Dave Ambrose

Our ads are served by Google. I don't expect that to be an infection route, though sites like Yahoo! aren't nearly as diligent about the ads they serve. If you did get infected via one of our ads, let me know and I'll get with Google. I've already tagged a few as inappropriate for this site. I'm moving this thread to General.

I just looked at your profile and didn't see anything amiss. Did you accidentally mark the entire site as "read"?

We can change your name, and even merge accounts. Send me a PM and I'll fix it.

Yes. I found an old can in the shed. I'm very happy. They still sell the real stuff in Aridzona and Nevada. Maybe a road trip is in order?

It also looks like we're a little overdue for some database maintenance. I can do it this weekend. Expect to see the site down for about 15 minutes or so.

I'm in a similar situation, tho not as bad. I went up to the rafters and did a quick count. Hmmm.....that's more than I thought. Worse yet, Mary, my wife, poked her head up there. I got busted. My kit buying has slowed dramatically. It took a little while to come to terms with that, but I'm OK. I look at my kit stash and I like it. I'm looking forward to building them all, and at this point, that's not too unrealistic. I have relatively few duplicates, tho I do have some, and those are mostly intentional. If Rachael can slow down with the raffle wins, I'll be in good shape. Unfortunately, my build rate has slowed due to other priorities, but in the long run, that's not a bad thing either. At the end of our current project chain, I will have a new workshop. With a spray booth and air compressor. That will make building much easier. I don't expect to be slacking, but I'm looking forward to retirement too.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm a software engineer. I do a lot of stuff, but I mostly design systems that scrape information off paper and get it into somebody's computer.

Here in San Diego, Rubio's is our go-to fast food place. They are best known for their very tasty fish tacos, but they have other stuff too. I only occasionally get tired of them.

That's very clever. I'm totally gonna steal your method.

I think the big difference for new kits is that you're trying to pay for the molds on a much smaller kit volume. Back in the '60's you could sell hundreds of thousands, or even millions of kits. Now days, it's 10s of thousands. That's probably most of the price difference. Now that I have the '30 coupe kit in hand, I can see that Revell is taking a more modular approach to their molds and kits. That's going to help a lot with pricing. Royalties also play a part, but that's usually on a per unit basis.

I like colorful cars. My Xterra was bright yellow. In 13 years of driving it, only one person ever pulled out in front of me. We replaced it with a blue Frontier pickup truck. We had the hardest time getting one in something other than SoCal drab. I swear that 95% of the cars around here are black, white, silver, or some kind of metallic beige.

I bought a '78 FIAT 131. It was my first ever new car. Aside from the dealer cross threading a spark plug at its 1000 mile inspection, it needed only routine maintenance for the next 10 years, and 131K miles. They were actually good cars, but suffered from incompetent mechanics and indifferent dealerships.

We do monthly themes for our club too (San Diego Model Car Club), They usually generate a fair amount of interest, but not always. This last year, we ran a survey, and took suggestions, then built our list off of that. We try to think of a clever and amusing name for the theme.

There were preview pictures of the Excelsior at Comic Con. It looks like a excellent kit. I think I might have to get one of those The Pacer? I thought they were ugly when they came out. Now my taste in cars is more refined, and well, I still think they're ugly.

Hi Sam, and welcome. That's a very nice first model. I've been finding it useful to limit myself to one new technique or material per build. I get overextended and frustrated if I try more than that, then the project goes on the shelf for a while. As for photo etch parts, they are made from very thin metal which has been coated with a light-sensitive resist. You expose the resist through a mask, and wherever there is light, the resist hardens, forming a barrier. You then wash away the unexposed resist, and put the metal on a backing tape. You drop it into a solution that removes the unprotected metal. Once the unprotected metal dissolves, you're left with the parts you wanted. You can make parts with very fine holes and details this way.

This game seems to be taking San Diego by storm. I live near a park, and it's been full of kids. On the plus side, they're out walking and face to face socializing. Nobody's gotten run over yet, but a couple of geniuses walked off a cliff near the beach. One fell 80 feet, the other 50, and had to be rescued from the cliff face. Both are going to be very good friends with their orthopedic surgeons for a while.

Finally, a rat rod I like. Nice work.

What an interesting thread. Thanks for posting it!

Good luck. It should be fun to learn something new. Good idea to pick something that can't be offshored.

I love those Minilites. I'm gonna have to get some. I wish I had a set for my MG. Full size, of course.

That looks great! The wood came out beautifully.

I'm pretty sure that houses are an infinite time sink. We've got a bunch of stuff that needs doing. My modeling time will be taken up by a gate, a new floor in out bedroom, an exhaust hood in the kitchen, and a new shed.

Yeah, that'll do nicely. :-) Thanks!

You have to accept little kids on their own terms. Early on, they're busy building motor skills. At that age, they actually understand quite a bit, but they have no way to communicate with you verbally. They're not completely wired yet. They'd like to come to you, but they can't yet. They will remember you, so being engaged with them is a good thing; even if it's making funny faces at them. He's trying to learn how to interact with you. At this point, he'll give you things, then come and take them again. He's actually learning an important concept, conservation, that we take for granted. Reading a book on child development might help put this all in context for you. It did for me, though many years too late for my niece and nephew. (but, they loved me anyway) The important thing is that you just care about him. He'll figure out that you're real quickly enough. They're very good at that.

Looks like you got a nice, craftsmanlike paint job. Paint drama is still my biggest source of modeling pain. I started making checklists. That helped a lot, but I still have things go awry for various reasons. It gets better tho. My last couple of builds have been largely paint drama-free.