Harry P.

Maybe it's the Amish people's fault!

The "tonic cover" alone has to be worth a few grand! Man, that thing has "bad taste" written all over it. Amazing how much ugly 40K will buy...

Ed, with a little TLC and some basic modeling skills, this kit can be built to look fantastic. Yeah, it's definitely not state of the art as far as detail and parts count, but it can build into a very nice shelf model. Multi-piece bodies shouldn't scare anyone off. After all, it's a model kit! You have to put everything else together, what's the big deal if you also have to put the body together? Multi-piece bodies shouldn't scare any modeler with average skills.

Hood ornament drawn in Photoshop...

Emission testing is ok. What's crazy is that it's mandatory for some people and not for others. What's the point of having a set of standards in place if they don't apply to everyone? Because I live in the Chicago metro area, I have to pass emissions. My daughters live in Urbana. No emissions testing there... yet as far as I know, they also breathe air... just like me. But apparently the air down there is ok to be polluted? And yes, I get it that they target the larger metro areas because that's where more cars are. But still... dirty air is dirty air, whether you live in Chicago or Podunk, Iowa. And getting back to my original point... the fact that because there's a program in place to clean up the air, we have situations where dozens and dozens of cars sit idling at emissions testing sites, all day long, six days a week, polluting the air, waiting to be emissions tested to make sure they're not polluting the air!

In a previous post I mentioned how the birch veneer that I'm covering the fuselage with was thin and flexible enough so that it followed the curves of the fuselage without wetting it. Well, that's because I started at the cockpit area, where the radiuses (radii?) of the fuselage are the largest. As you work back towards the tail, the fuselage tapers and the radiuses get tighter and tighter (hey... '60s song flashback!... )... anyway, my veneer panels were cracking as I tried to force them around these tighter curves. So I had to start "preshaping" the veneer by wetting it on one side and letting it dry, which gave it a permanent curl. Then I could lay out and cut the panels and use that permanent curl to my advantage. However... once I got to the tail itself we have a whole new set of problems. Some of the individual panels will have to curve in two directions (compound curve). So the only way I would be able to make the panels fit is to soak them, clamp them in place wet and let them dry in place... then when dry, remove them and actually glue them back in place. A slow, tedious and meticulous process for sure. Here's where I'm at today... It's probably too hard to see in the photo, but the base of the panels that cover the tail flare out at the bottom in one direction and at the same time curve gently from front to back to follow the curve of the top of the horizontal stabilizer. Bending wood to curve in two directions at the same time is no easy task! I'm trying to keep the joints between panels as tight as I can, but it's very hard to do. The good thing is, once the panels are stained, they will be quite a bit darker and the dark joint lines will be less noticeable. Plus the color scheme will take your attention away from the panel seams, too... so I'm pretty sure things will look good in the end.

Those old kits can be built into very nice models. A nice paint job, some foil for the chrome trim, and you'd be surprised how good the finished product can look.

The HEMI decal is all black... it should be easy enough to touch up the tear with a sharp brush and some gloss black paint.

Solves one problem but creates another: property tax!

Yeah, I should have known better. I'll go back in a week or two.

I don't mind the idea of testing... I have nothing against clean air. What gets me is that only the people in metro Chicago and St. Louis have to be tested... they don't do testing anywhere else in the state! Why is it that clean air is important for some people, but not for the rest of them? Either everyone should be tested, or nobody should be tested. This picking and choosing only a couple of areas in the state is nuts. Farmer Jones downstate can run his old smoke belching pickup all day long, but I have to pass a test?

Oh yeah. Big time.

Mitchell Blvd. in Schaumburg. Closest one to my house.

James, I hear ya! I'm sure the Illinois program is more a scam than anything else. First of all, they only test cars in the Chicago and St. Louis metro areas. If you live in Rockford, or Springfield, or the Quad Cities. or Champaign-Urbana, or Peoria, or anywhere else except metro Chicago or St. Louis... no testing! You can drive the biggest polluter in the state, belching black smoke and carcinogens like an old locomotive... hey, no problemo! We're only worried about cars that pollute the air in Chicago and St. Louis. Anywhere else in Illinois, free pass! And as if that wasn't ridiculous enough... if your car pollutes the air so much that it fails the test, you get another shot. And another. And if you fail the test three times... you're exempt!!! If your car spews so much pollution into the air that it fails the test three times, hey... you're good to go! My tax dollars at work...

Keep at it! The more you paint, the better you'll get. Nice work!

I know what you mean. With me and my friends it was fire...

Cool! Who knew that such an obscure car has a plastic kit and a diecast made of it? BTW... am I the only one who thinks that little Renault looks like an Amphicar?

Don't worry, Peter... I'm giving you an Honorable Mention!

Al... is that your model and display? If so, very cool!

Oh, you know it.

Ok, so I'm a good citizen and decide to take my car in for its annual emissions test. I don't think they do automotive emissions testing everywhere in the country, but here in Illinois it's done in the Chicago and St. Louis metro areas (no other cities in Illinois, but that's a rant for another thread!). Your car has to pass the emissions test before you can renew your registration sticker every year. I went in this morning around 10:30... I figured there wouldn't be a lot of cars and I could fly right through. Wrong! The lines were incredible! I figured I'd try again later when the lines weren't so long. So I went back around 2 in the afternoon. Now the lines were even longer than before... literally out into the street! Needless to say, I went home and will try again another day. But on the way home I couldn't help but think how stupid this is... here's a program set up by the do-gooders to help keep the air clean (no problem there!)... and what do you have? Dozens and dozens of cars sitting in blocks-long lines, engines running, wasting gas (getting basically zero mpg as they all sit in the line that moves at a glacial pace) and spewing emissions the whole time! In other words... the only reason there are dozens and dozens of cars gathered there, idling away and wasting gas and sending emissions into the air is because the do-gooders want to cut down on auto emissions! Hellooooooo irony!

Definitely not a '70. The wraparound front bumper is completely different and the '70 doesn't have that lower character line that sweeps into the rear wheel opening.

Exactly. Using a finished product or part, taking measurements off it, and using the measurements and info to create the tooling to recreate that product or part. The "bad guys" do it all the time with captured military equipment.

Please post questions in the question section.

My "comfort zone" includes cars, trucks, bikes, ships, planes, stagecoaches, trains, covered wagons... or anything else that looks like it would be interesting and fun to build. I can't imagine artificially restricting myself to only one certain type of model, or only one certain scale. That's like going to all the best restaurants and always ordering a burger and fries, no matter how many other things are on the menu.