Mike999

I also posted this in "Off-Topic/What Non-Model..." But after I did, decided it's On-Topic enough for here. MENG is best known for aircraft and armor kits, but it does make some useful tools for modelers of every genre. Plus some really nice plastic Nut & Bolt Sets suitable for all scales. MENG also makes pre-painted 1/9 scale motorcycle kits if you like bikes, and 1/24 scale accessories for its Hummer and Jeep Rubicon kits. This weekend Sprue Brothers is selling all MENG products for 20% off. I have no connection to them, other than being a happy customer. I've dealt with Sprue Brothers for years. One thing I like about them is their VERY fast shipping. Details from the website and a link: Weekend Special - Additional 20% Off All Meng Items From now until 11:59pm US Central Time Sunday October 18, 2020 receive an additional 20% Off All Meng Model items! No coupon required - just add to cart and discount will be automatically applied (note - to see the discount, you have to go to the cart page [click on the cart symbol on the upper right side of your screen]). Discount applies only to online orders placed during the discount period, and to in stock items. http://www.spruebrothers.com/

Heads up! This weekend, Sprue Brothers has a 20% off sale on all MENG products. Details from their website and link: Weekend Special - Additional 20% Off All Meng Items From now until 11:59pm US Central Time Sunday October 18, 2020 receive an additional 20% Off All Meng Model items! No coupon required - just add to cart and discount will be automatically applied (note - to see the discount, you have to go to the cart page [click on the cart symbol on the upper right side of your screen]). Discount applies only to online orders placed during the discount period, and to in stock items. http://www.spruebrothers.com/

You stole that one! On the Wespe website, the Opel Super Six is listed for 51.20 Euros. The kits are resin. For quite a few years, Wespe was one of the very few companies releasing WWII civilian or nearly civilian vehicles. And they do a bunch. Including a Studebaker staff car, cut-down '41 Ford station wagons as used in North Africa and many others. https://www.wespemodels.com/opel_super_6_pwes_35021

I see what you did there with the DeLorean! Just as a heads-up: the STARZ cable movie channel is currently running the 2018 movie "Driven," about the DeLorean debacle. I watched it a couple of nights ago, it's pretty funny. "You want the FBI to loan John DeLorean 2 million dollars, so we can arrest him?" It also contains some good Car Porn, as you would expect. Like the red '67 GTO that Jason Sudeikis drives. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5592796/

Probably the M41. The 3 Hobby Lobbys in my area always have that kit in stock, and a couple more old Tamiya kits. They also have the much newer Tamiya M4A3E8 "Easy Eight European Theater" Sherman tank. That one has a full retail/HL price of $49.99. Tamiya did a lot of its old military kits in the weird 1/21 scale and those often go for big bucks on eBay. Around the same time its competition, Bandai, did some German armor kits in even bigger 1/15 scale: a Tiger I, Panzer IV and Sturmgeschutz IV, and a Hummel 150mm self-propelled gun.

During the carjacking fad in Los Angeles years ago, a guy saw a well-dressed couple who appeared to be out on a date. They looked like an easy mark and he tried to force them out of the car and steal it. They were a couple out on a date. The guy was an LAPD officer and his date was a female Deputy Sheriff. Both were carrying their off-duty service weapons. So that was one of the shortest carjack attempts in history.

That's an awesome job to tackle in 1/24 and resin! I have a part-built Miniman Factory 1/35 scale kit, the UAZ-452 van. The resin leaf springs are a weak point, and I'm thinking of replacing them with plastic or metal. I see a de-militarized M54 5-ton truck around here sometimes that's used as a logging truck.

The Revell '56 is a good kit for police car fans, too. This vintage Chevy ad pitches both the 2-door and 4-door '56 150 and 210 body styles for police work. The Los Angeles Police Dept. used 1956 Chevy 4-doors, one of the rare years that department didn't go with Ford or MoPar. Somebody did a really nice 4-door resin body for the Revell kit, complete with new inner door panels. I found one at a kit swap meet but don't know who made it.

All those fun "extra parts" originated in the AMT 1961 and '62 Buick Special station wagon kits: the Chrysler V8 with 3 intake options, utility trailer, fuel/oil cans, engine hoist, tool box and other neat accessories. They were all carried right over to the '63 Nova wagon 3-in-1 kit. Some of those cool accessories also made it into the Boss Nova: the fuel/oil cans, tool box, big fire extinguisher, chrome torque wrench, a driver's helmet with separate face mask and probably a couple more parts I've forgotten.

