Tom Geiger

IPMS may have written standards but they are inconsistent from show to show. Many chapter shows are 'car unfriendly'. I remember having to put my light commercial vehicles in a class called "Motorcycles and Civilian Trucks". Depending on the chapter, they can be down right discouraging to anyone with 'non military wheeled vehicles". But the ironic part is that they welcome those who do fantasy sci-fi and monster figures with open arms! Nor is IPMS beyond the issues reported elsewhere in this thread such as their own chapter members winning all the awards. I was at one where my trucks didn't win anything, but someone in the chapters wife won an award in that category with an unpainted body. And at the same show the two guys announcing the awards kept giving them to each other. Not a good appearance! The only show in any arena I can say is truly judged fairly is GSL in Salt Lake. Since the armor and planes are their main focus, the judges are from those genres. Think about what would occur if you or I were asked to judge the military categories. We wouldn't even be able to identify the subjects, never mind know if they were modified and if that work is correct. And that's what happens when the armor guys are let loose on the cars! A couple guys from my clubs went to the local IPMS show this year and were chuckling as to what cars won awards.

I used to have a 1989 Crown Vic that was first my grandfather's, then I inherited it from my father. It was bullet proof! I put over 200,000 on it. I drove it a 150 mile round trip commute and got 19-20 mpg. I gave it to my wife's brother. He drove it for a year and gave it to a friend of his who is still driving it.

Nice truck with my favorite engine! And three on the tree, I remember that! Build on!

Jurors are picked from a combination of state records. They take you from the drivers license, voter registrations and tax returns. You'd have to live under a rock to avoid those three. I served three times at county level in Monmouth County, NJ back when I lived there. It seemed I'd come up every ten years. I worked for companies that would pay me. I found it interesting to serve. Each time I spent a week. The first time I only got out of the jury room once, for a jury selection and had to disqualify myself. I knew one of the people involved in the case. The second time, I got on a case that lasted less than a day. A young lady got pulled over and had an open bag of cocaine on the console of her car. She had a lawyer arguing that it was a rented car. Like when you rent a car you don't notice the big bag on the console? Based on the law, we had to find her guilty. Sentencing would be by others later. Third time out, I got on a trial that lasted 4 days. I feared it would go into the next week, but we wrapped it up on Friday. It was an incest case with a step father and underage step daughter. Very interesting case. I felt my time was well spent and it was cool to see how the system works. Someone above said, "IMO, jurors should be picked from a pool of people who are either unemployed, retired or on government subsidies." and that can't be so. Under our government you are guaranteed a jury of your peers, and that means you and me. If you were unjustly accused of a crime would you want to be judged by welfare recipients?

We call those window blinds, and because of the direction (up and down versus side to side) we call them vertical blinds. Yes, they are hard plastic here in the USA too. You can recycle used ones, or go to the store and ask for the scraps when they cut them to size to fit windows!

Considering that the general public doesn't use these for anything rougher than the turnpike, they now produce cars that look like Jeeps. And the average person out there is happy. So be it.

And these are the exact thoughts I had while reading the posts above. Sad part is, these are the things that drive people away from the hobby! I used to be very into stamp collecting. This is a hobby that's 150 years old and is very organized and monied. Much like model shows, people build very specialized collections that involve a lot of research. We'd create custom pages to display them on. When you go to a big show, there are frames that hold the collections and they are judged on a checklist of criteria including your research and subject knowledge, down to the graphics and presentation. They have an international organization, the American Philatelic Society (APS) that has a very strict judging standard and accredited judges. The exhibits are judged against a sheet that gives values to every category. You are competing against yourself. There are no first, second and third awards, there are gold, silver and bronze. Every display that is judged to have a certain point range is awarded the correct award at that show. So you may have two gold awards and five silvers, if the quality of the exhibits dictates. Within categories, the highest number won the category award, and best of show is the highest tallied exhibit. There were smaller shows that had no gold awards. At a smaller show in Pennsylvania, I won Best of Show with a silver award exhibit. At larger shows people would say, "Wow! That was a great show! They had 5 gold winners, 10 silvers and 15 bronzes!" Nobody would complain about the judges. I can say from experience, that the judging was very consistent from event to event. I started out not winning anything, but used the judging sheets and coaching from judges and others to perfect my collection. Then I started winning bronzes at shows. It took me years to get to silver. I never did win a gold award. The judges were very knowledgeable and there was strict criteria and training. You needed to have a consistent silver collection to become a trainee. Then after a period of training, you'd progress to junior judge and up the chain. Nobody ever complained about the judging. And that's the big problem with our hobby. We do not have any judging standards what so ever. It's up to each show to do what they want to do. And as we know, the actual results have varied.

