and come with different tips to do different things. This would give you a chance to experiment without buying several differant brushes. The one brush that comes to mind for me, is the Badger 175 Crescendo starter kit with three tips. I have had one for over 20 years and it still serves me well. I currently own three other brushes but that is a different story altogether. Last is the compressor. Basically, the brush doesn't care what compressor you use as long as it provides a clean, dry, adjustable stream of air. It doesn't matter to airbrush if it is a cheap can of air or a 500 gallon commercial compressor as long as it gets the air it needs consistently. Beyond that you need to decide what you need, for instance you may live in an apartment and need to keep the noise down so a silent, airbrush only, compressor is what you need. Or you may have a large workshop and run a lot of air tools, so a good quality machine with a storage tank may be the ticket. A lot of my friends who need quite swear by compressed CO2 bottles. The type that they use in soda fountains. They are fairly cheap to refill once you buy the container. There are probably as many air sources out there as there are airbrushes, so take your pick, but get what suits you. So which of the two should you buy? For $50 it really doesn't matter. The no name with a compressor is going to be cheap all the way around, but if you are just experimenting, than it may be a good choice because it will teach you what you need in your next setup. Just know that you will be replacing in sooner rather than later to get a better quality setup if you are going to use it a lot. The Testors will probably last you longer but I wouldn't think much longer. Figure out what you really will be doing and get the brush that suits you, but remember this, the magic is in the magician, not the wand! A top quality airbrush will not improve your paint job. Only educating yourself on how to use an airbrush will do that.

It has always been true that small quantities cost more the large. The smaller the breakdown, the greater the difference. That is why I have avoided "For Models" products as often as I can. I buy sanding sticks in packs of 50 or 100 direct from the manufacture. I buy paint in quarts at the auto store if it is something I will use over time(I still have quarts of black, white and Ferrari red lacquer in my cabinet). For metal, I buy it from IMS online or I go down to the local iron store and buy what I need by the foot. Now this isn't going to work for the casual model build who only builds a couple of models a year, but I've been doing this a while and it makes sense for me to buy in bulk when I can.

With a little effort you could create the lotus from "The prisoner" with the Tamiya super 7 kit. You would need stone guards for the headlights and different wheels, but it would be doable.

Looking at the photo of the built car it looks like they used the R/C car which would have decals for the grill. The windows and the edge of the fender wells definitely look like an R/C body. HiroBoy has photos the the sprue breakdown. Definitely glad to see Tamiya doing an "merican" car for a change.

I read your link and find it a bit odd that you see this as a mundane car. It was anything but that in the in the BTCC racing trim. I think that is why Tamiya did it because they released a lot of BTCC cars at the time, this one as well. There are many parts that are interchangeable between the kit you are building and the BTCC version. Think of your kit as the homologation special! You mentioned price and frankly, I haven't been paying attention to that of late but Holy S***! Back in the day, I use to chop them up to make custom cars. I even gave one to S. Tamiya during a visit to the home office. I have a couple of them that I stashed thinking I would redo the custom aspect, but I might be reluctant to do that with what people are charging for these. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.