Aaronw

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.

That's kind of funny considering an Impala is a very nimble animal like a Gazelle and looks nothing like a donkey. Guess I need to have a look at an Impala badge to see if the artwork is really that bad or peoples imagination taking a huge leap of artistic license. Of course if this developed in the inner cities it is very likely the people who came up with the name have never seen a real impala or donkey.

You might have to wait a bit on the 240Z, I'm currently building a stock 240Z from the Revell kit as a warm up, so the rally version is down a bit on the list. My brother has had a couple of 1-1 240Z's so I'm kind of partial to them myself. He still has one parked over at my Dad's, I'm tempted to buy it from him but that might look like a midlife crisis car now (I just turned 40 a couple months back). I had a look in the boxes, the decals look very nice so hopefully that won't be a problem. I hadn't realized the Stratos would be such a simple paint job, its all white. The decals provide almost all the color, but they do look like a bit of a challenge since there are a lot of them. Guess I better stock up on the Microsol and Microset. I can see these being a bit addictive though, I spent about an hour watching you tube videos and kept thinking ohh, that would be a neat one to do. Has Jaguar ever been into rally racing, I could have sworn I saw a Jag XJ coupe in one of the videos, BMW 2002 would be neat too, but I haven't seen that as a kit. I'll be priming the bodies later today since I have nice weather for it.

I'm not really into racing but I've always found rally cars to be interesting, I guess its the off road sports car thing. I've had a thing for the Lancia Stratos since I was in high school and finally got myself one. Actually I kind of went off the deep end and bought the Tamiya Alpine 1600SC, Hasegawa Lancia Stratos ('75 and '77 versions) and the Hasegawa Datsun 240Z. I really know nothing about these cars except they look neat, any suggestions, websites, things to watch for on the kits etc would be appreciated. Thanks

Well since everyone else is throwing in their $0.02, what I'd really like to see is the Ford C cab combined with the American LaFrance pumper body, that should be an easy conversion to create a "new" kit and the Ford C was the most popular commercial cab ever used to build fire apparatus. All it would take would be a longer frame and figuring out what parts needed to go where. Perhaps a few new items to spruce it up, maybe some good emergency lights, an electronic siren, some nozzles or hand tools etc just to head off the "its just a re-pop of two old kits" naysayers, it seems to be working with Revell. Adding the Cat 3208 diesel from the Ford Louisville kit would also be a plus but again not neccessary. A kit like this would use recently run tooling to create a "new" kit of probably the most popular fire engine ever made, there are still thousands of of Ford C based fire engines serving in the US and Canada. If you can't sell a Ford C based fire engine, then I guess its true that fire engines are poor sellers. If that works the Ford Louisville could be used to do the same kind of kit as they were also a popular chassis for fire apparatus. The second item I'd love to see is the '25 Ford Model T 4 in 1 kit. This was a nice kit but was a short run "buyers choice" last time around and very hard to find even though the last run was only a few years ago.

For some reason these seem appropriate. No pics of me from school, the guy chiselling the rocks got eaten by a dinosaur before he made it to the W's.

I used to watch Speed Racer when I was a kid. Early 70's none of this MTV Cartoon Network stuff (you guys make me feel old ), I've got a couple of the DVD's now for my son. He's almost 8 and he thinks its cool, even the toilet flush sound when the car starts underwater. Think I'll have to get the Polar Lights kits when they are out again, glue kit for me, snap kit for the kid.

Very nice, when I was growing up there was someone in the area with an Avanti, not sure where but I'd see the car going down the street from time to time. Very unusual car and from what I understand pretty fast too. I had a kit of one of these at one time but like many of my old kits I have no idea what happend to it.

Thanks, too bad it looks like the stuff isn't very good quality, there were some interesting subjects.

Nice to see a big rig on the list, Thanks.

I just took these real quick as an example, so ignore the fact they are not that great, I didn't even move the lights so they are much farther away than normal which is why I think the adjusted photo has a slight pink tinge. Except for the last pic they are only edited for size, no other adjustments, the last pic had no color adjustments just brightness / contrast. This first one was taken set on daylight This next one was taken with the white balance set to tungstun (Incandescent or the regular egg-ish shaped light bulbs) This last one I used the tungstun setting and then used Photoshop to adjust brightness / contrast just to brighten it up. Any photo editing software should let you do this. On my camera white balance is found under functions, I open the function menu, then I select the bar that has AWB (automatic), a sun (daylight), a cloud (cloudy), a lightbulb (tungstun / incandescent), a tube (flourescent) and a tube with an H (not sure on this, halogen?). I'm pretty sure mine is different than other cannons though, mine has a thunmb toggle kind of like a video game which I haven't seen on other cameras. The adult school near me had a class for beginning digital photography. I never took it but it sounded like it was just an experinced photographer who helped people figure out how to use the various functions on their camera. Something like that sounds perfect for you if there was someplace offering a class like that.

