Dave Ambrose

I got a clean bill of health from my cardiologist. No more followups unless my afib comes back.

It doesn't matter what you're selling. Retail is brutal these days. I'm fully stocked with kits (at least according to my wife), but I buy paint, and some tools at our local hobby shops. At least around here, the RC sections of the hobby shops keep the rest of it afloat.

I had to look twice at this. SMH is also an acronym for Shake My Head.

I thought the Fairladies were the previous models; 1600 and 2000? That's a very nice looking Z. Z-cars are classics, and will still look good 100 years from now.

Looks good to me too.

You must be way north. Good quality mineral spirits are a decent second choice. The ModelMaster thinner is high-quality mineral spirits. We have higher temperatures and lower humidity, so the slower drying time helps me a lot. Metalizer is a lacquer. You can also use lacquer thinner, or better yet, Xylene. Both are available at your local hardware store. Given your location, something that evaporates faster is probably better, so I would certainly try lacquer thinner. Whatever you do, test it on a plastic spoon first.

Clearly, someone has more dollars than sense.

If you're airbrushing it, I've found the ModelMaster airbrush thinner to be much better than the standard hardware store paint thinner. (Paraffin for those in the UK) It's better refined and dries better. That's all I use for thinning the ModelMaster paints, and it lays down well.

Another reminder -- please, this is not the place to do anything more that express condolences and anxiety. Political discussions are important, but we have neither the inclination or the skill to manage them here. Please take them elsewhere. Thanks, Dave Ambrose

Tonight's primary mission was mostly accomplished. You should see a healthy performance improvement, and it should stay that way. If the board is being inordinately slow, drop me a PM and let me know what you were trying to do when the slowness hit, along with the date and time (with time zone please). Thanks for being patient. Hopefully, things will be better now.

I did defragment some of the database tables. There was an important one that was especially bad. The web hosting company used to do that automatically every night, now they don't.

I started with computers in the '70s. We were thrilled to have those drives, and now getting a USB drive that size is considered an insult. I have many terabytes of storage on my home network. Those big drives get much less useful when connected by a too-skinny wire. This is an incredibly large forum system by almost any standard. Certainly in the 90th percentile size-wise. Mostly, it's getting the right structure in place. This server hosts multiple web sites, and it makes many things more complicated. I want to make sure we don't lose any data during this upgrade. That would be a first-magnitude disaster. We've already lost our gallery, and I'll be reinitializing that once we get the forum software up to current rev.

My first goal is to get the board running faster. But, before we can do anything, we have to be able to back up the files. This board is huge. The files (including pictures) are 57 GB. The database is a good deal smaller, but still big. That will be Thursday night's task. The source button is on my list, but further down the road.

I'll be taking the forums offline for maintenance, Thursday night, 8 PM PDT. They'll probably be offline for 2.5 to 3 hours, maybe less. Thanks for being patient, Dave Ambrose

The problem isn't in your browser or computer. I've identified the problem and am working on improving it. Thanks for being patient.

The chrome bumper MGBs rides 1-1/2 inches lower than the rubber bumper models. The ride height was raised to meed federal bumper standards.

Ladies and Gentlemen, This thread has gotten political. I've removed the overly political posts from view. Please, respect the board rules and don't discuss politics here. It's an important subject, but I'm sure there are better venues, and their hosts are more than happy to have you there. We don't allow political or religious discussions for good reasons. These rules have served us well. Your religious beliefs and the political scene is generally not relevant to building model cars, which is what most of us came here to enjoy. I'm going to make the charitable assumption that some people forgot the rules in the heat of the moment, and not hand out any warnings. Please do not continue to discuss either politics or religion* here. Moderating people's posts is generally annoying to both the person moderated, and the moderator. Thank you for your cooperation, Dave Ambrose * When we say religious discussions, we mean discussing or debating the merits or characteristics of various religions. Offering to keep someone in distress in your prayers is fine.

We've been there a few times. It is so hard to get on the plane going back to the mainland.

Gregg is in Hawai'i. Being good Americans, we incorporate a lot of local vocabulary in our conversations. Things I've come across here: pau -- finished or doneokole -- the north end of a horse heading south, a rude person, or your tuches.ali'i -- the ruling classakamai -- smart, intelligent, or cleveraloha -- hello, goodbye, or an exceptionally compassionate way of living indigenous to the Hawai'ian Islandsmahalo -- thank youPost any new ones here, and I'll translate as best I can. Unfortunately, I don't have the proper diacritical marks, so I can't clue you in on which syllables are accented. But, all the vowels are pronounced, and use the same pronunciation as Spanish.

I have Presbyopia. I could not build without one of these, or the clip-on magnifiers for my glasses.

This is uncalled for. We're supposed to be doing this for fun. You don't need a vast tool chest to build model cars. You can enjoy yourself with an Xacto knife, a set of needle files (highly recommended), some sand paper, a few good brushes, and some paint. Oh yes, glue. You'll need that. Try a few, stick with the one you like. "Best" often degenerates into a religious argument. If you're feeling luxe, get some small diagonal cutters like the Xuron cutters to remove parts from the trees. As someone who could open a hardware store in their garage, buy tools as you find you need them. Your first model car won't be great regardless of your tool collection, so just build it and enjoy yourself. Your skills will develop with practice.

Thanks. That's what I was wondering. The ability to delete posts is a separate issue, and was removed because someone was abusing it. As an operational policy, we don't actually delete postings, we hide them. There are times when we need to go back over old postings so keeping them around is essential. I'll look into the source button. It seems to me it should be there, but it may be affected by some other setting in the BBS software.

What's your screen resolution? Some people with really old, low res screens, end up with the tablet version of the editor. It don't think it has that button. My editor window does have that button, it's on the left hand side of the toolbar. But, I'm not sure whether it extends to otherwise normal people.

Hardly anyone ever used it, so it got shut down, and we let the domain expire. It was then renewed by some entity who thinks they can get big bucks for it by selling it back to us.

I'm also the site administrator. I keep the underlying software and servers working properly.