Lunajammer

Hey MeatMan, I see lot of cool and interesting progress on your entry in another thread. No love for the CBR? ?

I really appreciate your presentations here. Your excellent, clean photos do a lot of talking.

Lots to like here. Certainly a good source of inspiration.

Or the opposite... One of our museums displays under glass a fair sized collection of common, poorly built, unpainted, busted, glue splotched airplanes. Probably belonged to a member or big financial supporter, but it bothers me that this is what's supposed to represent museum worthy scale replicas. If they want to honor the donor, hang a picture of the person. They probably didn't want to tell the widow they wouldn't display them. Meanwhile one of the best aircraft/military modelers in our area for decades passed away. I found his airbrushed and accurately detailed aircraft piled up and broken in a rummage box on the floor at the thrift store. Broke my heart.

When a club member passed, other key members joined his wife in liquidating as much as they could at the annual toy and hobby show. Knowledgeable members set the prices, hustled and hawked while the wife greeted and thanked the buyers. They set and dickered the price of the valuable kits and tools, but wasted no time haggling over common kits and small stuff. At day's end, most was gone, she made a little money, was free of the burden, buyers got great bargains and it all ended up in the hands of people who wanted it. Win-win-win.

End of weekend update. Body has been primed and sanded, misc. parts have been sprayed, revealing some color clues here.

Has Tamiya ventured into the BMF space? I'd be surprised if they didn't but I've never heard mention of anything.

Don't Look Up. The lovely Ms. L. and I watched it last week. Definitely a dark, satirical, socio-political commentary about very contemporary times, brought to us by former SNL writer and regular Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay (Anchorman [1&2], Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, Ant-Man). While it dramatizes all the absurdities playing out in current politics and culture, it does so without pointing fingers at any identifiable people or political parties (with the possible exception of Elon Musk). Not an easy task for almost all current comedy, satire and op-ed writers whose meal ticket is the easy "low hanging fruit."

Mario Andretti eulogized him by saying if he had half the patience Big Al had, he'd have won more.

Here ya go, Bud...

Among the celebrity obits, I was surprised there's been no mention of the passing of Indy great Al Unser, Sr. December 9, 2021 after a long battle with cancer. I only found out a few days ago and can't find any mention on this forum. Regardless, he was one of my favorites. One of those classic, all-around racers.

While I intended to use the spare Thunderbird 390 engine from the Lindberg '34 Ford pickup, I decided to keep it simple by sticking with the kit-provided engine, which is a 427 big block Chevy... ya know, the one with the hole through it. So that's the first thing to patch. I bought the kit at a swap and the engine halves and heads were glued on with no particular care. I'll live.

Wow, heck of a list. It's going to be a busy year and a competitive finish for sure. The Ranchero is going to get a street machine treatment, beginning with opening up the wheel wells. Some quarter-round rod for fender flares.

Boy, those look crisp! That Roadrunner gets me psyched.

No sweat, box not important. All that matters is that we see your basic plastic starting point so we can all appreciate your journey from aspiration to glory ?. Looking forward to it. (Sorry Anthony, not trying to speak on your behalf).

It would be a fun car to "recustomize." Basically lop off all the gaudy head scratchers and re-envision it.

For the '61 Ranchero I'm considering some five slot deep dish wheels from the parts box, but one rim is broken, so I'm gonna try to fix it with a parts box ring. Broken rim is ground off and the ring is prepped. All four after repair and awaiting paint. Still undecided if these are what I really want to go with but that's where I'm at for now.

Love those 32's, they're so balanced. I'll need to find your build threads.

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Fantastic work and wonderful choice of subjects. If that was all last year, then I can't to see what you do this year.

They’re pretty common, half the members here probably have one. Maybe offer a trade in the trade section.

…AND done! ?? Kidding. I built this in the mid 70’s as a tween. This is the first time I used a rattle can to paint a model. I still have it and it’s nice to have a built reference for my ‘61 CBR Ranchero. I could have also done this for the replica build off CBP.

Whoa, Bill. That's an interesting departure from what we're used to seeing from you. Looking forward to it.

What a great turnout of finishers this year on a theme that got a lot of builders excited to join in. Special thanks to Jonathan (disconovaman) for keeping the energy up for the whole year and motivating builders to persevere. ?

Congratulations Kurt! That'll be a guaranteed winner no matter where you show it.