Ace-Garageguy

Looking good.

I think the gloss is totally bogus. I'd kinda like it in a flat clear to preserve the as-found look, but the gloss? Yuck.

Actually, in many cases "copying" an image from the web here only copies the web-address of where the photo is hosted. As long as the other site is up, the photo displays here in a way similar to how PB works, but the photo is not actually hosted on the MCM server. It's called "hot-linking". I know this to be a fact in many cases from first-hand experience. Some photos I've copied here to illustrate particular technical points have disappeared when the source site has gone down...just as they do when a PB account gets shut off or reshuffled. Some sites also discourage hot-linking and will shut off access to an image if they see a spike in bandwidth use. In that case, the photo also disappears even though the source site is still up. In all fairness to everyone on the net, hot-linking is considered kinda rude because it uses bandwidth on the host site the user isn't paying for. Because of that, the most ethical way to copy an image HERE is to copy it on to your OWN hard-drive and then upload it to PB or other photo host, and copy it here from there...but hot-linking an image here will not use up your photo space any more than using PB will. Unnerstan?

No reason not to do it. Pluses include less total paint thickness and fewer opportunities to get trash in the finish material. Steve Guthmiller used clear over white primer for the roof of this beautiful model, and you can't beat Steve's work. Good enough for Steve, good enough for me.

I have had the same experience on several occasions. Exactly. Sometimes the 404 is followed by not even being able to get on the board for an hour or 3.

I believe Flickr discourages re-posting anything hosted there; many images seem to be copy or save protected too. A google search for "posting photos from flickr" will answer your questions. Here's the Flickr "help" page on the topic. https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157637892284923/

I'm just not seeing the "problem". Using a photo-hosting site and linking anyone's posts here to it works the same exact way it's worked for years. It's worked fine for me since 2009 on another forum, since 2012 on this one, on three different computers at two different addresses using 4 different browsers. Photobucket CAN be a little glitchy at times, but it usually gets sorted pretty quickly. If you do a build thread, or an under-glass thread, or answer a tech question, it takes no more than 30 seconds per photo to load a shot from your computer to a host site, and to link it to display here, and only a few seconds to grab a shot from somewhere else on the internet to illustrate a point or question. Gosh, what an incredibly difficult, inconvenient and time-consuming thing to have to do. I suppose some folks could be having hardware or software issues that I haven't encountered, but you'd think I would have had SOME recurring problem while using multiple browsers and computers...and so far, they haven't materialized. The ONLY problem I've had lately is occasional S L O W loading of content into a thread, but it's not always a photo-related issue.

In model cars, it usually means no engine, interior or underside details...basically just a styling exercise with blacked-out windows. Not to be confused with the term "slammed", which means lowered to the extreme. The terms do get somewhat interchanged, and then there's the (door) slammer classes in drag racing...something entirely different. Here are two kitted "slammers" from AMT. There are more in the series, and they make great bases for wild customs. No guts, black windows. This AMT kit is labeled a "slammer", which is also a name for a type of short-track race car. This is "slammed" . In drag racing "door slammers" can refer to any full-bodied car with operational doors, as opposed to funny cars with one-piece flip-up bodies.

I don't have any need to argue the point about whether these things look good or not. Most of them miss any possible "good design" definition I may have by miles. That said, the old car bodies didn't HAVE to be narrowed because they were ALREADY narrow enough to expose the wheels / tires when the fenders were removed. And for a little historical perspective, it was quite common to narrow production car bodies on lakes-racers for certain classes.

There have been a fair number of cars built on the general idea of narrowing a production car body over a set of frame rails during the past several years. It's not like you can go to the junkyard and get a decent '30s car body to build a real hot-rod anymore...most places...so why not recycle something that probably has no real collector value because of far-advanced rust or collision damage? As long as the function and workmanship are good...well, it's not my thing, but it's just another way to build a rod out of junk. Sounds good to me. A lot more sophisticated, but simply a development of the basic idea. I like this a LOT.

Very FIRST thing we need to know is what scale are you working in? Those braided hoses on that particular engine are roughly 1" OD (one inch outside diameter). For 1/25 scale, that would be 1/25 of one inch...right? The decimal equivalent of 1/25 of one inch is 1 INCH DIVIDED BY 25. That equals .040"...so you're right, you would use the .035" braided line because it's the closest to .040".

I want to hate it, but I kinda like it.

