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