Mike999

Great work! Those ENTEX/Aoshima 1/16 scale vintage motorcycle kits date back to the early 1970's, and are NOT an easy build. I have a 1975 copy of Scale Modeler magazine with a build article about the Ace 4-cylinder bike in that series. The builder had a lot of trouble getting it together. For inspiration: here's Alexander De Leon's awesome re-work of that Harley kit. He replaced the wheel spokes with metal wire, and that was just the start. He also scratch-built a rider figure, starting with a metal armature "skeleton." His re-work is a Harley used by the US Army, when they were chasing Pancho Villa in 1916. https://www.planetfigure.com/threads/new-mechanized-army-military-modelling-cover-article-published-july-1995.63370/

The recent History Channel series "Grant" was well done, IMO. But I was glad to see that channel doing anything other than its usual junk, space aliens and Pawn Dorks. I've seen many history shows where something like this happens: the narrator is talking about the German invasion of Poland, which happened in September 1939. But the video clip running with the narration shows Tiger tanks, which didn't enter service until 1942, or Panthers which didn't appear until 1943.

I've never seen that Nissan van kit in a Dragon box. That's really interesting. The old versions of the Aoshima Subaru Sambar "kei" van also came with SCUBA gear, surfboard, roof rack, rubber raft and an interior console with a stove (at least I think it's a stove). That old Sambar kit was also released as a red-and-white Japanese Post Office van. It had the same accessories but didn't show them on the box. Aoshima later re-tooled and modernized its Sambar kits, which are completely different from the older kits. AFAIK they don't have any of the neat accessories.

Looks like I already fixed it, and forgot I had before I posted that. Duh. I pulled it out of the box tonight and looked it over. The top is straight and so are the window posts. That jogged my memory because I've had it for a long time. As I remember the top was sunken in the middle, and I used the "steam trick" to carefully straighten it. It is a nice kit, a very sharp resin casting, and I'd like to build it. All it needs is an engine. It's molded in a brownish resin.

Ha! I found its partner years ago, also in a "dirty Ziploc bag" at a kit swap meet: the stock Aurora '22 T. It has a couple of warped and missing parts. The Aurora kit included one neat part that the AMT Model T didn't: a luggage holder that went on the running board. These kits were available thru the "Parents' Magazine Young Model Builders Club," back in the 1960s-70s. They came in a mailer box, with the kit parts sealed in a plastic bag inside. I don't think the Ziploc bag had been invented yet. Here's an article about the club. Its advertising material showed several other Aurora kits, like the Jaguar XKE, Viking ship and CH-54 Skycrane helicopter. Also a couple of Revell kits. https://clickamericana.com/toys-and-games/join-the-young-model-builders-club-1967

Old-kit dealers will be weeping. That Kenworth/Challenge Cement Mixer was bringing 3-digit prices way back in the 1980s. I remember seeing them, VERY rarely, at old kit shows back then. It would be nice if the Jimmy was the "Bushwhacker" version with the trail bike and rack. IIRC, the only difference between it and the Blazer was the grille and side emblems. Still good to have it back, though. Speaking of the Great Unloading...?...I may soon be dumping a resin '63 Nova wagon body. It has an interior and body with the hood molded in, no chrome parts. But it does not have a chassis. I had planned to combine it with a full resin kit I found cheap at a swap meet, a '63 Nova hardtop with a warped roof that does have a chassis, separate hood and chrome parts. Now I may not have to do all that.

They took out the Lincoln's engine, but were rude and didn't show it happening. If you freeze the movie as the Lincoln is going into the crusher, you can see that it has no engine or transmission. Also, if you watch closely, you can see that the "cubed Lincoln" changes its appearance quite a bit from the junkyard, to when it arrives back at Goldfinger's place. Somebody on IMdb noticed this: "The Ford Ranchero that Oddjob uses to remove the remains of the Lincoln initially has blackwall tires and in the final scene where it passes the agent's T-Bird it has whitewalls. When it arrives back at Goldfinger's compound it has blackwalls again."