Just possibly maybe the renewed interest in this one is because I posted a link to it on a thread where the OP was asking about Pyro kits the other day. I thought that rather than going along with the constant bashing of how bad they are, it might be nice to remind ourselves how good they can look with effort applied. You're one of the modelers who regularly takes blah, ho-hum or toylike kits and makes them into beautiful models, so i'm sure you understand.

X2. Ed maybe missed his calling as a nature photographer. He certainly has an eye for the beauty that's all around us, and a skill for capturing it in images.

The 1974 Monstro Horibilius GT Mk VIII Astroturd looks just like that.

Yeah, you actually build and finish models. All I do is post about them and hunt' em on ebay.

30 seconds at the end of an auction s too much work? Man, that's rough. Exactly.

To each his own. I'm never "on" any auction until the last few seconds. I usually win, and I never pay stupid money. If I see there's been a lot of little incremental bids, I just laugh at them. "Frenzy bidders" are the plethora of little twinks that will sometimes come in close to the end, each raising the bid by a dollar, thinking somehow they're going to be the winner. It's just stupid. You say "trying to get the other guy to drop out" and that's EXACTLY what drives the price up and up and up. You don't show your hand in a poker game do you? If you don't bid 'til the end, nobody tries to "get the other guy to drop out", because there's no mystery bid to try to counter. Look at it this way. Say the bidding goes to $35 and slows down because you've put in a $200 bid early. Somebody comes in and raises the bid to $50. Still no good, because your $200 bid is floating there. So somebody else starts bidding in increments to see where the ceiling is. He gets to $100 and stops, 'cause he hasn't hit the ceiling and doesn't have more that $100 to spend. Somebody with more coin comes in and pushes it up to $150. If the $200 bid hadn't been flaoting there in space, the bidding MIGHT have stopped at, say, $65...until the last few seconds. Then, he who has the fastest finger or sniperware, and puts in the highest number wins.

Exactly. It's also the hardest to take apart if you need to, BECAUSE it fuses the parts so well.

Man, there's a lot of great stuff on here I never would have heard if it weren't for youse guys. Who woulda thunk I'd get my musical horizons expanded on a model car site? Pretty cool.

I agree there's nothing "evil" about using it; it's just a personal choice for me. It's like automatic transmissions...fine for folks who don't like to bother to shift...or can't...but not for me. I've got enough crapp so that, if I don't REALLY want something, I'm not going to bother bidding at ALL, and if I DO really want something, I'll stay up late and get it fair and square, the old-fossil way.

With a fast connection and a high number for something you really want, you can beat it every time. All it depends on is the maximum number the sniper software is authorized to bid to. If you're higher with your last-few-seconds bid, YOU win...not the sniper...and you ONLY pay whatever the additional specific-to-that-auction increment extra is, NOT your maximum bid. People seem to think that if you bid $200 in the last few seconds and the next highest bid is $75 that YOU get stuck paying $200. NOPE. You pay only $76 (or, one more time, whatever the minimum increment is for that particular auction, plus the next-highest bid).

Yeah, but all bidding early does is to drive the price up. Bid $50 or $200 or whatever and leave it, the bid will show a much lower number initially, and some clown will come along and bid in $1, $5 or $10 increments to see where the ceiling is...and all that does is push the price up for no reason. And putting a lot of bids on something only shows there's interest, and adds to the idiot feeding frenzy. Likewise, going back in and raising your bid for an item time after time after time ain't going to do diddly but, again, drive the price up. It is NOT a winning strategy. If you really want it and don't want to use sniperware (I don't), all you gotta do is bid your max within the last few seconds. If you get it, you get it for $1 more (or whatever the specific auction minimum increment is) over the next top bid. If you lose it, it's because somebody wanted it for more money than your top number. It's really very simple. Another thing...when the numbers start getting stupid, do a search for the same item. 9 times out of ten, you'l find it for less on another auction, but the frenzy-bidders are mindlessly stuck in competing for THIS one. Over the years, I've probably "won" around 98% of what I've bid on, using this strategy. I don't really NEED any more kits, so good luck to all of you who are still hunting.

Kinda casts a little more doubt on all that "photographic evidence" of alien faces sculpted on the Martian landscape, and alien "structures" on the moon etc., eh?

So, ummm...regularly buying the mag on the newsstand doesn't entitle a modeler to ethically participate in and enjoy this site?