Sunday, April 22, 2007

Happy Birthday Sweetiie!

Not a modeling post, but today was my dear wife's birthday...Happy Birthday sweetie! I took her and the dogs for a picnic at the Arboretum. No modeling was done in the post AMPS buzz. The weather was perfect, even if the dogs were a little misbehaved, and I think my wife had a great day. I even managed to bake her favorite jelly sponge, thanks to her mom's recipe, and pulled of at least a semi passable imitation of the desert. It ain't her moms, but it did in a pinch!

Happy Birthday Kiwigirl!

AMPS Report

I managed to make it up to Havre de Grace on Saturday for the AMPS show. I was going to try and finish the M4A3 and T-34/76 kits so I could enter them in the competition , but remembered my Tiger debacle from a few years ago (I melted my Tiger chassis under a light bulb trying to speed the paint drying process). So I decided to just take the M10, and enter it. I had to do a quick super glue job for a turret figure that had become dislodged, and it was off to the contest table. I was hoping to get another silver, but was pleasantly surprised later that night to be awarded a Gold! Unfortunately, it's probably the last Medal I'll get at AMPS, as now I have to compete as an "Advanced" modeler.

I was also really looking forward to two events on Saturday. First there was a behind the scenes tour of the Aberdeen Proving Ground Museum at 10AM, then at 2:30 there was the Missing Lynx Braille scale get together. So right after I registered my model I did a quick walk through of the contest room and vendor room, then off to the Museum. The Museum tour was great, I took hundreds of photos. After the tour my buddy and I went for some lunch (12:20PM), I looked at a copy of the schedule and found out that the Braille Scale meeting was moved to 11AM! Duh! I was quite bummed, even ended up missing Steve Zaloga's talk. So we headed back to Havre de Grace for a retail therapy.

It was a rather intense therapy session, don't tell the wife! I managed to find copies of the Nuts & Bolts series Marder III books [Sd.Kfz. 138 & 139] for a somewhat reasonable price. I also found the three Kiwi Armour series books I was looking for when I was in New Zealand, who would have thought. I also managed to spend a few dollars at the Tiger Productions tables, picking up all manner of diorama accessories. Lastly I managed to spend a few dollars at the Archer tables, picking up many of their Allied dry transfers. All in all quite the hall. My wife and I head to New Hampshire next weekend for a stitching show. I guess I'll have to encourage her to do a little retail therapy so I don't feel so bad wiping out the checking account by myself!

To make matters worse the announced that they were doing the best of judging right in the middle of my shopping spree, err therapy, so I didn't get to make it to the contest room for my normal picture session. Hopefully one of the other "Braille Scalers" shot lots of pictures, because quite a few models were back at the judging table when I did my only walk through.

Monday, April 16, 2007

The rumors of my demise were greatly exagerated

OK, it's been a little while since I've posted anything to my sadly neglected blog. Proof I'm still alive and building. Admittedly at a snails pace, but I'm still plugging away. I've been dabbling a little bit with Mig Pigments. So far I'm pretty impressed with the results. They're much easier to use than your average pastels.







Here is RPM's FT-17, possibly the most over engineered kit I've ever built. The amount of detail is incredible, but so is the number of parts.



and here is Aces' M3 Panhard armored car. Overall a nice little kit, not bad for a limited run kit. One of aces best.



I also tried pigments on Dragons T-34/76 L11. They really rescued the model. I wasn't at all happy with the pastel job I did on it.






Here is UM's BT-5. I really like this kit, it builds up fairly easily, and has pretty good detail. However, I'm adding Part Photo Etch details and tracks.



Lastly I'm working on Dragons AAVP7A1 with external Armor. Dragon first released this amphibious beast with a diecast metal hull. Thankfully they've followed up with
an all plastic version. I obliterated most of the side detail filling seams, but this will all be covered by the bolt on armor.