DocRob

Seems to be a good fit Carl and the surfaces look pretty good to without the typical 3D-printing traces. I have only one full printed plane kit and it has some of these superficial traces. I have to see, how it looks under primer, but your pics look pretty convincing. Cheers Rob

A wiser fella once said, sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, the bar eats you. Peter, what can I say. Sometimes it's better to step on the brake than to go further only fighting a build with no fun at all. Your description of the building experience sums it up, there are these kits out there, which just are no fun to finish and others, far from perfect kits, which are somehow stimulating and taking all out of you, but are satisfactory. That leaves satisfaction and fun as the determining measurements for modeling, and if both lack, why not binning the kit. Do you have an exit scenario for your competition model or do you abandon the idea? Cheers Rob

It was a kind of Honda-hype thing, I guess. The RC166 motorcycle had a 250 ccm 6 cylinder engine. Later they experimented with oval pistons like in the Honda NR motorcycle. weird engineering, but somehow it worked. Cheers Rob

Today it's about 40° Celsius with a humidity of 10 percent, yesterday it was 22° Celsius with 95 percent humidity, what better to do than spent some time in the relatively cool cave, instead of getting a heart attack. My worktop is absolutely cramped with half build sub assemblies, pre-painted parts, so I need to get a bit of order into the mess and assemble some of these. I started with the seat belts. The kit supplied ones look good, but I had a set of Hiro belts and decided to use them. Some of the buckles are cast white metal, the rest is made from PE. Assembly is a lot easier than 1/32 seat belts from HGW, but I had difficulties to find a CA glue adhering to the ribbon. Later, I realized, that the ribbon parts should have been glued with the supplied two sided adhesive tape. Would have been great, if that would have been mentioned in the manual. The seat looks super cool now and again I have to say, I really love the semi matte black from the Tamiya LP range. Next were the front suspensions with many snap fit parts. naturally one of the arms broke, but it could be repaired easily. The steering does not work like suggested in the manual, but I think it's impossible to get it working at all. The Tamiya approach with working steering and suspension is until now the area of the build, causing the most problems. On to some detail work. I butchered an old laptop, which was waiting to get binned to get fine electric cables and added some to the instruments and racing computer. Cheers Rob

Wow Gary, what a nice little setting. Your Würger looks absolutely fantastic with all the different weathering techniques, blending perfectly. Cheers Rob

Some new kits and some tools are the catch of the day. Lately, I have developed a liking for strange looking race cars and this Tamiya Mercedes will be a first venture into this direction with the weird decal set from Racing Decals 43. Possibly this was ignited with remembering my airbrushing roots, spraying motorcycle helmets back in the late 80's with strange designs. Next is another Tamiya classic, the Honda RA 272 a simple kit, counting the parts, but a bit to simplified around some parts. Therefore, I also bought two detail sets from Falcon Models, which address the engine and rear suspension with 3D printed parts Last but not least, a hopefully decent soldering station for delicate PE jobs and electronic stuff. It comes with different tips and will replace my Weller station from the 80's Cheers Rob

All the best to your wife, Peter. What you show here, looks nicely detailed, despite the obstacles, mainly through the bad manual and some ill fitting. I hope, putting the cabin together will not prove too difficult, or have you already tested the fit? Welcome to my world of delivery time assumptions. A month isn't so uncommon, even sometimes from the Spanish mainland. There is no place for bad planning or immediate build bursts . Cheers Rob

I finished the body parts, with a generous coat of clear coat. To be precise, one fast drying very thin coat, to protect the decals from the thinner and then a heavier coat of GX-100 for the deep shine. The clear coat sprayed very well and I figure, my bad results with GX-100 resulted in mixing the stuff with thinner in a plastic jar, which may got spoilt by the thinner. Reminder to myself, always use a glas jar for adding the leveling thinner. After a proper curing time, I used the three differently grained Tamiya polishing pastes and finally the Tamiya polishing wax and got a near perfect surface. Near perfect, because I had some dust issues during spraying, something I never had before, given the normally high humidity here. There is nothing, I can do about it, but I will look a bit deeper into the subject, to see, if the new compressor might be involved into the issue. There is always a hair in the soup, literally . Cheers Rob

