Tom Geiger

that's why I take a ton of in progress shots. You see things in those photos you don't see at the bench!

very cool. You did enough details without overdoing it! The roof came out nicely too. Glad to see you managed to disguise the edges of your cuts

Good progress John. Can't wait to see it Saturday. Here's what I was working on with the same kit. I shortened the body down, but left the roof length as a visor. It will go on a chassis from the old Monogram Green Hornet kit. I had a photo of that mocked up, but Fotki must be holding it hostage since it's not in the folder.

Very nice replica of the original car. I love that old kit, I have tried that chassis under a bunch of bodies.

That came out really cool. I especially like the contrast of the saddle color interior.

The good news is that research has never been easier with the Internet. I remember in the old days, pouring over old magazines, trying to find a 1:1 to look at or asking model buddies for advise. It was long, tedious and I often finished models with incorrect details. Depending on the subject, eBay Motors can be your best friend. Nearly any kind of vehicle in existence gets offered for sale there. Many times with 25-50 or more good photos you can save to your computer. The good part is that if you don't find what you're looking for, check back in a few days. The entire show changes every week. Also, if you are looking for a foreign vehicle, check out the eBay international sites. And you can find vehicles in every condition, so I've saved lots of photos of beaters and junkers, some for nothing more than my rust and dent file. Now here's taking research a bit deeper, if you don't find the info in photos of cars for sale, try parts for sale. Here's a few examples of photos I used for detailing. Today there is no excuse to not get it right. It's that easy. In doing the Mopar flathead six in my '34 Ford rat sedan, I gathered over 25 photos of the engine. I have some in cars, and some that were out of cars and available for sale. In this photo, I got the distributor angle,dip stick location and oil filter line locations. Notice the wire loom next to the oil filter... So I searched for it by itself. You can't get better reference on this item than the three photos I have of this! Obscure? Here's one of many photos of a 1928 Citroen engine that I used to build the Heller Bordens Truck. Transmission linkage detail from a trans for sale on eBay... which allowed me to build this!

Very true. When a seldom seen kit appears on eBay, it results in a bidding war and sells for a high price. Several other people see this sale and decide to cash in and sell their own copies. In the next week or so several of this same kit show up for sale, and since the original excitement has been satisfied, they sell for much less. So if you take those prices and average them, you may have a realistic value.

Nobody said the post office would be closed, only that they wouldn't do residential carrier routes. As far as the others who mentioned social security checks (now all done electronic transfer) and prescription delivery (most are for 3 month supplies, and the vendor prompts you to renew ahead of time) My local post office here in PA is open until 3pm on Saturday so it is customer driven. The postal service has been thinning the ranks for years. My bro-in-law works at a mail sorting center. Right now he's on midnight shift because he's low man on seniority. He's been there 25 years, yes the least senior people at that center are 25 year vets. His center is shutting down in August and he doesn't know if he's getting laid off or being moved who knows where. He's 55 and hoping to hang in there another 10-12 1/2 years.

Boxes and boxes of stuff arriving daily! Every time a small box comes in the mail my wife will tell me I have "another present". At this point my one garage is near full. Today I added the T-Shirt order, I believe most of what appears in this photo is Round 2's show booth stuff for NNL East.

Again Casey, flawed logic that works in a library, but not in real life. Now you are suggesting that I ADD a post to an already buried thread down in the hinterland of non-read posts? That would have even seen less readership than IF I had started the thread down below. Which brings me to another topic. It frustrates me (and probably others) that when someone starts a thread about a topic, that you drag up some five year old 10 page thread on the same topic and add it to it. The five year old thread is obsolete and a good number of the photos are missing because they're no longer at that web address. So now the new post author and those who started to follow that one can't find the thread, AND people are intimidated to read through 10 pages of old muck and dead jokes to get to the recent information. The one thing that the board moderators don't understand at all is that this board is here for one reason. To sell magazines and serve the hobby. And we are the customers. There is no profit in belittling and ticking off the customers.

Bingo! We're talking human nature. Exactly my point. Ah, Bill but suppose you didn't know there was going to be a last minute change? You wouldn't know to check the buried Contest and Shows section. You show up for NNL East, you go eat dinner by yourself on Friday night, only to find out there was a party you didn't know about? When we post the original notice for the show and the after show review, we will post it under Contests and Shows. What I posted was an FYI that we need to get to as many people as possible quickly. Thus my frustration. The Friday night event was put together at the last minute. The hotel restaurant shut down and we originally thought we'd just skip it for a year and let people be on their own. But the emails of disappointment we got, and the number of people we knew were attending for the first time, we needed to give them the full experience. So the last few weeks were spent interviewing caterers, putting together budgets, visiting the hotel to figure out the how and where, and dealing with the town on whether or not we needed to buy permits. I only felt comfortable announcing it after my visit up there on Friday. In fact, we had some bumps in the road regarding codes and such today. So imagine my frustration that Birthday announcements and cat pictures get priority treatment over something that's important to people and the hobby!

