niteowl7710

Well all this jury talk was all for naught, the Grand Jury has returned a No-Bill, meaning they've declined to indict him on any and all charges and this matter is over, at least in the Criminal Court System. Interesting piece of evidence made public was the kid had enough dope in his system to be at a level to "impair judgement". Who was wanting to string up Tony Stewart for being a murderer again? I have no horse in the whole pot legalization thing, but this ain't the 70s anymore, I would think most people would understand you shouldn't smoke a joint and then climb into a race car at any level of competition. Man it's so pesky when you don't have all the facts and you just want to condemn a man's life based on what you see on a few TV clips. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nascar-from-the-marbles/tony-stewart-not-charged-by-grand-jury-in-death-of-kevin-ward-jr-190047656.html

Two other considerations to Casey's point. The road between Point A and Point B at Revell certainly isn't the shortest line. When they laid the foundation of the Tri-5 kits in the 1990s with the '55 Bel Air Convertible, and then '56 Nomad, did anyone REALLY think it would be 2014 before there would be a '57 Bel Air Convertible? Who saw the 150/Black Widow kit being in that series? Who expected there to never be a '55 or '57 Nomad by now? The other is that unless you're the most Tye-dyed in the wool JoHan, Vintage AMT wire axle lovin' somebody out there, I don't think ANYONE is going to look at a new tool/modified tool '65 GTO and go well...I'd much rather try to graft that Hardtop onto AMT's old '65 than put together a new state of the art kit. There comes a point in my mind - but I'll admit perhaps not in the reality of the marketplace - where these ancient 40-50 year old tools, except perhaps unfortunately for body proportions, can REALLY hold a candle to anything being done in the current manufacturing environment. I for one would march out tomorrow and buy new '65 & '67 GTOs if it meant relegating those ancient AMT kits into the closet of history they belong in now. Nobody cares if you're not the first, if you're the BEST.

Guys you're missing the point. First of all despite being patterned after (allegedly) the 1/24 Monte Carlo/GN(X) it was going to be 1/25 scale. Secondly it has NOTHING to do with the DONK shown a decade ago, that kit didn't even have an engine and was based on a diecast that also never saw the light of day. Lastly Angelo never said "Ed Sexton called and told me the starting cutting the tooling on the Cutlass, and it'll be out in July". He just said Ed said they started cutting tooling. It seems to take Revell about 18 months from when they start cutting steel for a project to when it comes to market, which gives this thing another good 6-8 months before it would even be behind schedule. Now with the new marketing "regime" in Elk Grove (a technique I happen to like BTW), we're only being fed release information one QUARTER at a time. We might not hear about this kit until next Summer since there's no big blanket "Here's what we're doing for the entire year" release package like there was in prior years. As I've said before this new system is a delicious irony to me because after many moons of people complaining that Revell would announce kits in October of one year, and then not release them until November/December of the following year, now they tell you exactly what to expect in digestible 90 days chunks and people are going apoplectic that some kit that someone hinted about coming out in the future is now dead because it hasn't been on the past 4 quarters worth of announcements.

I have no reason whatsoever to believe Angelo is telling anything but the truth, it was his telling a little TOO much of the truth too SOON that caused the "problems" with this one, in so much as it seems like he's been promptly cut out of the development loop after he posted on every piece of electronic social media he could find that Ed called him and told him they were cutting the tooling for the first kit right after New Years.

I think Delfin's arches come from another older Aoshima kit, however if you want a Trueno with arches straight out of the box you're looking for this TRD Trueno N2 kit http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10198718 It's a curbside (as is the similar TRD Levin N2 if you prefer the non-hidden headlights style), but the engine insert is available in a number of releases, but the ones currently available are Aoshima's "Initial D" Trueno kits - http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10183076 http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10192570 The Volume 37 version is from later in the series and offers a roll cage, a "Weber Style" intake, racing seats, etc. The Volume 1 represents the car at the very opening of the comic and is pretty much a factory stock Trueno.

Build it, it's just a pile of plastic scraps until you actually make it your own.

It's a JDM "AE86" Toyota Trueno, which we got here in the States as the 5th Gen ('83-'87) Toyota Corolla. Although to be technically correct the title should be Hachi-Roku as the short hand nickname is Japanese for "Eight-Six".

Ontario County has 107k residents. The city where the track is is the one with 10,000 people. Secondly a Grand Jury isn't a trial, it's determination to find if the evidence exists to support bringing charges to an actual trial. If the Grand Jury decides there is insufficient evidence to support criminal charges then this is all over with, if they decide to indict him on something, then the actual jury trial would take place at some point in the future. Tony Stewart was never arrested in this entire thing so there would be an entire process to go through after an indictment.

