Grumman F3F-1 Interior Progress

Buz Pezold is making some fantastic progress on the RAREPlane 1/72 vacu-form F3F-1, as evidenced by the illustration below:

Buz's F3F-1 Progress

Attached is the photo of the before & after of the kit F3F-1 cowl.  Progress is being made on this kit, but it is going SLOOOOOOOOW!  However, I am having fun!

Buz

(Click on the pic to view the detail. THIS is master modeling!)

Armor Modeling Madness

Caution: Foul Language (but most modelers have at least thought about it at some point...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJaMaEf4ZY

Making Silk Purses out of Sow's Ears

The club challenge this year was to take a less than desirable kit and making your best out of it. We had three such kits at this Saturday's meeting.

Mike Wolfe built Roden's Heinkel He-111E as a Luftwaffe bomber from the late 1930's. He needed copious amounts of putty to successfully mount the wings to the wingroots. Bomb bay doors that don't fit and oversized bulkheads were a few other challenges with this kit. He used decals from DP Casper to finish this kit. A great job here! (Roden 1/72)

Mike Idacavage built Mach 2's Douglas D558-2 Skyrocket as one flown by Scott Crossfield as part of the U.S. Navy's answer to the U.S.A.F X-planes. Mike needed to essentially resculpt the entire aft fuselage from Milliput and scratchbuild the pitot from aluminum tubing. He also needed to source decals from the scrap box to include a 1/144 scale airliner passenger window as the apu exhaust port. A few members chose Mach 2 kits as their subject; Mike got his done, and it looks great! (Mach 2 1/72)

Rob Morales built the Zvezda T-60 Soviet Light Tank as seen in winter camouflage on the Northern Front during World War Two. He had to reinforce all of the wheels with brass rod just to keep them attached and almost was unable to attach one track due to the mounting pin hole disintegrating and the track's resistance to any type of adhesive. Also the amount of flash removed from the kit parts during assembly could have been used to make a separate kit. The project was great practice for a distressed finish. (Zvezda 1/35)

Rob's T-60 was chosen as the best of the Silk Purses. We will be displaying the entries at the Chattanooga show, so if you have one that's almost done, finish it and bring it!

December Meeting

We held our December 2013 meeting at Hobbytown USA, Kennesaw, at 1 P.M. on December 14. Fourteen members were in attendance.

HTUSA's Kevin Westphal updated us on some new kit news.

We had some great modeling on display.

Dave Lockhart's British MTB (Airfix 1/72), of which the actual deck plan never existed.

Mike Idacavage showed us a work-in-progress MD-80 to be done in Scandinavian livery (Minicraft 1/144)

Rob Hofels had another work-in-progress, but for most of us we'd consider it done! His Corvette conversion to a small-block powered ride is stunning in it's details and finish. (Revell 1/25)

Mike Wolfe had a couple of variations of the Dauntless dive bomber. Both were simple conversions but they are ones you never see on contest tables, a pre-war Marine and a veteran of Pearl Harbor that flew from the U.S.S. Enterprise (Hasegawa 1/72)

John Vallrugo showed his interior scratchbuilding of the Fairey Firefly FR.1. He mainly uses balsa to bring a spartan interior to a realistic look. (Frog 1/72)

Rob Morales finished a WW2 panzer officer in a late-war reversible winter uniform indicating the direction toward the enemy (or maybe not...) (Alpine Miniatures 1/35)

Rob Holfels' Vette is our Model of the Month.

Mike Idacavage won a gift certificate to HTUSA.

Our next meeting will be on January 18, 2014. We are meeting on the THIRD Saturday in January to avoid a conflict with the Chattanooga IPMS Show on January 10 and 11.

DACO Skyline B737s

Just a short post, I have heard from Danny at DACO that he is going to repop his terrific B737s (-300/-400/-500) and they should be available by March of 2014. This is excellent news for modern airline modelers. As Revell has reissued their A330 and with some nice B787 and A350 kits, including Hasegawa's 1/200 scale Dreamliner, there's plenty of good subjects for the airline decal makers (and they are stepping up!)

A Few USMC Pieces

This first model is the Tamiya M1046 HMMVW Weapons Carrier in 1/35 scale. It incorporates the USMC parts, specifically the snorkel and extended exhaust. It is modeled as a late 1990s vehicle. The kit is an out-of-the-box build.

 

Next is another Tamiya 1/35 scale kit, the AAVP-7A1 Amtrac. This "tuna boat" is also done OOB, again a 90s-era vehicle as evidenced by the uniforms worn by the Marine crewmen. The glossy finish on the lower areas are purposefully done to simulate a vehicle just "hitting the beach".