Any chance you could go back to the place you bought it and ask someone to show you how to set the white balance and photo size? If not how about a local camera shop? I'm sure someone familiar with digital cameras could figure it out fairly quickly with the manual and camera in front of them. I'm pretty sure adjusting the white balance will solve a good chunk of your photo issues. Unfortunately even though I have a Canon it is a completely different model with different controls. I understand exactly how you feel, for years I kept getting more and bigger lights, I was up to 2 500w halogens and 2 250w halogens and still couldn't seem to get enough light. Then someone (Gregg) explained about the white balance, now I use 2 100w incandescent bulbs, I dropped 1300w of lighting and have plenty of light. If you could manage it, if you found an adult school or college with a basic photography class I'm sure you would find it worthwhile. I learned a ton in the two 30 min seminars last summer and all they really were was Gregg and Jairus trading wisecracks while Gregg took photos of models (a diecast at that ). I'm sure a real class would teach you even more although it probably wouldn't be as entertaining.

I don't know what it is but recently on FSM there are armor and aircraft guys coming out of the woodwork with car questions. Since they don't really build cars regularly they don't want to join a real car site just to ask one question. I thought I might be able to bridge the gap for them, but I'm finding gaps of my own so I'm asking you guys. #1 can the AMT 1968 Ford Shelby GT500 be built into Steve McQueen's Mustang from Bullitt? Is there a better kit to start with? He doesn't want to use the Diecast Bullitt Mustang. #2 can you recommend some good contenders for a junkyard car, an armor guy wants to go to town with some weathering and wants a good detailed kit. Probably something from the 50-60's, anything out there that would stand out as a junked rust bucket? Thanks

That doesn't look bad at all. Sure it doesn't have a lot of added detail but from what I can see the paint is well done and the fit is good and if you can do that you are doing fine. As far as the photos, your lighting problem looks like its your white balance. Cameras are set up for daylight photos, if you shoot indoors with incandecent or flourescent lights you need to adjust the camera. Compared to daylight Incandecent tends to shift towards yellow or brown, flourecent towards blue or red. By telling your camera what kind of lighting you are using it will shift the colors to compensate. Each camera is a little different but its usually a fairly simple adjustment, mine has a picture of the sun for daylight, a lightbulb for incandecent and a tube for flourescent lights.

I work weekends, so I couldn't make it every month but I'd be up for taking the day off here and there. Saturdays work better for me, but sundays could be worked out. Tracy is about 2 - 2 1/2 hours so a bit more reasonable for a day out. The Bay Area can easily become 5-6 hours each way with traffic, about 4 in the dead of night. I wasn't aware of a hobby shop in Tracy, I occasionally stop into one on Bang Ave in Modesto, but that is all I know of until you hit the Hobby Town in Fresno. I'd be hurting if it wasn't for Tower and Model Roundup, gotta love the internet when you live in the boonies.

Thats a bit far for me, SF Bay Area is pretty much an over night trip for me these days, but mentioning hobby shops, you still have Hobbies Unlimited on Hesperian in San Lorenzo. Although he is going to be moving across town soon if he hasn't already. Like Wolds the rent went way up, but unlike Wolds Al decided to move instead of shut down. It's a smallish shop, but well stocked with cars, military, aircraft, model RR, RC etc and unlike many hobby shops he actually carries Model Cars Magazine. The owner has had the place for 20+ years (at least as long as I can remember), and he worked in the shop as a kid eventually buying the place from the old owner. Its one of the few "old time" hobby shops I know of still in the Bay Area where you can hear old guys standing around to rave or bitch about kits. He's moving next door to Porky's Pizza for those who know San Lorenzo, Porky's is pretty good too.

That would be a great idea, I've never understood why the "parts pack" idea never really took off. There are certain kits that are well known to be popular kit bash kits. A chassis and running gear kit at 1/2 - 2/3 the cost of a full kit would probably do fairy well. Probably not going to be a huge seller just because kit bashers are not as large a group as OOB modelers, but te profit margin would be higher since they could sell it at a higher margin and most people would be happy they didn't have to pay full price when they only wanted part of the kit. I'd love to be able to buy a partial Ford Loiusville kit for resin trucks, I'd grab several at $15-20 instead of $30+ for the whole thing.

Hey, I like this list. we need more police cars I'm just glad to see somebody stepping up to take over AMT, even if we just get re-issues for awhile that's ok, they make a lot of kits I like and have one of the best line ups of truck kits. we need more fire engines As I recall the initial news around Revell and Hawk / Lindberg drew a bit of negativity as well, and 2007 was a great year for kits from them and 2008 looks like it is getting off to a decent start as well. we need more ambulances So welcome, and thanks. I expect we won't see a whole lot of activity until the end of '08 but I'm looking forward to '09.

I think sometime Tower puts discontinued on items that are announced and then postponed. I've noticed that a few times with kits that are still coming out but delayed. Instead of pushing the date back they seem to put discontnued.

That's not a bad idea. Not that I really felt unsafe leaving my builds on the table, but there wasn't really any way to hang out nearby without blocking the aisles, and no way to know who built what if you were curious about a specific build.