Aaronw

That's for sure, now if they would just follow it with a '79-90 Ford LTD / Crown Vic it would pretty well take care of the 80's.

A 747 can carry a fuel load of 48,000 to 64,000 gallons of fuel (varies depending on which version of 747). The 747 has a cruising speed of 555 to 570 miles per hour, so is realistically a contender for the aircraft in the question. A proposed 747 firefighting air tanker was developed that can carry 24,000 gallons of retardant (at 12 lbs per gallon), the DC10 air tanker in limited use carries 12,000 gallons of retardant. It's possible that the fuel consumption, had an extra zero but it could just as easily be the answer is missing one. Regardless I'd say there is a zero goofing off.

I see them on ebay frequently, usually seem to go for $40 or so. Looks like a decent casting, probably a late 80's / early 90's truck.

That is the one I was thinking of.

I believe you will find they forgot a zero in their answers. Distance / speed = 4.46 hours, 15200 gallons / 4.46 hours = 3400 gallons per hour (+/-). C is probably the correct answer assuming it should have been 3000. Makes you wonder how accurate the over all test is if they made a mistake like that? How many did you just not catch or will never know because they show the wrong answer being correct. The school should ask for its money back from the test writing company.

There is a good chance I'll be there, still working on some details but it looks good.

If you search the forums (maybe tips & techniques?) there was a good how to Z a frame, I think Jairus did it but don't remember for sure now, it was probably back at least 6 months.

Yes you can use a wireless set up (router, modem??? I don't know the technical details) with DSL. I had a similar problem a few years back. I was in an apartment and the only phone jack was in a hallway. Rather than run a cable across the floor we bought a wireless set up from the DSL provider. It was still very fast and we never had any problems with it. There was an initial set up cost to buy the equipment but no additional monthly fee.

Here you go, there are a few minor variations but this is pretty much the standard firefighters gear bag. I have coat, helmet, boots etc all packed in here. I shot it in front of the tire of my pickup for scale, standard 15" rim and tire. Most of these bags have a flat bottom and a zipper that goes all the way across, in theory you could just unzip the bag and step into your gear although I've never found that to work, or maybe I'm just a clutz. All of the bags I've seen have firefighter or some other fire department logo on them. I guess we wouldn't know what was in the bag otherwise.

I've been told to stay away from Super Clean, it can make resin melt down.

I think the name he used was Grove Graphics, I don't remember his ebay name. I can take a photo of the bag I have in my truck tommorrow, it would be a fairly easy job with a blob of putty.

There was a guy last year doing resin helmets, and at least boots & pants, he might have done a coat as well. Unfortunately he quit casting after a short time. You might get lucky and find these on ebay but that is all I know of. On the plus side most people carry their gear in a duffel bag so any large square bag should work.

Not just those two, I was reading last night that Lotus was sold awhile back to a company in Malaysia or Indonesia.

Over on the Fine Scale Modeler boards this has been talked about. Gunze will be dropping their direct sales to the US & Canada. Details were not given as to why now but they said sales in the US & Canada were not strong enough for them to continue exporting to those countries and they recommended using Japanese mail order companies for those who wished to continue using the paints. The comments referring to the issues Tamiya had sound reasonable though. Tamiya paints are available in the small 10ml bottles, those are the only Tamiya paints my LHS stocks.

Most of the trucks really are not safe either and have a lot of the same problems mentioned in the post above about the Monte Carlo, in fact many of the same techniques are used on the trucks. Inadequate axle strength, inadequate brakes, poor turning radius, jury rigged solutions etc. There is a big difference between a real trail ready 4x4 and the "monster" trucks you see on the street. About the only advantage to the jacked up trucks is they are usually built a little heavier to start with than a car. I have heard a lot of stories about lifted trucks losing wheels because they put 44" or larger tire on 1/2 ton axles that really can't take the stress of anything larger than about a 33" tire or so. Low and slow, the jacked up trucks are being looked at, in fact they are what started the interest but the "donks" have the same issues, poor control and they bypass most of the side impact safety features of modern cars.

I'll try and swing the 20th, that gives me plenty of time to make arrangements. Just so I'm clear on the concept is everybody supposed to bring some little tip or technique to swap? Kind of like a whole bunch of little mini presentations? I could... well I'm good at... Hey, I have some experience getting my fingers unstuck from small parts. Actually some not so small parts, I still have a little bit of skin glued to the inside of a resin truck cab.

87. If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it. That is going into my station rules, fire crews are almost as bad as military personnel when it comes to entertaining themselves. There are a couple others I may need to borrow, great list but your friend must have a very patient CO.