I have to agree with most of that. And had the same impression watching "The Witch." ALL these people are weird, especially those spooky twins and their goat. You've probably seen both movies named "Stalingrad" but if not, both are worth watching. The 1993 German movie is more realistic. The 2013 Russian flick is more spectacular but also more of a propaganda movie, IMO. It was directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, who also did the 2005 movie "The 9th Company" about Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. That one was made with the co-operation of the Russian govt., so has real vehicles like BTRs, HIND helicopters and T-72 tanks...which were never used in Afghanistan, but oh well. Bondarchuk's father directed the 4-part "War and Peace" back in the 1950's with a running time of about 3 days. If you can find it, a very realistic and downright harrowing WWII movie is "Come and See." About the war in Belarus between partisans and the Nazis. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/

Best of luck with this. Hope it turns out well for both of you.

Sprue Brothers put this one on sale last week and suckered me right in, as usual. This is the AFV Club 1/35 scale Vietnam M54 gun truck "King Cobra," with the hull of an M113 armored personnel carrier sitting in the bed. The M54 and M113 are both great AFV Club kits, and this one adds parts like the turnbuckles used to secure the M113 and those great cobra decals.

Ha! I was in Fort Dodge, IA, for a business trip in April 1994. (Easy to remember, I was there the day Kurt Cobain died.) The town had a little one-chair barber shop...that was also a sort of hobby shop! All sorts of kits--cars, aircraft, military--that were old and out of production in 1994, stacked in the back. No kits as old as the 1960s or '70's, but lots of old ESCI stuff and others from the early 1980s. On my days off, I roamed out of Ft. Dodge and hit other small towns in the area. Some of those towns had classic, locally-owned Five & Ten Cent stores that still sold model kits. I remember seeing a stack of the AMT "Customizing" and "Prestige" kits, circa 1986, in one of the Dime Stores. Japan again...we took the Bullet Train from Tokyo to Gifu Prefecture, to visit the big Mitsubishi plant. The plant entrance featured a huge display case, with scale models of every aircraft Mitsubishi ever built. Awesome. Sadly, that was in early 1995, right after the monster Kobe earthquake. Train schedules were often disrupted because the Japanese govt. seized trains at random, stuffed them with emergency workers and supplies and sent them to Kobe.

You can add South Korea and Taiwan to that list. Back in the 1990's I did several business trips to Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, etc., so things may have changed. But... Seoul had the Academy outlet store and a Tamiya outlet store. Both were located in the humongous toy marketplace, near the Olympic Stadium at that time. There were several dedicated hobby shops right in the area of my hotel. Most toy stores also had a good model kit section. Taiwan has a BIG model community, and the manufacturer AFV Club is based there. So Taipei had many hobby shops, often carrying obscure resin kits or conversions that were locally made. The shops were usually small with great stuff stacked all over the place. It was like a treasure hunt. Tokyo was just awesome. It had a whole chain of stores, Yellow Submarine, that only sold figures: horror, sci-fi, anime etc. I found a Tenshodo hobby shop in the middle of the high-rent Ginza district and bought 2 of the Aoshima 007 Astons. I found one whole store (a small one) that only sold 1/35 scale resin kits and conversions.

Great score! Especially that Revell '32 Ford Highboy roadster. That kit seems even harder to find than the Revell '32 Ford Sedan. I lurked on eBay for months, trying to get a Highboy at a decent price. They were all expensive, had high shipping costs or both. One night last year, I saw one for $15.00 plus $7.00 shipping, Buy It Now. Jumped right on it! Warning for newer modelers: Revell re-issued the old Monogram '32 Ford roadster, from the early 1960's, in a "Classic Cruisers" box. The box-top says "1:25 scale." It's not, it is 1:24 scale and a very simple kit with no real chassis (the suspension attaches directly to the fenders). It does have some nice parts and many people like it, for a simple nostalgia build. But if you want the newer Highboy kit, make sure you get the kit shown in CabDriver's post. Or any kit with "Highboy" on the box. If you're looking for the Highboy roadster, this is the '32 Ford you DON'T want to get:

The old Samson Tire & Rubber factory in East Los Angeles is a stunner. Built in 1929, unfortunately just in time for the stock market crash. Nowadays it's an outlet mall. Back in the 1990's, one of the mall stores was a K&B Toys outlet with cheap model kits.

