Dave Ambrose

Update 2: New server is in place, and it checks out good. I've given them go-ahead to do the final data transfer. The site will probably go offline tomorrow, Jan 28, while the final cutover happens. You may get various errors including "Host not found" while this is happening, and possibly afterward. Please bear with us as it can take up to 24 hours (but usually doesn't) for old information to get purged from the Interwebs.

That's a great idea. I'll see if I can change the default. You can also define your own activity streams too.

It's pretty high up on my list of things to do. But, it will happen after I get us moved in to the new server.

Update 1: The new server is up and running. We will be doing a data migration sometime very soon. I'll try to make it more graceful, but you may get a time out for the entire site.

It shouldn’t affect that, but you’re going to have a much harder time finding a modern browser that will run on XP. Add to this the insecurity of that OS, and you seriously need to upgrade.

At long last, the forum and main website will be migrating to a new server. We'll try to keep the disruption to a minimum, but I don't yet have a hard and fast schedule for any offline time. Our hosting company will coordinate with me as best they can, but there are likely some factors that are beyond our control. The new server should be faster and more responsive than the old one. We're also upgrading the underlying server software, which is a necessary security measure. If you find the sites offline, please bear with us. We'll have them back as soon as we can. I'll also update this posting as more information becomes available. Update 1: The new server is up and running. We will be doing a data migration sometime very soon. I'll try to make it more graceful, but you may get a time out for the entire site. Update 2: New server is in place, and it checks out good. I've given them go-ahead to do the final data transfer. The site will probably go offline tomorrow, Jan 28, while the final cutover happens. You may get various errors including "Host not found" while this is happening, and possibly afterward. Please bear with us as it can take up to 24 hours (but usually doesn't) for old information to get purged from the Interwebs. Update 3: Final migration is scheduled for 11 AM, Pacific today, Jan 28th. If you have anything you're thinking about posting, consider holding off until this evening. Update 4: Migration is complete. All looks good so far, but let us know if you encounter any problems.

We support both encrypted (https) and unencrypted (http) urls. We have a fully qualified SSL certificate, but the site doesn’t automatically redirect the unencrypted requests, hence the message. we do have all the appropriate countermeasures in place and I’m going to try to fix the redirection problem when we upgrade the server.

You can read the board without logging in. Seems that lots of people do that.

I inadvertently discovered that if you start swearing like an angry navy chief in the goat locker, the voice response systems will sometimes route you to a rep who can actually help you. And yes, I can be quite the potty mouth under some circumstances.

Hmmm. . . looks a bit like my backlog XB-70 Corsair Rutan's voyager Lockheed Vega (don't tell my dad) PBY Catalina P-38 SR-71 I have a whole 'nother list of imaginary flying machines.

Great build! My eyes bulged out so far, they smudged my glasses.

I just finished an MPC Titan IIIc. Terrible kit. The halve of the rocket bodies do not fit well and require massive amounts of filing and fitting. Given that the center booster is silver, it shows every little defect. Glad to have this one in the done column. the only good thing about that kit was the box. My cat liked to sleep in it.

I'm going to want one of those snap kits to build with my grandson.

Happy new year from the lower left coast!

Thanks. Digital distribution is high on our list of things to implement. It would fix a lot of problems for us. At this point, we haven't identified a platform that protects our copyrights, works well for legitimate users, and offers workable economics. We haven't finished researching it yet, and if we find one, you can be assured that we'll be up on that platform in a hurry.

Rex, Where did you see that? I took a quick look and all I saw were issues of Model Car Builder magazine. I didn't see any for Model Cars magazine.

Sadly, this wasn’t game, per se. This came from a company in New Jersey courtesy of my sister in law. some years ago, my wife shot two deer on a hunting trip. We ate a lot of venison that fall.

She should have called fish and game. I don't know about other states, but California Fish and Game takes those reports very seriously. Sadly, they are also understaffed.

This one also works fine -- http://roadstars.mercedes-benz.com/en_GB/magazine/route/01-2018/on-tour-with-arto-simola-in-the-actros-lowrider.html The certificate they use to verify their identity is out of whack. Not altogether uncommon.

I didn't get a picture, but a model A drove down the main street festooned with antlers and a red nose. It was a great look on that car.

Before you get all wrapped up in the “snap kit” label, remember that Gundam kits snap together and they are very detailed and precise.

My sister-in-law sent us a game box with venison, boar, and a couple of pheasants. We cooked the venison this evening. Forgot to take a picture, but it was deerlicious.

Have them contact Gregg@modelcarsmag.com. We need more Canadian dealers.

Arecibo is both an amazing, and problematic facility. It was designed for an era when our equipment to receive and process the signals was 1000 times less effective than it is now. So, you had to compensate with a lot of collecting area. It certainly has a vast collector. Unfortunately, it isn't steerable, so the effective collecting area falls off significantly when you're not looking directly overhead. The object you want to look at will rarely, if ever, be overhead. Given the sensitivity and low noise of modern head-end electronics, there isn't the great need for so much collecting area. If you need more sensitivity, you can get that, plus better spatial resolution, by combining signals from multiple antennas. We didn't have that kind of signal processing capability when Arecibo was built. Now we've implemented processing capabilities that weren't even theoretically possible when the dish was built. Dr. Bouman's work imaging a black hole would be a good example. Its unique capability was for radar astronomy. That will be hard to replace. Theoretically, you can use a multiple antenna setup as you would for receiving, but you'd need to do something unprecedented with the transmitters. The military-industrial complex tried to do something similar for the "Star Wars" initiative, and failed pretty miserably. So, that capability is gone. The telescope needed its supporting cables refitted. Those cables are under horrendous tension. That's why there are six of them. Two cables had already failed, and the rest were in overload conditions. The ends of the cables were cast into place in the towers with molten zinc. They weren't designed for replacement. We wouldn't do it that way now, but that was the best they could do in 1963. I haven't heard about the condition of the columns, but I can't imagine that they were in great condition either. I can't imagine how you might retrofit them safely without removing a large piece of the reflecting surface. Arecibo got to where it is over time, and mostly behind the scenes. I don't like how it turned out, but given the condition it was in, decommissioning was probably the wisest choice.