On Sunday Morning at 0230 I pull out of the Pittsburgh L&DC with what I call the Troop Mail Run. It's all the FPO/APO mail from anywhere along the East Coast & Eastern Midwest (think Ohio, Michigan, Eastern Indiana, et al) that is sorted and then consolidated to Chicago for air lift out of the States.

The other half of my "Make Your Own 2013 LHD NIssan GT-R" finally showed up from Hong Kong after being blown into Low Earth Orbit. Disappeared off tracking for 8 days between HKI and JFK. DSC01895 (1280x857) by niteowl7710, on Flickr

SAL is a Japan Post shipping method. Surface Air Lift, it comes overseas on available space on various cargo flights. Since it's a first come, first serve space thing it usually takes two to three weeks - as opposed to the 3-4 days FedEx or Japan Post EMS (Express Mail Service). The speed (or rather the lack thereof) comes with lower price than the speedier options, and is the most economical way to ship 1-3 kits. After that you're usually over the 2000g weight limit and have to ship one of the other two ways. The big difference in delivery time has led to the joke that SAL isn't a thing, it's actually a guy named Sal who delivers the mail via donkey the way they get mail down into the base camps at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

No although I'd expect at some point in the future they'll make a '68 out of the '67 now that it exists. Now back to pressuring them to make a better '69 Firebird, and caving in to the demands for the "no-brainer" '70 Charger.

The biggest "problem" that the G-Body tooling has right now is that the guy who owned the vehicle that Revell supposedly measured three years ago came onto this forum, Facebook, and everywhere else that he could and proclaimed that Ed Sexton called him and told him they cut the tooling for the kit. This was right around the time that Casey found the diagram showing the Cutlass appeared to based on the patterns of the existing Monte Carlo & Regal in the engineering & assembly sense. Anyone who has any sort of "in" with any model company will tell you that the quickest way to burn that bridge down to smoldering rubble is to publicly announce something that hasn't been already publicly announced by the model company itself. Going and blabbing all over every "high mountain" on the internet that Revell is making something that Revell hasn't said their making gets you removed from the entire process whether it's your cars they're using or not. Some people who remember the details of the build-up to the Mustang LX will recall that Bradley told more than he should have here and even though he was instrumental in hooking up Revell with the drag racing 5.0 guys he was instantly and forever severed from the kit development process. Now the only people who can say for sure if they're really working on a Cutlass can only do the veiled "You'll be surprised what you see in the future" routine. It's that fine line between coming off as some know it all "Hobby Insider" and constantly being a kit tease. Personally I will not even enter a discussion about kits I know are pending in the distance because I have no desire of accidentally sticking my cyber-foot in my mouth and damaging good relationships I've spent many years developing.

I speak of the ZL-1, which I realize isn't BRAND SPANKIN' NEW, but it's less than a year old. Proving that even as that tool approaches 25 years old (not 30, my bad) there was still one more kit lurking in that tooling. Even if it was more of a compilation of parts rather than any truly new tooling.

I have on the several occasions (and I know this will shock people) that I've had the opportunity, suggested the "Make it into a '70 Charger" idea to the powers that be representing Revell. The AMT kit was an annual, so it doesn't even exist anymore, so there's no direct competition. I also never understood why there was no '67/'68 Camaro, and no '69 Firebird since while AMT obviously reissued their '68 recently, there was the potential for sales there as I'd much rather have a state of the art new (or based on the excellent existing tooling) kit than build another one of the AMT kits - and yes I have built both of those older AMT kits in the past during the AMT/Ertl days. Take into consideration it took what 20 years to get a '57 Bel Air Convertible, and nearly 30 years later there was a "new" variation of the '69 Camaro tooling, I'd think this is a hurry up and wait proposition. It'll come along...eventually...

It's been populating every single advertising banner since I looked at their website, and I concur...it looks like a KW T-600 and a ProStar had an illicit love child.

All new design? Looks like a ProStar with all the rounded bits sent through a board sander and squared off...

Give me a couple of days, it's a little on the moist side beyond the confines of my basement. Once I get a sunny day (Friday allegedly) I'll take some photos. The thing is obviously pretty big, and it'll overwhelm the area on my bench I normally shoot photos.