The '23 T roadster was finally re-issued about a year ago, too. This is from the original Depot Hack instruction sheet. At the bottom of the page, the "Advanced Modeling Hints" shows how to hot-rod the Depot Hack, using parts from the T roadster. Old-timers will know this but some newer builders may not: the AMT '23 T kits are quite a bit different from the '25 T kits and don't share any parts. The '25 T was first issued in 1960, the '23 kits didn't come out until 1975 or so. Among the differences: the '23 T kits have multi-part frames and separate stock wheels and rubber tires. (The '25 has one-piece plastic tires and wheels.) The '23 kits also have a much more accurate steering wheel. In the pic below, the '23 wheel is on the left, the '25 on the right. Thanks to Model T fanatic Anthony Hazelaar for the photo.

Glencoe Models has a neat gallery of built-ups, mostly the old ITC kits. Not much here for car fans, but you can see some great builds of stuff like a weathered Convair 880 in the Boneyard, Bell Convertiplane, Piasecki Air Geep and many rocket ship kits. There are also some photos of the real subjects. http://www.glencoemodels.com/Gallery/TheGallery.html

HERESY! BLASPHEMY! ABOMINATION! UNCLEAN!

Another Zombie Thread climbs out of the grave! Lowe's can cut you a piece of Plexiglas. The top of my paint spray booth has a Plexiglas panel, to let in light. Over time it tends to get "cloudy." And of course get paint on it. I took the old sheet to Lowe's and had them cut an exact copy. You might even find an offcut piece that will work in the trash can. Lowe's will still charge you for it, but not as much as cutting a full new sheet. I've even picked up a few of those offcuts and used them to cover part of the workbench. It's a good hard surface for cutting on, better than wood.

Inspiration...if he's crazy enough to do that. ?

I use a Valspar Metallic Silver that comes out like your paint. Pretty sure I bought it at Lowe's. Heck, with all the buyouts/consolidations in the paint industry, it might be exactly the same paint.

Wrong interior, unless you're building an over-restored '60 El Camino upgraded with an Impala interior. Scroll up a little bit to my earlier post where I bloviated about that.? Pictures of bone-stock '59 and '60 El Camino interiors are hard to find because so many have been upgraded or modified. Here's an original, unrestored '59 El Camino interior. Same trim level as the low-buck Biscayne.

It sure is and you did a nice clean build of it. The P-39 is one of my favorite planes too. It's just so weird. Tricycle landing gear. Car doors. Mid-engined, to make room for the 37mm cannon in the nose built by Oldsmobile, of all people. I love that thing and the P-63 Kingcobra too. The Monogram P-39 was first released in 1967 IIRC and STILL looks great, as your build shows. Until the year 2000 it was the only 1/48 P-39 available. Eduard and Hasegawa have done P-39's since but the old Mongram kit still holds its own. The only knock on it is raised panel lines and some missing details, easily fixed if the builder wants. But it also comes with engine and gun bay inserts, crew figures and even a 55-gallon drum! Also it's cheap, which the other 2 kits are not. Back in July, I found a shrink-wrapped "Pro-Modeler" P-39Q on eBay for $9.99. That version came with "weighted" tires and a small sheet of photo-etched parts.

Hobby Lobby has the '59 El Camino in the big "Art Box." Or at least they did recently. I got one there. Minor point, since there's some discussion of using the Revell '60 Impala for interior parts: El Caminos didn't have the fancy Impala interior, though many have been upgraded with Impala interiors in real life and you see them all over the internet. If you're building a stock El Camino, the interiors in the '59 and '60 AMT kits are correct. The El Camino had the same interior trim level as the Biscayne. Only 3 interior colors were available: gray, green, or blue. 1959 and '60 El Caminos didn't have carpet, either, so that saves us some trouble with the old embossing powder. But feel free to add rust! From an Elky website: "Floor coverings were black vinyl, with colored specks molded in to match the upholstery color. (Unfortunately, moisture could become trapped beneath these mats, causing floor pans to rust as the years went by.)"