HobbyLinc has the Tiger Shark on clearance right now for $11.99. Also the Revell '68 Chevelle for $19.69 and the Lindberg Dodge L-700 truck with Shell tanker trailer for $26.69. http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/mpc/mpcmpc876-12.htm

Interesting note about the LAPD requirement to withstand "special threat rounds," like 7.62 mm. They've been there and done that, in the Feb. 1997 North Hollywood Shootout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

Flea Market Day! No need to post pix, everybody knows what these 2 look like: the latest issues of the AMT '56 Ford and '69 Olds 4-4-2. Both still had the Hobby Lobby price tag on them, with the price blacked out. (I'm guessing $29.99!) One had a trace of a red HL Clearance sticker on the box. The shrink-wrap had been slit all the way around on the bottom of both kits, which made me suspicious. But everything was still sealed inside. The tops of both cars were straight, not crunched or bent, which I've seen on some HL Clearance kits. No other visible damage. The seller priced them low enough to hook me, since both are good parts sources. Especially the Olds. At the same flea market a couple of weeks ago, I picked up an older AMT-ERTL version of that kit.

This just came in the mail. Made by MMK in the Czech Republic. It's a conversion for the WC-62 kit, making it an armored version as used by the French in Vietnam. Got it from the eBay seller "larrylmtanks." He's Czech and sells a lot of great, oddball conversion kits. On a biz trip once to Toulouse, France, at a flea market I found a set of 3 soft-cover books about the French war in Vietnam. They were published by Editions Heimdal, who do a lot of books aimed at modelers. The text is French, but the books are mostly photos of military vehicles, aircraft etc. used in the war. The screens over the bed on this conversion were a common modification on open vehicles. To keep out the sun and, more important, Viet Minh hand grenades.

Do you have a USPS Tracking Number? Go to the USPS website, enter the number and you can see where your stuff is. If you don't have a Tracking Number yet, the problem may be with your vendor and not the Post Office. To answer your question, no problems at all. I've placed quite a few orders with online vendors since March and they've all arrived quickly. Same for a few eBay items I bought. From the other side, I've had an eBay sale running for about a month. Once I mail the packages, I can follow them on eBay with the Tracking Number. eBay also reports to me when the package is delivered. I'm on the East Coast and all the buyers got their stuff pretty quickly, even buyers on the West Coast.

There's an old sci-fi movie with the first appearance of a Stealth aircraft! When the planes take off to chase the UFO, they are F-86's. But by the time they get to altitude, they've magically turned into F-94's. Proving that the Car Switch is nothing new: "Mystery Science Theater 3000" used to run a lot of the old serials from the 1930's and Forties. In many episodes, you see the bad guys roaring around a mountain road in a big Packard or Cadillac. But when the car goes over the cliff...and bursts into flames, always...it's a much older car, like a Model T.

Ditto for the SATCO left-hand dash in the Aoshima Range Rovers. The casting is very "blobby," for lack of a better word, with soft detail. But the Range Rover has a roof, unlike the MG, so it might be passable. For the curious...recently on eBay, I sold an older Aoshima Range Rover with the SATCO resin dash. It went for $59.99 + shipping, Buy It Now. I've seen eBay sellers, usually from Japan, asking more than $100 for that older kit plus very expensive shipping. Like the MGB, it's good to see the kit reissued, which should make it more affordable to modelers who want one. And I just did a quick eBay check. Tokyo-Hobby sells the new Range Rover kit for $30.10 + $24 shipping. The American online vendor Hobbylinc has it for $44.79. Another Japanese seller is offering it for $75.45 + $19 shipping, and it's marked "Used" even though it's the new re-issue. Go figure...

Aha! Thanks. The American SATCO MGB must be the one I heard about. I've never seen that kit either. I do have an Aoshima Range Rover with an American SATCO resin left-hand dashboard. Since SATCO was already doing LHD dashboards for other Aoshima kits, it makes sense they would do one for the MGB. GeeBee, thanks for checking. Now I don't have to chase a non-existent Airfix kit with an extra dashboard.