That is very cool. Not many of those were made, I can't imagine how many actually exist today. Back in the day, Tony's Pizza in Hazlet, NJ bought a fleet of red ones. I'm not sure how many they actually had. You'd see them all over town, acquiring more body damage every time you'd see one, at mercy of teen age drivers. They didn't last long!

welcome! Build what you want and what's important to you. Don't feel you have to build street rods to be part of the crowd. Be true to the voices in your head and this is a very rewarding hobby!

The bondo looks just fine. I've seen cars like that driving around.

That is neat! I have a soft spot for that Ranchero kit. You solved all the chassis issues!

At most shows any model that wins a major award (first in category, best in show) is no longer eligible for awards at that show again. Most modelers I know wouldn't think of competing again with the same model. While we're at it, my pet peeve is shows where the membership of the sponsoring club win the lionshare of the awards. My own belief is that you are either hosting an event or participating in an event. If you are hosting, your guests should win the awards. It sets an air of fairness. Even if the club members won the awards fair and square, it just doesn't look right. Same for judges. They'll say they are competing in categories they're not judging, but it just leaves them open for criticism. For the record, at NNL East the Tri-State members aren't eligible for awards. Our models are all on our club table, without numbers needed for voting on them.

I was building a 1950 Ford F-1 pickup and was using photo etched "F-1" emblems from Model Car Garage. I got both sides done and then noticed I lost the "1" from the passenger side. I searched high and low for it on the bench, under the bench, took everything off the bench, swept up all the debris and sorted through it... no avail. It was good and gone. Not wanting to buy another sheet from Model Car Garage, I decided to drill a small hole where the missing digit was and dab a little bit of rust in the dull mark the glue left. There, done! And fitting right into the way I build old trucks. The next week I'm at work sitting in a meeting and I notice a little shine coming from my shirt sleeve. There was my "1" glued so securely to the bottom of the shirt sleeve that it even went through the wash!

I know what you mean! My Mrs. will set herself up with a show like "Dancing With The Stars" or "The Bachelorette" and then get mad at me if I leave the room. Not a problem though, she normally falls asleep on the couch within 15 minutes. Once she's asleep I can go upstairs to work in my model room for awhile. I'll be up there 2 hrs and return to watch a 10pm show. She'll wake up and ask what happened to her show and never realize I had left!

And that's exactly the reason for NNLs. Everyone gets the enjoyment of participating and showing their work without the pressure of judging, winning and losing. In my book, if I meet someone at the show who really enjoys a model of mine, that makes my day, and I've made a new friend!

Those MPC 70s and 80s cars were done really nice. Throw away cars like the Chevy Cavalier, Ford EXP, and Dodge Omni all have excellent detail and go together well. And the good part is that many of them can still be bought cheap today.

If you have glued two fingers together with CA, to get them apart slide them sideways from each other. Don't try to pull apart.

Outlaw derbys sound dangerous. People get hurt when vehicles of different sizes collide.

Very cool Tom! Nothing beats time spent modeling with a child or grand child. They love the attention and will remember it forever. Enjoy it while you can, they grow up really fast. I built with both my daughters and their models are in my showcase to this day. They are 29 and 25 now, so it went way too fast. Now I await grandchildren to spoil!

Yes! One of my favorite kits. I have two more in progress right now. This one is pretty much box stock, built back when the kit first came out. I was copying a picture of a 1:1 truck so I changed the front bumper, added the fender top lights and added a different seat. I filled the box with chopped wood. Yours is very cool and I like what you did with the kit.

Which reminds me... when I was doing the 24 hour build, it was 5 am and I was getting sloppy and seeing double from being up all night. I was holding the Miss Deal Funny Car body and fumbled it. As it started to head for the floor I grabbed at it and managed to trap it between my arms and chest, breaking both A pillars against my chest! I decided that was enough for the night. I did manage to fix them the next day.

Great work. I like 'em!

Yea, not a pretty picture... flocking, acrylic paints, paper details ... at least it wasn't this one:

I'm with Blair! You have all your details covered. It looks super!