This is a slide show I made up as filler when I'm teaching classes. The music was done by Puerto Rico Bomberos for a fire prevention campaign in Puerto Rico. http://www.geocities.com/cnf_e32/videos/video2.htm

In the Complete Future article Matt mentions using simple green in the Future, says it makes an amazing finish, but attracts dust like crazy so you have to be extra careful about dust when you put it on. Future and Simple Green Future is great for creating a good medium gloss finish and with repeat layers and light sanding at 800 grit between layers can generate a fairly high gloss but if you want something truly outstanding then you need some Simple Green. Simple Green is a household and industrial cleaner found throughout the United States. It can be purchased in concentrated form or premixed. Most grocery stores carry the pre-mixed variety. In a small cup mix three parts Future with one part pre-mix Simple Green. Apply to your model with an airbrush using 15 to 18 psi pressure and about four to six inches of distance. Apply an even slightly wet coat then immediately cover the model with a large bowl or clean box because this will be a major dust magnet. Allow to cure overnight. When you remove the cover your model may appear to be wet still but no, this is the finish that is achieved – a STILL WET LOOK! You can apply a second coat if needed but be sure to cover the model again during the cure process. I failed to do this with one of my cars and it attracted a collection of fine dust particles and they really show up on such a high gloss finish. The Future seems to dry with the same hard finish as when used normally. Due to the high gloss aspect fingerprints will show up very easily so keep a lint free polishing cloth handy for when you cannot resist touching it. http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

Yeah, sometimes its nice to build something actually following the directions. I have been having a really hard time staying motived on some of the more complicated builds I have laying around. I picked up a couple of sports cars at NNL West and thought I'd give them a try to get over my builders block. I only finished 1 build in 2007 and that was a 1/72 WW1 biplane that took me 2 days to build. I'd like to do a lot better in 2008. You will definately be seeing more builds with lights and sirens on them from me in the future. I'll get some pics up as soon as I have something worth showing. I think Group Builds and WIP posts were part of my problem, to much time thinking and yacking not enough time building.

Nice job on your Alpine. I got paint on mine this weekend. I ended up going with Tamiya's Light Metallic blue which is a perfect match to the plastic, you can barely tell the difference between painted and unpainted. I can't take the credit, I showed the kit to my wife when she was headed into town and asked her to find me the best match, she did good. It was between the Mica blue and light metallic blue. I'm watching out for the Monte Carlo version of the kit as well, maybe I'll do it in Mica blue just to be a little different from this one (other than all the racing decals on the Monte Carlo version). I painted the 240Z I'm building with Tamiya Italian red and wasn't really impressed, not bad but certainly not 3x the price of my standard Krylon nice. The metallic blue however practically painted itself, its probably one of the nicest paint jobs I've done right out of the can. The Tamiya primer is nice too, dries very quickly.

Like them or hate them, you probably won't be seeing Donks, bubbles, boxes or those jacked up monster trucks much longer except in plastic. I took an auto extrication class last November (again, they keep changing the way they build cars, which changes how we rip them apart) and according to the instructor getting rid of these altered ride height vehicles is a high priority for the Department of Transportation and many State police agencies. They cause damage and injuries way out of proportion to their size and speed, normal cars are not built to be hit by a car 3 feet off the ground. His belief is they will not be street legal in most states within the next 3-5 years. At the least they will probably be required to have a stock height bumper which will make them look even stranger, almost Picaso like. So enjoy them or hate them while you can, they might become an endangered species.

Tom Bongard used to do SAE's Model Firehouse column in the 80-90's. Anyone know what happened to him, he did some great work and wrote quite a few good articles related to emergency vehicle models.

Well the Revell one should be done pretty soon so I'll have some pics of it. If you mean my brothers 1-1 no, its under a tarp, he got tired of it getting stolen so the last time it happened he parked in my Dad's backyard and its been there since. He can't drive it because the jerks stole the steering wheel when they ditched it and he hasn't tried to track another one down. That is one of the reasons I was thinking about buying it from him. Almost all my neighbors are cops so car theft isn't really a problem here. I saw what I thought was a Jag in a historic rally video from 2007 so it was probably all show and not neccessarily just rally cars, there were a bunch of Porsche 911's as well that looked more like road racers and didn't really look like they'd be too happy bouncing across Africa. It was funny, because as I was watching some of these videos it kept making me think of Speed Racer. A lot of the races in that cartoon were like really wild rally races, crossing piranna infested rivers and such.

Yeah, he has a very colorful way of displaying his builds. You're not the first who took him seriously. Nice to see your back to work, I've been enjoying the box art here and at FSM.