smhardesty

Well, good news and bad news. TarheelRick, I could see where you Internet connection could be causing part of the problem. Now, keep in mind that I am in no way stating that the fault is all on your end. If this site happens to use certain scripts to call routines that are known to be a bit on the "heavy" side the combination of those two factors could be the problem. I still have never seen any real slowdown, but I have noticed that occasionally when I pop open a new tab or 2, I get a slight hesitation before the page begins to load. It's normally only about 3 or 4 seconds so I don't consider it a problem. From what your saying it's much more than a hesitation. I'd definitely try cleaning your browser out and doing the hard reboot on your router and Internet device. Which brings us to a "however". Rob, the ping times and download speeds you're getting are great! I wish I had that available. But as to the problem with the site, I can't consider your internet service to be a real cause of trouble. Have you tried dumping all the history and cleaning the cache in Safari? I've included a couple links to steps to speed up Safari below. You might want to consider those. The other thing would be to do a hard reboot on your wireless router and whatever Internet device you have, cable box, modem, etc. The other thing that could be causing the hitch would be some type of problem with your ISP or DNS provider. The problem can actually be part website, part ISP or DNS provider problem and might not ever be resolved. I have an ongoing problem using Thunderbird as my mail client for my fastmail.com email addresses. Whenever I "Send" a new email it takes at least 10 seconds to send. It took me forever to finally track the glitch down and once I found it I had to make a decision to either live with the problem or use Fastmail's webmail interface. Nothing I can do about the problem. It's actually a glitch between my ISP provider and Fastmail's servers and neither of them are about to make major changes just to satisfy the few customers that have the problem I have. https://www.lifewire.com/speed-up-safari-with-these-tune-up-tips-2260842 http://www.wikihow.com/Speed-up-Safari

A couple of you guys have made mention of using "one of" the metalizer spray paints. Which one?

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; } OK, I’ve just been introduced to the Molotow chrome pens in a different thread. I found them for sale on a few different sites. Great to see that those are available at Dick Blick. I have an account there that I set up to purchase items for my photography hobby (which I have neglected terribly). Goofy62 has already mentioned the “Sharpies” to me elsewhere, but I haven’t purchased any yet. I’m just now scribing panel lines and sanding out imperfections on my first two builds in about 50 years. Sounds like I need to just visit dickblick.com and put together a small order of various pens. Jim, I’ll probably include the Uni-Ball UM153 pen you mentioned too. I figure it’s best to try at least 3 or 4 different techniques to discover what works best for me. One of the ways that I dreamed up in my head before I started asking for advice was to touch the eraser on a pencil to the white paint, then very carefully “stamp” the letters on the tire. I guess that would be a little similar to putting a coat of paint on a piece of plastic or glass and then laying the tire on it. I might visit eBay and buy a few “lots” of tires to practice on. The majority of my kits are muscle cars from the 60s and 70s so I’m going to have a lot of opportunity to bring out those great RWLs. I probably should check the local Walmarts to see what kind of Sharpies and gel pens they have before ordering from Dick Blick. Can’t be positive, but I figure Wally would be a little cheaper than Dick Blick. Oh, and Hugh, “Podunk” is actually Olney, IL. Olney is known as the home of the white squirrel. The town is absolutely LOADED with squirrels and a decent percentage are white. There is a hefty fine for killing one, even if you happened to run over it with your car. The things are almost sacred! As to how far from a decent hobby store – about an hour and a half. I have to travel to either Evansville or Terre Haute, IN. Thanks to every one of you guys for your replies. I just can’t say enough about how danged helpful it is to have a forum like this. Yeah, I built kits as a kid, but I never really “built” a kit, if that makes sense. I mostly just globbed some glue on parts and stuck them together. As an old fart, I’m hoping for slightly better results than what I did as a kid. Thanks, again.

WOW! You guys just provided me with LOTS of great info. I've managed to find sources for every product you mentioned. I think I'll probably try out most, if not all of the products as I go along. I expect I'll find at least one method that I get along with. stitchdup, that is really impressive. I'll be wanting to try those chrome pens that you and crazyjim both suggested. Thanks to each of you guys for your suggestions. I just need to get some of the products you mentioned on order. All of us find different ways that work best for us. I think I need to try all your suggestions before I decide what I'm best able to do. Outstanding, guys!

