Danno

Love it!

Wow!

Verrrry nice, Curt!

Sweeeet!

Excellent!

John’s work always adds a smile to my day. This one is no exception! Great work, as usual, Johnny.

Eww. Just eww!

Not enough Golfs

Armadillos by Morning

Rocky Mountain Oysters!

Speaking of taxis . . . At one point an agency which will remain nameless (I might have worked there) took a patrol car and painted it yellow, slapped some phony taxi decals on it and used it for undercover and surveillance. Another time a sedan was removed from patrol service to be reassigned to the detectives. The Assistant Chief groused about having a police car for detective work, so he worked a deal with a local body shop. Next time we saw the car, it was pure white with two subtle blue and gold stripes from grille to rear bumper, just like the local Ma Bell telephone company's fleet cars, most of which ran around with only the stripes and no door markings. The Chief had a minor cow, complaining loudly that the phone company might sue us! It took a deft eye to recognize how clever the Assistant Chief had been: the stripes were swapped, left for right. Most people who saw the car saw a telephone company car and Ma Bell couldn't sue us for trademark infringement because the stripes were different from theirs.

Thanks for the kind words, Misha. Glad you joined and glad the entering was a good experience for you. We still have a truckload of Entries in the uploading process, but the IT Team tells me every Entry will be in place by tomorrow. We won't begin vetting and judging until everybody's Entries are in their proper places. I like to say 'we won't start without you' to anyone who Registered by the deadline. We intend to live up to that promise! More fun ahead! Thank you for making our COVID-19 Lemonade work!

It is an AMAZING kit! Pricey is relative . . . this 130+ piece kit has everything you need except a donor cab/interior/chassis. By leaving that up to the builder, you can model a Squad 51 or some other year/make of your choice. (LACFD used the same compartment body, trim, and accessories on a variety of chassis, including Chevy and Ford in addition to the Dodge featured on Emergency! In fact, at the time Emergency! was produced, LACFD didn't use Dodge chassis for the squads -- making the one on Emergency! quite unique. The Ranger kit has EVERYTHING! If you tried to piece an equivalent model together from various sources it would cost you a ton more than Ranger's kit. And, the Ranger kit has the best decal set available anywhere for the LACFD squads; again, with optional numbers should you want to build Squad 40, or some other unit. BONUS - One final thing -- that link I provided you goes to Ranger's Virtual Vendor Table at the dscV16 - Virtual Venue Model Car Championship. They're offering the Squad kit at $20 off during the show if ordered from their Virtual Vendor page.

There IS an update, Todd. ALL you need to know is Ranger Detail Technologies. They offer a complete. superbly detailed multi-media kit to build the most accurate Squad (Squad 51 or any of the LA County Squads). Check it out: Ranger Detail Tecnologies Store at dscV16

Love it!

Reason old skool coppers looked grumpy? 10-4 that! This string of comments reminds me of one of my all-time favorite stories related to resale value of used (surplus) police patrol cars taking on an all new significance. The bean counters at one large agency were increasingly disgusted with the small residual value of surplus cars. They consulted 'consultants' and discovered that the lousy resale value was due to the overall condition & high mileage but aggravated by all the body holes (mounts for spotlights, emergency lights, sirens, antennas), the leftover mismatched panels (black & white scheme), and the various sticky/gummy/dirty areas where markings were pealed off. They devised an unusual plan to increase the resale values of surplus cars. They ordered all new cars in random factory colors (no two tones) with air conditioning (new that year) and no windshield pillar spotlights. They employed gutter-mount light bars (new) with radio antennas mounted to the light bars. They used reflective signs attached to the light bars to identify them as police cars. There were no other exterior markings. They installed hand-held spotlights in the interiors, and created a radio/PA/siren control head "stack" attached only to the floor. It was innovative and radical, but it worked! The cops loved it and the shocked citizenry quickly adapted to the absence of the old black & whites. Crime scenes seldom drew two or more police cars of the same color. The experiment was successful, but not without at least one memorable episode. The last dinosaur was a remarkably low mileage leftover black and white. The brass refused to surplus it until it reached the requisite mileage and it was far short. Yet, its very black-and-whiteness was a sore thumb, stick in the eye of the boss. So one notable day a second tier chief-type took it to the city shops and commissioned a makeover. A cheap makeover. He directed that they strip the decals, removethe roof-mounted siren-light and pillar-mounted spotlights, patch the holes, and install the new-style gutter mount light bar, etc. The shop guys asked what color he wanted it painted. He said whatever they had that was cheap as long as it wasn't black or white. Shop guys being shop guys, the police department got their low-mileage straggler back . . . with the new-style equipment, but painted bright baby blue! The car remained very low mileage . . . none of the cops would drive it. They found all kinds of excuses to not drive it . . . legend has it more than one officer went home right after roll call with a sudden onset of illness (maybe blue flu . . . baby blue flu?). After a few weeks of that, the car mysteriously vanished . . . reportedly auctioned for next to nothing.

