Dave Ambrose

Doug, that looks like orange peel. No practical amount of super fine sanding will fix it. Orange peel is a huge problem down heat due to the heat and low humidity. I don’t know if you’re using an airbrush, but if you are, try thinning the paint more. Lay down another color coat and try to make sure it’s a little wet. If you’d like more guidance, come to the San Diego Model Car Club meeting. We have a lot of expertise in painting.

Thanks. Sounds like we both remember the bad old days. This is like my second worst upgrade ever. I’ll keep trying, but vendor support is very limited on the weekends. Going to have to do this during someone’s business hours.

Try sending me a message. Other people have been sending them. It you still can’t, I’ll dig deeper.

We’ve been getting that message for a while now. It's not harmful, and should disappear with the upgrade. The mobile presentation has been problematic for a while. The upgrade will also fix that. The site should be more responsive to your input.

Update: I haven't had this much trouble with an upgrade in a very long time. Got past the first place we ran aground, only to find another roadblock. We'll get that solved and try again, probably on a weekday. Thank you all for being patient. Please let me know if you have any trouble posting pictures, or encounter the infamous 404 error. I did make tweaks to the server that may affect these.

That looks a lot like the rubber buttplate that's on the 30-06 my dad built. Brownells has rubber buttplates that look similar, but aren't likely identical. There's a surprising number of Mauser fans for a relatively small population. I have three, my dad's in 30-06, mine in 30-06, and another on in 6.5mm Gibbs. (speaking of P.O. Ackley)

It depends on where you're buying your lacquer thinner. Traditional lacquer thinner is a mixture of toluene, xylene, and maybe a few other things. However, in California, it's mostly acetone due to clean air regulations. I don't know of any other state that requires this. Cali modelers are advised to buy some good stuff on their next trip to Nevada or Aridzona.

I hope I can act as confirmation for that. We had a yellow Xterra for a long time. Great SUV. It lasted 13 years until the transmission failed. I completely approve of that color. Out here, most of the cars you see are either silver, black, or white, and sometimes a dull, boring shade called something like Champagne.

I need to build one of these in 1:1.

Yes. Wash the models, then dip them in a weak solution of household bleach to sterilize them. You’ll lose the boxes, instructions, and decals, but not the kits. Ne sure to label them and wear gloves when you wash them.

I blame autocorrupt, sometimes mistakenly called autocorrect. I fixed it.

I first bought Windows in 1993. I'm still waiting for a credible product. Does that count?

Well, that didn't go as planned. Ran into a couple of problems that caused the update to fail, and I had to restore the site from the backup made at the beginning of this process. I know what went wrong, but it will take some time to fix. I'll let you know when our next attempt will happen. I do apologize for it taking so long. The backups are 170 GB. They take a long time to make, and a long time to restore. Please let me know if you encounter any problems. Thank you all for being patient.

I saw a super nice MG TC today at lunch. I hope they show up at British car day in October. I’d like to take a closer look at it.

I'm taking the board offline tomorrow morning. I'd feel bad about this, except that I'm very confident that most everyone on this board has something they can build. Or, maybe some family member who's feeling neglected. Whatever you decide to do tomorrow, take some pictures, and post them here.

You could probably use a scrap of Hardie board, or Hardie siding. I found a broken piece of siding at my local Home Depot, and they just gave it to me Won't be as handy as that honeycomb board, but it's certainly good in the flammability department.

We went through something similar, and bought a Nissan Frontier. It's been a solid, exceedingly useful, if somewhat boring truck. It's much narrower and lower than the larger US trucks. In the midst of truck shopping, we learned we were going to be welcoming a grandson, so we got the crew cab instead of the extended cab. Finding that combination with the 6 foot bed was challenging, but ultimately accomplished. You can get either a 5 or 6 foot bed. My wife insisted on the 6 foot bed. Have only needed to do routine maintenance in 80K miles. Plenty of HP for towing, now that we inherited a boat. The only big drawback to this truck is the turning radius. With the crew cab and long bed, it's about the same as our old suburban. If you get one of the older ones with the torsion bar front suspension, you won't have that problem. Price was reasonable too. Got the mid-range trim level. With frequent beach trips in our lifestyle, leather upholstery wasn't going to be practical. We have neoprene seat covers that work great for slightly soggy people. I also never thought I would feel the need for heated seats. Boy was I wrong. First switch I usually hit after some time in the ocean.

Thanks. It's not my favorite time slot, but I need to do this when I'm fresh, rested, and aware of my surroundings. There will be a stop at Starbucks prior to the start of the upgrade.

You don’t mess with heart issues. I’m glad you’re in capable hands. Get well soon!

Sorry about that. I think I have that fixed. One of the changes I made to prepare for the upgrade had some unforeseen side effects. I've backed that change out, which should put everything back to right. PM me if you have any problems posting pictures.

It should be fixed now. Please PM me if it isn't. Thanks, Dave Ambrose

It wasn't supposed to cause any problems, but it looks like one of the changes for the next forum software version broke something. I'll back that out tomorrow morning, which should get us back to functional. Thanks for being patient.

I will be taking the forum offline for a software upgrade on Saturday, May 25th, and starting about 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time. That's high noon for you east coasters, and other denizens of the eastern time zone. I anticipate the upgrade will take about 6 hours, but it could take longer, or if I'm really lucky, it will all go smoothly, and we're back on the air sooner. Contributions to the sysadmin coffee fund are gratefully accepted. When I am done, you can expect the appearance, and some of the functionality to change. I'll try to document the changes best I can, but it probably won't be complete. I'll start a couple of threads here for problems, hints, and hacks. I know you can all find something to do while the board is down. Take pictures of what you're doing, and we can all post them afterward. I'd like to think this will fix our 404 problem, but it may well not. It will let us work on the solution as the current software is so out of date that the vendor doesn't want to try diagnosing any problems with it. Let me know if you have any questions. -- Dave Ambrose

Yup. Was working on that today. Turns out to be more complicated than I’d like it to be.

I don’t know, but I’ll take a look at this. We just made some server changes. Can you send me screen shot(s) of the message?