TarheelRick, I have one other idea. I just now spent 45 minutes reading threads on the forum. I also posted a reply on one thread and posted one new thread. Then I went back and did a little more reading. I had one page hesitate before loading. I'm not experiencing any really slow page loads. As for my idea, what sized pipe do you have from your Internet service provider? What speed do they promote as their, "up to" download speeds for the service you have? That might make a big difference in what I see happen and what you see. I've got a 100Mbps pipe. I rarely have speeds under 50Mbps and usually fall in the 70 - 90Mbps range. I just checked and I'm hitting about 85Mbps right now. Occasionally I'll notice things don't seem quite as snappy as they should be so I'll go to my cable box/wireless router and unplug the power. I leave it for a minute or so and plug it back in. That forces a hard reboot. That's something I used to suggest to ALL of my customers. Modems, cable boxes, and routers can get clogged up just like a PC so an occasional reboot is a good idea. So, first off, what is you speed? Here is a link to one of the places I consider to be fairly accurate. It will take a couple seconds for the page to load. When you see the green "Begin Test" button load it's ready. You'll get 3 results, "Ping", "Download Speed", and "Upload Speed". I'd be interested in what your ping time is and what your download speed is. http://www.speedtest.net/ Here is another site I use to test. It uses a completely different way of testing. Once again ping time and download speed are most important right now. This site should give you slower ping times and slightly slower download speeds. http://www.bandwidthplace.com/ If you don't mind, post your results. I'm really curious to see your what you have. By the way, I just retested my speeds. On Speedtest I hit 97Mbps and on Bandwidthplace I hit 68Mbps.

I've seen several websites that offer wheels that are what I am calling "unfinished". Bear with me on this since I'm just getting back in the hobby after about 50 years. I'm looking for sources for wheels and tires for kits I have I'll be building sometime down the road. I just now found a thread on this forum about aftermarket wheels and most of the wheels in the thread started as "unfinished". So how are those wheels finished to look like mags? I don't have an airbrush. All my painting will be done either by rattle can or good, old brush (for small parts). Is there a paint I can buy either in a rattle can or small bottle that will make these wheels look like mags?

OK. I've read this thread twice now. This happens to be one of the subjects that I have on my mind as I begin to get back in the hobby. I've imagined all sorts of ways to paint the raised white letters. I don't think I'll be hijacking this thread if I ask you guys for more specifics on how you are painting the RWLs. I noticed that there were a couple mentions of "gel pens" and also noticed that Hugh uses a silver Sharpie. I have a very slight problem with loss of feeling in the fingers of my right hand so I'm not nearly as confident and skilled in doing tedious tasks with my hand any more. So, of all the techniques you guys use to paint RWLs, which would be best for me to try? Also, if it's a gel pen or Sharpie, where is a good place to order them online? I live in Podunk, IL and have no access to hobby shops within about an hour and a half's drive. I'll most likely order online form some reputable place. And if I'm out of line for asking these questions here, please just let me know. I don't intend to hijack a thread.

Jeff, I spent the last 5 years or so of my computing career doing pretty much nothing but reloading customers’ PCs that ran Windows. The Windows operating system suffers from more than one faults, but one of the worst is the buildup of trash in the Registry. When that is coupled with maybe one or two viruses and a few applications that are way too resource hungry, the computer seems to be slow. The fact is that the physical hardware is still fully capable of performing at the level it did when you first bought it. Computer hardware doesn’t degrade, or wear out, like an automobile. It either works, or it’s broken. The problem is that most larger computer repair shops will steer you in the direction of buying a whole new system. I’m willing to wager a fair amount that if your PC were reloaded the correct way you would be amazed at just how fast it is. There are very few computer techs that know the true way to do a reload and most of the guys that do know how will want to charge so much $$$ that buying a new system is actually cheaper for you. One alternative is to find someone who knows and understand LINUX and have a user friendly distribution installed on your hardware. LINUX isn’t the same, for geeks only, unfriendly operating system it once was. If you’re willing to devote just a LITTLE time to finding your way around a slightly different looking desktop you’ll be a convert for life. Just food for thought.

One more thought about this problem. I mentioned before that techs need as much info as they can get to properly diagnose a problem. Here are things that will really help find a solution to any website related problem. If you will include as many of the items listed each time you post a complaint about something that happens it should really help. 1) The EXACT error message you received, if any. 2) A thorough description of exactly what you were attempting to do when the problem occurred and exactly what you noticed happening. Try not to simply state the site is too slow, or the site isn't working. 3) Which web browser you use and the exact version. 4) What operating system you run and the exact version of it. 5) Any hardware specifics you can provide, such as make and model of the computer, what video card, how much RAM, etc. 6) How many other applications you had opened and/or how many tabs you had opened in your browser. 7) Any other info you believe to be pertinent. Keep in mind you don't have to provide all this info, but it helps. If you can do a little research on your PC and browser in advance and have that info readily available it won't take any time at all to include it in your post.

