Ace-Garageguy

Started just now, can't advance past page one of the "Off Topic Lounge". EDIT: Cleared the cache, now it works.

Challenger I, Mickey Thompson's LSR attempt car, managed a best one-way pass of 406.6.

Enough power is when you can smoke the rear tires in top gear at 100MPH just by nailing the throttle.

80 degrees today, forecast 82 tomorrow. Might need to slip the leash and go for a hike.

Smoked a ton of Camels, Lucky Strikes, and Pall Malls have I...and Gauloises and Gitanes too.

"Ships of the desert" was a name for camels.

Far as 'old tech' goes, I have a Philco radio-record player my parents bought in the late 1940s. The wood cabinet is in fine shape, but needs refinishing. A few years back I found sources for electron tubes and needles, and as the rest of the parts in it were built of stout stuff indeed, it works and sounds like it did 77 years ago. I put a hidden input jack on it, configured so I can run recorded old-time radio programs from the web through the original amp and speaker. Time travel. It's kina fun when a relative youngster stops by and hears the ancient programming, and not knowing much about anything, asks how it's possible. I just shake my head, and say "I don't know, but it still seems to be able to pick up radio broadcasts from a long time ago..."

Band of Brothers is a series I really need to seek out to watch.

Two more to feed my greed: another one I thought I might as well get before they get any more expensive, a 1/16 AMT '55 Nomad. The Revell '34 and Minicraft '30 Ford drag cars needed something to tow 'em to the strip, anyway. And the last Accurate Miniatures Grand Sport Corvette I'll be buying. I snagged a bunch of the low-hood versions some time back, incredibly cheap, and later several sets of the brass PE parts that go with the high-hood version, but I had none of these high-hoods. Now I have one, easy enough to copy if I end up needing more.

Dead dreams still haunt my sleep.

My problem with PVA clear parts glues like Testors is that most of them have zero strength when they're wet. Something like a mirror glued inside a windshield will most likely require some kind of jig or fixture to hold it until the glue sets up. This isn't a problem when attaching headlight lenses to grilles that are lying flat on the bench, or closely fitting 'glass' windows that can be taped in place prior to gluing the edges. How you're going to manage a fixture for gluing a mirror to a windshield seems like a problem. Two thoughts come to mind: maybe self-closing tweezers carefully arranged prior to applying the glue, or a thin strip of masking tape. Otherwise, I got nothin'.

Nitroglycerine in small doses can keep your heart from exploding, oddly enough.

Yeah, quite a few black-and white films and color print and slide films are readily available. The old-school photography movement is going strong. Right off hand, I don't know if anyone still makes new VHS tapes, but there seems to be plenty of new-old-stock still out there. https://www.amazon.com/new-vhs-tapes/s?k=new+vhs+tapes

Exclaimed my house, cars, and all my bank accounts, yes she did.

Interesting thread, as model railroaders who painted their steam locomotives black discovered eons ago it just didn't look 'right'. Part of it was the fact most black locomotives weathered to dirty gray pretty quickly in operation, and part of it was interpreting actual colors correctly from early color prints and slides. But there are 'builder's photos' of brandy-new steam locomotives that clearly show them to be shiny black the day they rolled out of the shop. Far as gloss black goes on car models, I've never found anything at all amiss by just painting a model that's supposed to represent a black car...black.

Ribbons are available from several sources. Here's one: https://www.typewritercollector.com/collectible/ribbons.htm

"Participate at your own risk" said the sign at the entrance to the amateur sword-swallowing competition,

Fascinating, beautiful model. You, sir, know more about a lot of this stuff than I'll ever hope to, and I thank you for participating in this forum, sharing your vast wealth of knowledge.

Yeah, that was the standard I/O form back when I had programming classes at Tech. And before this goes off the rails with the typical "old man shouting at clouds" memes, just let me say for the hundredth time I think much of today's technology is great. At the level of computing represented by the photo above, it would probably take a building the size of Lockheed's largest assembly area to house the power of one modern smart-phone...and it would run a helluva lot slower. Today's tech lets us do some stuff quicker and more conveniently than was even imaginable in those days, but it's also led to an over-reliance on machines to do a lot of our thinking for us, and makes it possible to get so inundated with the trivial and the just plain stupid, that we're losing much of our face-time with the real world and each other...while often sneered-at physical skills that are necessary to keep 'civilization' functioning simply disappear. Some of the thinkers among us have realized the wisdom of "all things in moderation" since the beginnings of recorded history. They just might have been on to something.

Yup, and you can push-start a mag-equipped car with no battery anyway...

Yup.