I read somewhere that the Airfix MGB kit also has 2 dashboards, for right or left hand drive. Can anybody confirm that? If true, it seems like the 2 dashboards would still be in the latest Aoshima kits. So I suspect it's either an Urban Legend or my memory misfiring (again). The new Aoshima Rubber Bumper kit still has parts for either Rubber or Chrome Bumper cars. I just checked mine, it's the last Aoshima Rubber Bumper re-issue in the white box. The chrome grille, bumpers and wire wheels are still in the box, on the chrome sprue. They're just not mentioned in the instructions, and the parts are grayed-out on the parts layout drawing. But they are definitely in there. I had an older Aoshima Rubber Bumper kit and it was the same way, with parts for both versions. I don't know if the Chrome Bumper kit had all the parts, maybe not. The new RO-style wheels are on a separate sprue, molded in white.

That is amazing. Thanks. I worked with a guy once who helped re-commission the Iowa-class battleships in 1981. He said one of the biggest problems was finding parts for the 16-inch guns. None of those guns had been made since about 1940. They found some gun parts at old Coastal Artillery batteries in the USA and the Pacific islands. The fun part was when they went aboard museum ships looking for parts. The curators would only let them aboard at night, after the public had cleared out. They had to wear socks or bedroom slippers, to avoid messing up the wooden decks. But he said they did find a lot of useful stuff on the museum ships, often stuck in out-of-the-way places where nobody had looked for decades.

Yep, SoCal NNL. The one held at the boys' home in Chatsworth every spring.

They're on eBay Stores and Facebook. Bestmodelcarparts is run by Mike Hanson. He and his family used to show up for NNL West in Los Angeles and other shows. At one NNL show, Mike described how he mastered his '50 Olds station wagon. That was a lot of fun to hear. He used highly modified parts from several existing kits and some scratch-building.

Burbank's House of Hobbies. When I lived in Los Angeles, I went there every week. I'm pretty sure they do mail order. Here's their website. https://houseofhobbies.com/

Blast Models in France did 2 very nice resin upgrades for the M6 Gun Motor Carriage: Early WWII and Late/Postwar. "Postwar" because the Free French Forces in WWII got some M6's and kept using them after the war. Unfortunately, these upgrades were Limited Production kits made back in 2015, so they're almost Unobtainium today. Blast also makes improved resin wheels and other stuff for the Italeri and Skybow kits. https://www.blast-models.eu/en/19-world-war-ii

Congrats on fulfilling your Dodge fix! The M6 Gun Motor Carriage was probably one of the most hated vehicles in the U.S. Army. It was theoretically a tank destroyer. But by the time it got close enough to scratch the paint on a Panzer IV with its 37mm "door-knocker," it would have been vaporized by the German tank's main gun. After their misadventures in North Africa, most M6's were converted to unarmed vehicles, officially or not. Somewhere here I have a book about the Dodge WC series. A couple of photos show the 37mm gun removed and dumped unceremoniously in the desert. A few M6's went to the Pacific with the Marine Corps, but according to the Wiki article, were never used. It seems that would have been a better job for them, cracking Japanese pillboxes. But they had almost no crew protection, and the gun could only fire to the rear, which was tricky on a battlefield. The Wiki article shows an M6 with an interesting modification - a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the front bumper! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_Gun_Motor_Carriage

Here's another fun bit of trivia about the Monogram kit. Many years ago I saw a thread about it, somewhere on the Internet. Maybe so long ago that it was on Usenet! Anyway, a poster said he had worked on the real Land Rover that Monogram researched for their kit, while he was working in a foreign-car garage in Los Angeles. That Land Rover lived in Burbank. The poster said Monogram copied the real vehicle down to the last detail, including its U.S. spec carburetor. Which he had helped install. Land Rovers weren't that common even in Los Angeles, where I lived for many years. The Range Rover was pretty common, starting around the late 1980's when it became a huge status symbol in the richer parts of town. People who wouldn't be caught dead in a Ford Explorer or Chevy Suburban flocked to the Range Rover. Maybe because of the British Royal Family connections. ?

Just hit the Hobby Lobby closest to me, hoping for a 4-door Impala. Nope. No new kits, but all the shelf slots were filled. In this store, I think the newest kit is the Revell Boss 302. Picked up some supplies instead: hobby clamps, rubber cement for masking/weathering, and wood glue for use in dioramas etc.