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; } Ace, That can be more than just a little frustrating. I know because like everybody I have had it happen to me. Regardless of exactly what the problem is I might have a suggestion for you. It’s something I got in the habit of doing because of the exact scenario you described. I don’t type any posts directly on the website. I open my word editor and type my post in it. Once I have completed it, double checked it, and made certain I’m happy with it, I highlight the whole thing the copy and paste it into the box on the forum. There are a LOT of things that can happen to a guy while he is in the process of typing a long message for a forum or any other online place. Losing everything is just not an option to me. While it does take a couple extra steps, it has saved my butt more than a couple times. It really doesn’t take that much longer if you think about it. Just pop open your word processor, or even a text editor, type your message, select it all, copy, and paste. This is something you might want to consider, at least until the problem can be determined and a solution implemented. It’s not perfect, but it’s one idea.

Hey, Russ. Like I said, I'm in no way defending this site or ruling out any possible problems with the site. I was merely pointing out that slow web surfing can be caused by a large number of things. I totally agree that it's not likely that a browser would be the culprit if only one site is slow. There is a real slim possibility that the one site uses a script, or combination of scripts, that causes a glitch with a browser. The other thing I should have mentioned before is that it's helpful if everybody is very specific about the problem as opposed to a general complaint of "being slow". A computer tech worth his salt would ask users for specifics such as exactly which part of the page is loading slowly, or do letters not appear as you're typing, or some other specific type question. It might just be a couple lines in a script causing the bug or it could be something on the server. I haven't been a member long enough to have experienced any trouble at all with the site. I guess time will tell if or when I do.

Hey, guys. I'm a newbie to the hobby and a REAL newbie to this site. I am, however, not a newbie to computing in general. I spent over thirty years in the industry. I'm not being critical of any statement made by any individual here and I'm also not specifically defending the forum at this point. I'd just like to point out that there are so many reason that a "website" can seem slow. The list is actually way too long to get into here, but it includes everything from your web browser to your service provider to the backbone transporting your data to all the various DNS servers, etc, etc. I'm not implying that this specific forum isn't, or hasn't, experienced any difficulty, but I am saying that the real, true culprit might not end up being under the control of this site. I'm experiencing trouble right now with a few sites I visit regularly. I haven't pinned the problem down yet, but I know my bandwidth testing to the sites I'm having problems with indicate only 8 to 12 Mbps speeds with ping times way up in the 75 to 95 ms range, while all the other sites I visit reflect bandwidth speeds of 75 - 100 Mbps with ping times down in the 20 - 35 ms range. I've tried, but I can't find anything common with the sites I'm having trouble with. The problem may very well clear itself up before I find what the trouble is, or I could someday find that some setting on my PC or router is causing the trouble. Just thought I'd throw my comments out here. One thing I will say is that if you don't do it, you should really consider cleaning everything out of your browser on a pretty regular basis. Browsers can get REALLY clogged after surfing for a while. Kind of like "blowing the cobs" out of your car's engine every little while.

Great tip! Thanks. I actually managed to duplicate my very first post in the "Welcome! Introduce yourself" forum. Felt a little stupid. Didn't find that "delete" option. Somebody else deleted the duplicate so no harm done, but I'll know now how to correct any mistake I make in the future. Thanks from a newbie!

Thanks, guys. Yeah, that is a long time. I cringe every time I think about it. Makes me feel so danged old. I just popped on here today to start looking around and getting a feel for the forum. Figured I'd best read the replies on this thread. I look forward to meeting you all. Maybe down the road I'll be able to contribute more than I receive. As a newbie, or re-newbie, I'll glean more than I sow. Just a bit of info on me. I'm a definite MOPAR fan. I also have a real passion for AMC muscle cars, Studebakers, and Gassers. I have all in my stash at this point. Right now I have an AMT 2010 Challenger "Showroom Replica" and a Revell '67 GTX on the bench. Things are going pretty slowly for me so far as I'm trying different techniques to accomplish different tasks right now. As a kid I never sanded anything. I never worried, or even knew I should worry, about mold lines and other imperfections. So I'm going really slowly as I re-enter the hobby. Having lots of fun so far, so I'm not complaining.

Just now decided to join the MCM Forum. I'm just getting back into the hobby after about 50 years. I hope to be able to contribute a little bit at some point. For now I'll most likely be looking for answers and tips. Glad to be here.