Rob Morales 

IPMS Charter Renewal

IPMS Charter Renewal has been accomplished. We're good through 2014.

We will review the Chapter Roster at the December meeting. If you are a current IPMS Nationals member, thank you. If you are not or have expired credentials, please renew. We currently have 11 active Nationals members on roster.

Buz's F3F-1 - First Steps

First photo shows the vacuform parts still attached to the styrene sheet backing.  Note the detailed molding of the parts are somewhat crude in particular the wheel wells on the fuselage.  This will take some extra "elbow" grease to remove some of that detail and to do some "tweaking" to make improvements on the parts.  To many modelers vacuform kits are not for the faint of heart and are considered to be a "scourge" to plastic modeling.  My rule of thumb about vacuform kits is that they are plastic modeling's answer to balsa wood modeling.  Vacuform is very forgiving if you make mistake.  It really does help you to improve your modeling skills and develop techniques when it comes to detailing your model.

Second photo shows the fuselage halves removed and sanded from the sheet backing.  Note the molded wheel wells were removed (drilled out) and refashioned with scrap styrene and putty.

Third photo shows the Upper halves and Lower halves  of the wings removed and sanded from the backing.  Each wing half was sanded to shape.  Sanding the trailing edge as thin as possible then cementing the upper and lower halves.  Ailerons have been removed from top wing and are awaiting further sanding and shaping.

More later,

Buz

Rareplane F3F-1

Member Buz Pezold, who is a wizard in the small-scale biplane genre, updates us as to his next project.

At hand is the Rareplane Grumman F3F-1 Navy fighter in 1/72nd scale.

Buz was given the kit by another member, Dr. Bob Sigman. As you may know, Dr. Bob is battling pancreatic cancer. Buz is building this kit in his honor.

Given Buz's talent, this will be a gem to see. Stay tuned!

Atlanta Area IPMS and Friends Christmas Party

The Atlanta Area IPMS and friends annual Christmas party will be held at the Thai Star Restaurant in Norcross on Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 PM.

With traffic being what it is, we expect that many will get there a bit late. Not to worry, we won't be eating until 7:30 - 8:00. The game of "Dirty Santa" won't start until later.
Bring a covered dish and a wrapped model for our game of "Dirty Santa".
One change for this year will be that we are trying to up the ante. We would like to see everyone put some thought into the gifts and bring something that they would like to go home with.


Hope to see you there!

Bill Ficke
Thai Star Restaurant
5370 Peachtree Industrial Blvd.
Norcross, Georgia 30071

Chapter Officers and Charter Renewal

Effective November 9th, 2013, the chapter officers for IPMS Marietta Scale Modelers are:

David Lockhart - President

Mike Idacavage - Vice-President

Robert Morales - Secretary and Chapter Contact

Open Position - Treasurer

We have notified the Director of Local Chapters and the IPMS Region 3 Coordinator of this information and have begun the Chapter Charter renewal process. We will provide an update to this at the December 14th meeting.

The treasury is currently a jointly administered effort amongst the chapter officers.

IPMS Marietta Scale Modelers November 2013 Newsletter

Unfortunately, this type of blog site has some limitations. Uploading the newsletter being one of them. If you would like a copy of the newsletter, please email the club secretary here Newsletter Request

November Model of the Month

At our November 9th meeting, the members in attendance selected Paul Crawley's Savoia Marchetti S.79 Ala Littoria propliner in 1/72nd scale as the Model of the Month. Here are a few images, which do not do justice to the build.

The New Web Home of IPMS Marietta Scale Modelers, the Marietta, GA Chapter of IPMS-USA

It is apparent that not all chapter members are participants in Facebook. While we will still maintain the Facebook page, this page will become our official web communication venue.

Our chapter, while nominally based in Marietta, GA, currently meets at the Hobbytown USA in Kennesaw, GA. Our membership meetings take place monthly on the second Saturday of the month at 1:00 P.M. Occasionally, due to holidays or conflicts with local model shows, we may announce a change to the meeting date for that month.

Our current membership includes modelers from several communities in Northwest Georgia. Historically based in Marietta, once the home to several well regarded model shops, the club and it's membership are active in IPMS activities and are one of several Atlanta-area model clubs. 

MSM has always been very welcoming of every aspect of scale modeling subjects. While aviation modeling is always a popular aspect, we members of MSM also build nautical, military, science fiction and automotive subjects. Our meetings are good mixes of hobby talk, references and good-natured humor. If you built it, we'd love to see it!

We publish a monthly newsletter electronically and maintain a members-only Facebook group. If you are in the Metro Atlanta area and enjoys scale modeling, we invite you to join us!