Good move Kevin, you'll like the kit besides the enormous clean up effort necessary. Generally all goes together nicely. Cheers Rob

These decals are great, Gary. I normally fear decaling, but here everything went right. I don't have many experiences with Cartograph, but they worked perfectly on my ZM KAI Phantom, which was literally plastered in decals. Cheers Rob

Thank you Gus, I have to read a little about Arnoux. I'm not so much into racing and don't know a lot about the drivers. I will fill this gap within the next days. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, my experiences with compressors are limited, as the old one survived 34 years of use. Until now, I'm satisfied with the device, noise level is acceptable and most important, it produces a regular adjustable airflow. Cheers Rob

Good thinking and execution of the wear and tear of your 190, Gary. I liked all measures except the scuff marks. For my liking they are a bit prominent. A darker color would have suited better . The general idea of scuff marks is not so much, showing what is under the paint, then residues from boots abrasion, I guess. Cheers Rob

Phew, decals are on and I, as an old decal coward have to say, these Cartograph decals are the real deal. They are very opaque and fit like a glove, if you made a precise masking job between yellow and white. Even the superfine pinstripes fittet, bordering the yellow. For the first time, I used Tamiya Decal adhesive and so far, I have no complaints. The standard one was used on flat surfaces and the additional softener type was used on contours. There is one tiny fold on the curved front black stripe, but I hope with some stronger softener this will vanish. Before decaling, I wet sanded all the body parts with 6000 and 8000 grit and the surfaces were absolutely smooth and the color borders got rid of the tiny edge from masking. The rear wing was resprayed, because I polished through the edges on a tiny spot. I painted all the rivets on the body with a precision brush for a little bit more detail. Cheers Rob

Eduard produced some sets for the Karas as well. One wit IP and seatbelts, the other has a lot of additional parts, which might fit into your frame as well. I have this set for my Mirage Karas. Cheers Rob

Wonderful as always Mike. I have a bit of a deja vu, having built one too, but on black dinged floats. Cheers Rob

Yummy, happy birthday Carl, enjoy the cake. Cheers Rob

At least it did, while spraying for some hours today. Even the evil yellow levelled beautifully on my Renault F1 body . Cheers Rob

My new compressor arrived after a long week of making up the engine and cleaning parts. A task, not to underestimate wit this kit. Every part has to be inspected, sanded, scratched with a blade, the age of the mold forms is obviously. I will show you a total un-Tamiya look with lots of scratched off material only from the turbo system and gear housing . Finally I had to test my new Sparmax compressor and what better to try is spraying yellow onto the body parts. I really like the result, where only minimal polishing will be needed before I apply the decals. I sprayed the heavy thinned Tamiya LP8 with low pressure at about 13 psi or 0,9 bar. Next test was spraying lots of the innards with different metallic colors, AK's Extreme Metal Aluminum and from the Tamiya LP range titan gold, titan silver, gun metal, pearl silver and finally semi matte black for the air intakes on the upper body. Cheers Rob

Luckily my new compressor took only a week to get here, record breaking . It is a Sparmax TC620 X and it looks good, works good and emits about the same level of noise, like my 34 year old one, which passed away sadly, but this is a two piston oil less construction. It was the only decent model available with fast shipping, but I'm happy after some hours of spraying. Cheers Rob

A true beauty, sweet like Bill said. Cheers Rob

What a great looking Tomcat, Scott. You built (and painted) a beauty, congratulations. Cheers Rob

Right, missed that one Martin . Roisin Murphy's still is up to it, to my eye one of the last true Pop Divas, not solely a dance act with some lyrics and some synchronized moves around her, like so many others. Always a bit weird, but I loved what she had done through Covid, where so many stuck with their creativity, she made feeds from her living room, covering her own songs acustical and culminating in a concert without audience, only for the pure want of performing. Needless to say, I own all her vinyls. Cheers Rob

The time is now... ...the georgeous goddess Roisin Murphy always knew it Cheers Rob

Some more obscure additions to my stash from Ukraine. I look eagerly forward to build all of these soon. Cheers Rob