In many locales it wasn't so much officer comfort that drove the migration to air-conditioned cars as it was economics. The bean-counters figured out that consumers would pay more for surplus police service cars if they had air conditioning. Thus, officers got air-conditioned cars so the agency could sell their used cruisers for more $$ at the back end, recouping more of the capital investment. Plus, the air-conditioning option became cheaper . . . more cars were ordered/sold with air-conditioning than without. As a result, it became more costly to single out air-conditioning-delete cars on the assembly line. In effect, it was cheaper to build nearly all cars with air-conditioning than it was to build some with and some without. Think of radios. High cost option when they were first available, but before long so many cars were ordered/sold with radios that it became too troublesome and costly to build them without. Hence, radios became standard equipment.

Registration deadline for dscV17 - The Virtual Venue Model Car Championship is 11:59 p.m. MST tonight. That leaves almost 17 hours (from now) to fill out Registration Forms and pony up $2 per Entry to participate in our Anti-COVID-19 Alternative DESERT SCALE CLASSIC! Join us! Show your stuff! Beautiful Awards! More than 13,000 visits to our website this month! Hurry! Ending soon (16 hours and 44 minutes now). dscV16 - The Virtual Venue Model Car Championship Website

Registration deadline for dscV17 - The Virtual Venue Model Car Championship is 11:59 p.m. MST tonight. That leaves 17 hours (from now) to fill out Registration Forms and pony up $2 per Entry to participate in our Anti-COVID-19 Alternative DESERT SCALE CLASSIC! Join us! Show your stuff! Beautiful Awards! More than 13,000 visits to our website this month! Hurry! Ending soon (16 hours and 58 minutes now). dscV16 - The Virtual Venue Model Car Championship Website

Cool build! The Peugeot 205 won Pikes Peak in 1988, driven by Ari Vatanen - ending Audi's three consecutive overall wins (five if you count 1983 & 1984 when John Buffum won the new rally Group B class but was outrun for overall - both years - by open wheel cars). The Peugeot 205 won again in 1989, piloted by Robby Unser. BTW - Buffum's Audi Quattro won the class in 83 & 84, then Audi brought Michele Mouton in 1985 and she won overall. In 1986, Bobby Unser won overall. Then Audi brought Walter Rohl in 1987 to win the overall yet again. Interesting that you were there in '85, Kurt. I was, too. I was running Race and Event Safety.

Whoa! Mind blowing mind blower!

Steve, We have received right at 300 Entries. There are not that many models showing in the Championship galleries at this time because many of the Contestants haven't yet submitted their photos. Hopefully, the rest will arrive soon. Thanks for your interest, and, good luck to you!

Just a quick note and reminder that the Registration and Entry deadline is looming near --> Only 9 days to go! Don't miss the OnLine alternative to DESERT SCALE CLASSIC 16! We all know why DSC16 had to be canceled, but rather than lose a whole year, we went viral! Virtual! Please go take a look at how it is shaping up! We have 300 entries so far from 50 builders representing 14 states and 3 provinces! MORE THAN 11,000 visits to the website in the month since we launched!! How else can you show off your builds to 11,000 modeling enthusiasts? Plus ~ a Virtual Vendor Room where our vendors (and you can be a vendor, too) display items and products for sale via the Internet. And, in typical DSC fashion, prestigious awards in 29 Categories plus a Youth Category and 5 Master Awards. BONUS: You get to judge the judges! Cactus Car Modelers Club Members don't compete against you, but their builds are on display in a special gallery and Registrants vote on those! We took COVID-19 lemons and made lemonade. Don't miss out! dscV16 - The Virtual Venue http://www.dscv16.com

The biggest problem with the emergency equipment parts in the Ford kit* is that they are far from anything accurate. The beacons are undersized and too conically shaped to be legitimate beacons -- they are closer to Whelen strobes than beacons and the standard of the day … indeed the standard equipment with the lightbar (Federal Visibar) represented in the kit(s) was the Federal 14. It is much different in configuration. * The same parts were used in the Impala Fire Chief car and both police and fire versions of the Chevy van. The siren speaker/PA speaker was similarly unlike the most common unit employed on the Visibar … the Federal 25. And the spotlights . . . like 90% of the spotlights produced by kit manufacturers are merely caricatures; they look more like the common "custom" spotlights of the 50's-60's than legitimate Unity brand spotlights commonly used on emergency vehicles. Even the small antenna was a little on the cartoonish side. Decent parts were the hand-held spotlight, the riot shotgun, the weapon lock, and the "large" whip antenna. The best looking piece in the entire ensemble was the Motorola radio control head . . . but, alas, they didn't see fit to include a Motorola speaker (which would be pretty much standard with the Motorola radio).