Tom Geiger

it was warm here in PA today, with the creek in my yard running pretty swift with all the melting snow. I shoveled the last of the snow off my deck and flung it out across the yard in hope that it would melt quickly. The snow on my pool cover has melted so I put my cover pump out there in hopes of draining it all off quickly. Which might just be making room for the snow on Thursday!

Thanks Justin! Here's an early shot of the truck that shows just where the color scheme came from! A souvenir I bought in Aruba. And yes, the Chevy does have an Aruba license plate!

Not really. This truck is being done by a Chinese company who is not offering it here in the USA. A distributor is bringing it here, so you are paying a markup for the service. If the situation was that 2-3 American kit manufacturers decided to produce the same kit, it wouldn't result in them lowering the price to compete because the margins are already slim in the kit market. It would just result in none of them having enough sales to make their product viable, which wouldn't be good for us at all. This is a very small market.

Italeri isn't here to defend itself, but I'd guess that using the common chassis was what made the later projects do-able from a financial stand point. Same as the Caddy V8 in the new Revell '49 Mercury woody wagon. A source inside of Revell told me that was the one thing that made the project viable, reusing those under pinnings from the '49 Merc custom. There just wasn't money in that project budget to support developing a stock engine / trans for the kit. I'll bet the Italeri story would be similar. Probably saved them 20-25% of the development budget, which made the project viable!

Why haven't we seen new pickup kits? Simple, no manufacturer has ordered a promo run. The last, most recent model year trucks all were a by product of promotional models ordered by GM, Ford and Chrysler. And from what I've seen, they weren't breaking any sales records. You can still buy them, as well as many of the promos for $10-20 at shows. For late model trucks, your best bet is diecast. Take them apart, strip them down and finish them as you wish. Yea, that makes them models! Note that the Meng truck isn't targeted at the US market. It's being done in 1/24 so they're focusing on the Asian and European markets, places that won't balk at the necessary asking price. We'll see them cheaper than the $75 MSRP but guys will still whine that they're not $2 like the old days. Ford just happens to be the fastest growing brand in China right now, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were developing this truck for their home market. Go to the Ford China website and the first thing you'll see are photos of the new Mustang. Yea, the largest potential auto market on the planet loves American cars...

and now those same cards are worth a buck or two apiece! Oh, how times change!

Hey Vince! Here's my '32 Vicky. A bit bright!

Agreed! What's the sense of driving that huge Dually 4x4 crew cab sucker the size of a small house, on your way to the office as the only occupant? At what? 10 MPG on diesel which costs more than gas these days! For my hauling needs I have my old 1996 Grand Caravan which hasn't had the back seats in it in maybe three years. And that gets 18 MPG. Driving to work on the Turnpike? I take the 1999 Plymouth Breeze 2.4 four cylinder that gets 28 MPG!

On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place, If the summer change to winter, yours is no, Yours is no disgrace. Yours is no disgrace. Yours is no disgrace.

Very nice space! I'm meaning to use the same kind of counters in my model room in the near future. Your room looks like my den in my first house, which was a cape cod style home. When we bought the house, the room had been a teenagers room sometime in the past so the entire room, ceiling and all was painted black with glow in the dark / black light accents. When we got the house, someone said the room looked like a place where they shot up dope, so it got the name "The Dope Room". Even after I spent time to paint the many coats of white to cover it, the room never lost the name!

It stinks when people steal from others in the hobby. None of us would do that, first because we're honest type people but also because we have deep roots in the modeling community and wouldn't risk our hobby for a few cheap kits. Those who do mustn't be as involved as we are. A while back there was a string of thefts at NJ area swap meets. Dealers were complaining about costly older kits going missing and they surmised that some guy was walking around with a kit box lid, that they were putting down on top of the dealer's kit. When the dealer saw them walking away, they were just carrying a kit that wasn't theirs. I don't know if they ever caught him. We had a bit of stealing in the dealer area of NNL East many years ago. The Parsippany PAL building where we used to hold the show made us hire a couple of their police officers as uniformed security. Well one year a young guy thought he could just make a mad grab for a kit and run out the back entrance of the vendor room. What he didn't realize was that one of our cops was standing on the other side of the door. The cop grabbed the guy with the affected dealer right behind him. The kid got fidgety and tossed a cigarette pack in the garbage. The cop pulled it out and found he had tossed some joints. So we didn't have to prosecute him for shop lifting, he got a ride to headquarters for possession! As I was there the cop was yelling at him that he was stupid because he never would have searched him for that offense. He was planning on just yelling at him and kicking him out of the show! Dumb kid! The cops did tell me we really didn't have problems and we had a nice crowd. They told me horror stories about what went on at baseball card shows. Guys would watch people drop stuff off in their cars in the lot, then go break in and steal whatever was in the car. We did notice that our shoplifting problem went away when we stopped advertising. We could only figure that the thieves were picking up our flyer in the hobby shops. Last year I got an irate phone call from a guy the night of NNL East. He was chewing me out about our 'den of thieves' who STOLE his bag of kits and such he had bought at the show. I had him describe what he lost, and sure enough we had the bag. He had left it behind at a vendor table and someone turned it in. That shut him up quick! We generally have a good group and most lost stuff does get turned in.