Pretty sure it's Revell. It's one of the cars they use for the Make and Take programs. I built one too. Just fun to paint and detail.

And a quick reminder that everyone who displays models at NNL East will get a neat little gift with the show logo on it. Only available to those displaying models, so bring something!

Richard - Here's a thought for you. As you look to make this van more distinctive, you may not know that it was available in three different lengths. The kit is the extended wheel base model. There was a shorter van.... as well as a longer one, same as the kit, but with extra length behind the rear wheels. And a lot of aftermarket high tops to make anything from a custom van, a extended height work truck, an ambulance or handicap van. So there's a lot of different things you can do to make it distinctive.

OMG, that's what I forgot! Clear coat and polish. Harry is accurate, look at the car you are replicating and copy the reflection levels. The IROC shops used to be in NJ and I got invited to their open house a couple of times. Man were those cars rough! body damage, tears in fiberglass just rivited back together, over spray and damage repaired in different shine levels like old NYC taxis! They only have to look good from the stands!

Harry I stand by my observation. I just checked and my NNL East post down in No Man's Land currently has 34 views, and that's probably from readers who know enough to hit the "View New Content" button. Even this silly thread, has near double the views because it's in the most read category. And BTW, the Spotlight post has 163 views.

Looking good John! Can't wait to see it at the show. I didn't get to enjoy the nice weather either. Yesterday we filled the NNL East goody bags at our club meeting. Today I've been cranking out buttons and handling little details. The big question, I wonder how many guys are working on their NNL East models instead of doing their taxes??

When we moved NNL East from Parsippany to Wayne NJ to get into a building that was double the size, there were people who ranted about the six mile move!

Thank you ever so much for immediately taking my post of urgent news about NNL East Friday Night from the General section, and putting it down in No Man's Land in the Events category. Yea, I guess in your overly anal approach to managing this board, putting your own sense of organization way ahead of the good of the board readers and Model Cars Magazine. Truth be told, I sent the same message to both the Spotlight Hobbies Board and this board. I got it on the Spotlight board at 6:13 and on the Model Cars Board at 6:23. On Spotlight, the notice has 82 views and 3 responses from people who are attending the event and appreciated knowing about the Friday night barbeque. On the Model Cars Board, we have ZERO views and ZERO comments. Why? Because NOBODY READS THE CATEGORIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOARD!!!

Philadelphia suburbs, sunny and near 60 F today. Nice day to be outside. Now we just have to worry about the weather for NNL East this coming weekend!

Friday evening at the host hotel we will be hosting a barbeque for all our out of town visitors. We'll have plenty of burgers, dogs, sausage and chicken. We've hired a specialty caterer to do it right! So join us starting at 6pm. Round 2 will be attending the show this year. John asked me to announce that they will have a supply of tires for the '62 Corvette to make up for the two stock tires missing in the kit. And as far as the host hotel, if you are staying and haven't made a reservation please do so right now! I was there on Friday and we are near sold out for Friday night. Find the info on our website...

Overall the post office does a good job. 99.9% of the mail gets there and on time. The problem with the post office is their inability to compete, a lot because their hands are tied by congress. The post office is mandated to deliver mail to every address in this country without any surcharges. I once saw a news show, like a 20/20, that showed mail route in some western state by small plane. You know they lose tens of thousands of dollars a year on that one route. I recently went to UPS to mail 3 packages and they wanted to charge me a non-standard route surcharge on 2 of them. So it's unfair competition. Another issue is Saturday delivery. Recently congress blocked cancelling it. Well, if it's going to save millions of dollars, I can live with 5 day delivery. I can wait till Monday for my mail. The mail isn't as significant as it once was before phones, fax and the Internet.

I use Duplicolor grey primer on nearly everything, and that would work to eliminate any yellow bleed through. I recently had a pair of headers that were dark red, and I painted them Testors flat black, then flat white on top of that with no problems. That yellow version was a reissue from the 1988-92 era you mentioned. Back then someone in my club did a dozen of them stock / curbside for a promo collector. He sold us the remains for a dollar or two a kit. So I had several kits worth of the custom parts and other extras. Here's a sorry custom I was working on years ago. That's two of the Rivera's custom rear treatments on the back of it.

Welcome to the board! I guess you paid the Kansas Tourism Tax!

Funny thing, the furthest I've traveled for a show is from NJ to Salt Lake city, ironically, with Al Raab! I've also been to Toledo and as far north as Masscar. I would like to get out to NNL West and I have a standing invite to the South Africa NNL from my friends there. I'd really like to do that one! For those headed long distances to NNL East, we truly appreciate you're coming! The restaurant at the host hotel is closed this year, so we will be hosting a free barbecue at the hotel for our traveling friends! This will be a first class event with a good caterer. Also, for those who haven't made hotel reservations yet, we are near full up! So call the hotel NOW. Info is on the site at www.nnleast.com And make sure you say hello! It drives me crazy when I get emails the week after the show saying, "I saw you there but you looked busy". Never too busy to say hello.