Clunkmeister

Nicely put, Mark. I dream, much like you. I see a Val and a Kate from one of the big Japanese manufacturers, and I can envision a P-38 and P-39 from ZM. The Old Man’s engineering mind must work overtime while contemplating the machinery on those two aircraft. Like you, a slowdown in new announcements allowed me go catch my breath.

Well put, Rob. I've been on this rock long enough to know that the Industry serves the market. Simple consumer demand is what decides what the industry will produce. Nothing more. yes, there will always be the small outlier who bucks the trend and meets a niche demand for a certain small segment, but for the most part, industry responds to consumer demand. If the small outliers suddenly become super successful, industry will eventually notice and respond to the new demand. In models, a case in point could be made for Tamiya. They started their High End 1/32 "Super Kits" a couple decades ago, and now, due to their success, we have multiple high end 1/32 kitmakers. Same goes for the newish trend in anime and those Gundam thingens. WE may not understand it, but young people buy that stuff in droves, so if trends continue, it'll continue to grow. The hobby's not dead or dying, instead, it's shifting. up and comers may not have a passion for our creating ultra high level historical miniatures in plastic. They may take a fancy to other things in miniature. I once saw a really decent model of an Egg McMuffin at an IPMS show. The same show also featured a very realistic model of a beef taco. I guarantee you, if enough people in this world get onboard with taco modeling, Tamiya, RoG and others will produce them. Right now, men in the last half of their life on earth have disposable cash and have spoken in large enough volume to move a segment of the market to very high end 1/32 aircraft and large scale armor. In the early 90s, it was Accurate Miniatures in 1/48. Remember THOSE groundbreaking models? Before that, it was Monogram with their 1/48 Century Series jets. They set some serious tongues wagging back in the day. 25 years ago, 1/32 was for all intents and purposes, a small niche market filled with toy kits that needed major scratchbuilding to bring up to snuff. Then guys like Verlinded and Mr. Rutman came along and started releasing bibs and bobs in resin to make the job of upgrading them easier, and even brought out a few all resin kits that set the world afire. Then Revell of Germany dropped a Hawker Hunter on us.......... If you want to see an industry in REAL trouble, look at Model Railroading. They went ultra high end just like we did, but with them, even a freight car in HO costs an easy $40.00. then you need 30 or 40 of them on a train, plus 2 or 3 $300.00 locomotives to haul it, a Digital Control system to control it, and a layout that can set you back 10s of thousands of dollars for a decent sized HO home system, plus at least one room in your home. that bunch has REAL problems. Ask me, I used to do that stuff.

Thanks David! Mr Levelling Thinner is my magic elixir. I use it to thin all the paint I use, Gunze, Tamiya, and MM. I’ve also even thinned Future with it on occasion. What it does for me is alllw paint to go on thing, smooth, and level. No orange peel, and no paint issues whatsoever. Of course it doesn’t take the place of surface prep, but it literally eliminates all issues of paint failure. I’ve mentioned it to a few guys around here, and they achieve identical results.

Well Harv, compared to this, I think we got it covered. I see no real standardization on these postwar Lancs. Everything is pretty hodgepodge. It seems if doing one of these, you need to pick a prototype and stick with that individual aircraft. The profile pic looks pretty close to me.

Nope. Not by me It doesn’t happen often, and ok, I chuckled. I might even have been guilty of that language once or twice. I usually double up the “k” though LOL. My deal is that everyone here gets along great. There’s no sniping, no poking, no prodding, no problem children that need stomping. Nothing. Everyone chit chats, discusses models, techniques, and life in general, but most important, everyone here is building. And building nice stuff. I’m the lowest guy on the totem pole here, and was asked to help out simply because I’m in North America and LSM is home page on one of my office computers. It’s a zero stress job. The odd bit of spam gets reported, but that’s it. All I can say is that this last year, my blood pressure has dropped 20 points. You guys make me WANT to build. He’ll, I might even try one of those dodgy looking tank things one of these days.

Well, with a little clean up, it should look the part. Scoop is on according to where Martin’s pics showed it. Fuselage reinforcement plates and turret plate are .005 Evergreen clear. Placed according to pictures

.005 Evergreen clear. Now for the Martin turret blanking plate. Blanking off two turrets, I’m ready for a B-32.

Now gotta measure and cut the turret reinforcements and blanking plate

LOL. Me, it was Harleys. And dirt bikes.

Smitty, you nailed it!

Yeah, you know that’s the truth. A little speed, a strong leg, and not doing anything stupid should be more than enough to see you home. Providing the load’s right, of course.

This year is shaking up to be decent. Even in a good year, I couldn’t build barely four of those.

Hey, I built the Nautilus, though. As in Jules Verne

Awesome builds. I never saw the possibilities in that old kit. That Spiteful is amazing.

Truer words have never been spoken!

I think the hobby’s going to be fine. Maybe the focus is shifting somewhat away from Corsairs, Mustangs, and 190s, but kids are still building. But they’re building fruity colored jets flown by room broom packing young girls wearing short shorts. They also build models of goofy looking robotic cartoon stuff. And they paint it all with Testors primary colors out of the old glass bottles. Just like WE used to do, except we built the old Aurora Monsters and other glow in the dark goofiness. We built goofy models of the latest Barris custom creation, and moved up from there. Very few of us were creating award winning Corsairs or F-16s when we were 12. But we built the heck out of a Jules Verne Nautilus..... Yep, the hobby is fine. We’re just old. Tigers, Sherman’s, 190s, Corsairs, and Spitfires are great grandpa stuff to the youngsters. But 109s will live forever, though.

That’s what I said afterwards, yes

Martin, those pics speak volumes. I need to attach thin rectangular covers over the window areas. Belay that! I just need to scribe rectangles around the glass areas.

Check out that green paint! That’s NOT RAF interior green. That’s US interior green, almost a green chromate. I think I was right in mixing RAF and US interior greens together. Definitely a chromate on the panels, and a hybrid look on the bulkheads. Two different greens

Mike, I’m going to modify what you sent, and as long as we don’t break through, we’re good. We did alright with the pics we had at the time.

Fixing seams, rescribing, giving Radu’s riveter a workout... Plenty of smoothing to do.

The fuel tank fits like a glove. Now to make some straps and the plumbing.

The master at work, once again

That interior decor is awe inspiring, Mark