Rust! My favorite color!

Lookin' good Rich. I'm happy to watch your progress.

I'm amazed at how many of these I see in rush hour commuter traffic every day. I don't mean dedicated work trucks, but ones without any company markings and a guy wearing a tie driving it to the office.

Rich- Since you sent it to the pond... I noticed in your last photo (of the car in blue) you hadn't created the inner door jambs, inner door or the trunk inner lip. You need to do all that prior to paint.

Most of my snow has melted but it might just have been making room for more snow rumored??

Cool work as always Brett! I've been saving photos of this truck with the idea of building it someday. It probably started out as an REA or other delivery van, that was later repurposed by cutting out side windows for the knife sharpening operation. And yea, I'd be more likely to build it stock like this one than you would!

Very cool! My daughters are now 26 and 30, but I built a few models with them both when they were young. Those models are still in my display case and hold very fond memories for all of us. My 30 year old was at our house and was showing her boyfriend my display case. She was nearly in tears when she saw her Ghostbuster car, that we built when she was around 10, sitting in a prominent place! Enjoy these times, your girls will never forget the time you spent with them!

Great work Jürgen! You did the right thing by gluing those doors shut. Above are my two IMC / Lindberg A100s. The van is a resin body that had the doors molded shut so I didn't know just how bad those doors were until I did the pickup. I've just given up on hinging them with the kit hinges and am gluing them shut! I do want to build one of those L-700s to complete my set!

Very nice work! I especially like the opening doors and detail on the bungie cord that holds the surf board on the roof!

I think that large scale is pretty much a different hobby from us 1/24 / 1/25 scale builders, just as the 1/43 builders are pretty much to themselves. I don't think we get a ton of large scale models on display at NNL East, maybe a dozen or so. I'll pay attention this year. My own thoughts... I do own about a half dozen, all bought at an advantage price which made me buy them. I have a Revell funny car, which I've admired for having full plumbing. I've actually used it and it's instruction book as a guide to detail out 1/25 scale cars. I have an old original Lindberg T, bought 20 years ago at a garage sale for $5. I will always keep it since it's cool, and I have the box on display on top of one of my display cabinets. I did have a Revell 1957 Chevy I got as a present, but to me that one looked like they just took a 1/25 scale model and blew it up. I didn't think it would look right built since large scale requires much more detail. So I sold that one. I have a Minicraft Model A pickup and a '57 Thunderbird also, both bought for $10 or so at club meetings. I recently pulled those two out together with the idea of kit bashing them into a traditional rod Model A pickup. My first impression was "wow, these are huge!" as my head is wrapped around 1/25 scale. I didn't start the project for a few reasons. First, my own lack of a parts box to fish for additional parts. I have tons of 1/25 scale parts and am familiar enough with these kits to know where to find what. I don't have that experience in the larger scale, and the level of detail needed to make that project believable. I do think the future of large scale is in the aftermarket and certainly with the amazing things that can be 3D printed. So it will be a hobby for those willing to finance models of this size.

Wow! This thread has been dormant since my November 1 interview. Unfortunate, I didn't get that job. In fact nobody got that job, they never hired, which was the case with about 50% of the jobs I had interviewed for in 2013! The positive part is that I had another good interview with another company in December and again, they haven't hired anyone. I see they have started advertising that job again. They're looking for Superman at a Lois Lane salary. The good news is that I wasn't keen on either company, but I would have taken the job because I was out of work. In January I got a call from my old boss at the 2nd pharma I worked for, to work for him at the 1st pharma I worked for! So now I'm a consultant at pharma number 1, working for two levels of my old management from pharma number 2. Good karma and never burning a bridge works for me!

It is a good idea for a caster to take some pre-orders to gauge the need for the product. I talk to a lot of the aftermarket as part of my duties for NNL East. Most say that the best time for a new product like this is when the kit is brand new, and everyone is excited about it. Demand drops once it's just another item in the kit manufacturer's catalog, and drops off to nothing once the kit is out of print. This wouldn't fall into Model Haus territory, more like a project for RMR Ron Andrews since he does a lot of light commercial products. And of course only the caster can calculate what it would have to sell for to make it viable.

This weekend's haul that I acquired at my club meeting. The Ford pickup was bought from a fellow club member who was thinning out his hoard for $10. Even though I have several I can't pass up an old pickup kit for that price. Heck, I'd pay that just to get another set of those cool wheels. And then I got two new kits via Model King. I already have a 1950 Olds, but needed a donor kit for a resin wagon I recently bought. I didn't have the 49 Mercury woody, so that was cool to get. Looking at it, I'm quite impressed! It's one of those kits that you want to move everything else off the bench and start on immediately! And I got oh, 800 of these! Our club members set up assembly line style to package up the NNL East souvenir license plates!