I need a significant overhaul of my entire work area. When my grandparents built this house in the early 50s, a basement was a place where you kept your washer/dryer, wood/coal burning furnace, a coal chute, the water heater and all of your canned/bottled vegetables, sauces, etc. The idea that anyone would use it DAILY was absurd. The end result of that is other than those appliances (and a later added oil furnace) the only wiring down here is 6 light sockets. That means in order to plug anything in I have to use those light socket adapters. As a result I have a bare CFL bulb, an end table lamp, and a desk work lamp as my illumination. To keep my laptop down here, and run the space heater in the winter (concrete floors) I have to run an extension cord into the next "section" of the basement and up into another light socket adaptor. I want at LEAST this section re-wired to give me several OUTLETS, as I want to hang those overhead shop florescent lights, and have a place to install a paint booth and the compressor to my airbrush. Installing shelves over the table would require drilling into the cinder-block wall. But with outlets I could push the table against the wall - instead of it "floating" in the middle of the floor under the light socket - and let me work on it the 6' lengthwise. I used to work on another longer table like this as a teenager, and I just kept my ongoing projects stacked up in the further corner so they were never out of sight, out of mind like they are now.

I had one for awhile about 10 years ago - the young lady in the relationship kept it - ^THAT was the problem that I had with it. It's perfectly fine so long as everyone is in bed together, but as soon as one or the other of you get up - presuming you have different enough schedules that one of you will be in bed for more than a few minutes. But once the person with the lower sleep number gets up and leaves, the person with the higher number is going to fall a few centimeters to their death. Like John says the first couple of times it does feel like you're falling out of bed entirely. The other downside is that the thing airs up with what amounts to a vacuum cleaner motor, it's not exactly the quietest thing in the world. So again if you're going to bed at separate times (I stay up late - hence the nickname) 9 out of 10 times you're going to wake up your bed mate resetting your number when you lay down. The quick and dirty remedy to keep from falling to your doom is to adjust the other bladder up (or down) to your same number when they leave, and then the bed is level. Of course the other person will have to re-adjust their bed every night. On the positive side I LOVED that bed, I slept really well on it - so long as only I, or both of us were in it. The mornings where she worked, but I had off-days from being OTR I tumbled off my side into lower number oblivion eventually.

I have a 3' wide by 6' long table I work at...I keep my madness separated by never taking more parts out of the box than I'm working on in one individual sitting - eg JUST the engine runners, or JUST the interior parts. I admit on small parts I am an "on the runner" painter unless it something requiring substantially clean-up. Once they come off and until ready for unit assembly they go into pile of removable plastic tackle containers that were in the tackle box I used for my OTR Semi-Driving workshop. Quick piece of masking tape with a sharpie to remind me what in the hey the parts actually go to, and so on. If I'm not working on the parts, then they stay SEALED (if possible) in their bags to keep from going AWOL or being turned into a hockey puck by the furry basement inhabitants. I've found that if I clean up and BOX UP a kit I'm working on it, it gets shelved into no mans land of the stash, and might never return for months or years until the project comes back to the forefront of my mind again.

I think this is a twofer of tool sharing and/or 3rd party packaging. Be interesting to know if the tooling always belonged to Lindberg from Day 1, or if like so many other awful things Lindberg bought over the years (Pyro, Palmer, etc) it was something they wound up with...if they still had them lying around, Round 2 would be the ones in possession of the tooling now. Especially in the case of anything coming out of Testors. With the exception of the Boyd Series of kits in the 1990s like the Chezoom, pretty much everything they've ever produced was a case of someone - Fujimi, Italeri, JoHan, Lindberg - producing kits for them under contract, and they were then sold under the Testors label.

So today was a very eventful day with boxes galore showing up via the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx... First up from Taiwan - stole this for about 1/3rd of what it usually sells for, benefits of the auction ending mid-afternoon in China, and my being a niteowl... DSC01890 (1280x786) by niteowl7710, on Flickr Also on the Postal Truck were two separate SAL boxes from HLJ. I sent an e-mail asking them to combine this into one large box with all three kits in it (the shipping was the same), but they packed them up and blew them out the door faster than the time change could handle. DSC01891 (1280x797) by niteowl7710, on Flickr DSC01892 (1188x1280) by niteowl7710, on Flickr FedEx actually showed up a few hours before the mail did, and they brought along HobbyLink Japan. Decals - the Tabu ones are for the 4 Hours Brasilia 1996 race. They are for the Fujimi McLaren F1 GTR "Short Tail". The Studio 27 Carbon Fiber decals go to three Fujimi kits - Top Row McLaren MP4-12C, McLaren F1 GTR "Short Tail", and beside the Tabu - BMW Z4 GT3. DSC01893 (1080x1280) by niteowl7710, on Flickr No SERIOUSLY they brought along HobbyLink Japan...like the entire place... DSC01894 (862x1280) by niteowl7710, on Flickr