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Bryan

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Everything posted by Bryan

  1. I have seen some build threads...and admittedly they do look pretty tedious if you use aftermarket PE parts. For example an AA mount might be made of 20 or so PE pieces, and there might be 30-40 such AA mounts. That sort of thing. Much as I love the busy detail that results, I more or less hate working with PE. But it is kind of necessary....
  2. I know... I like the Arizona for historic value, but it is sort of an ugly and primitive looking vessel. The Bismark and Iowa are just overall awesome and have great lines, and with the Iowa you have the option of about 5 different configurations, all quite different. You could even build the 1980s version with Phalanx, Tomahawk, and Harpoon (I personally wouldn't...but it's an option). But Yamato/Musashi would win hands down....we just don't know when/if they might come out.
  3. Course....to build one of these awesome 1/200 ships...we must budget in the cost of a 5 foot long display case with LED top lighting as well. You simply could not allow one of these, once completed, to get dusty. You would never get it clean again without breaking stuff. Gawd....this thread has my gears turning....I have already checked prices on Sprue Bros......
  4. I think even more than that..... I used to be sort of a battleship nerd, and the Iowas were designed and built to comply with the Washington Treaty on capital ships which limited them to 45,000 tons displacement. I think they got heavier with retrofits when the war started, but initially it was taken very seriously to comply with the treaty. The Yamato and Musashi were built in secret and in violation of the Washington Treaty, and I think they were both nearly 70,000 tons as designed and completed. The Montana Class battleship was designed once it was realized the treaty was no longer being honored, and it was to be a ship in the size class of the Yamatos, with 4 main gun turrets of 3 16"/50 guns each and displacement of nearly 70,000 tons. But none were completed nor I think even started because by then it was recognized the battleship was obsolete. On top of all that, the 18" guns on the Yamatos are reason enough to build one! I wonder if we wait long enough Trumpeter will do it in 1/200...? If I was going to invest that time and money I would definitely want to start with the best kit possible.
  5. Are you referring to the Nichimo kit? The Yamato is the ultimate battleship, and if there was a modern kit I would be all over it. But isn't the Nichimo kit OOP, expensive on Ebay, and kind of a poor/not to modern standards kit?
  6. Best of luck to you! I hope you will do a full WIP, as I would love to follow it! I am constantly tempted by one of these 1/200 Battleships....in my case I would be torn between the Arizona and the Iowa. I am just not sure I have a sufficient attention span to ever finish it. I have followed a few build threads of these beasts, and they involve a ton of pretty tedious work, particularly with aftermarket brass involved.
  7. Me too. If I had to pick one "favorite aircraft"....from all types and all eras....it would probably be the Tempest MK V/VI. Second would be the Typhoon. Something about the huge front intake I think. Makes the planes look powerful, in sort of a "blunt instrument" kind of way. Plus I have always liked the British camo schemes and markings.
  8. I remember reading....don't know who to credit for it...that the SH kit has significant fit issues around the wing-fuselage join....and dihedral issues if not carefully assembled.
  9. That's going to be a great project. I'm struck looking at the photos, how much better looking (to my eye) the Privateer is compared to the B-24. I consider the B-24 to be kind of an ungainly looking aircraft, but the tail structure of the Privateer just seems to work much better aesthetically.
  10. I know little about car shows, but it is absolutely 100% true about models.... I cannot count the number of times I have followed a build thread wherein the builder was super talented....correcting every minor inaccuracy....adding every detail...however minute. I mean really going to the extreme in a quality build sense. Then when the model is completed and painted, I find it a little....meh....because the eye/mind cannot really absorb all the work that went into it. Then there is a build thread where a kit is just put together, with decent proficiency but no heroics....and topped off with a stunning paint job. The latter build might have only 1/50th of the work put into as the former....but it typically draws much more attention. I think this is why many armor and aircraft modelers often have a tendency to over-weather their builds a bit, at least in the sense of portraying scale reality. Even if it is not completely "realistic", it draws the eye and makes people look. At least it does me.... I have never participated in model competitions, but I would wager this factor has huge influence in the judging there, even if the judges are not aware of it fully.
  11. Hahahaah...I have two PCM Tempests also....one of which is about 1/4 finished. I also have the SH kit. My PCM build got stalled when I realized my completed/painted cockpit would not fit in the fuselage without major modification. I just lacked the energy at that time to deal with it....shelved the project...and haven't gone back. The PCM kit is a good kit, but while I haven't started the SH kit, it definitely looks next level in terms of detail and refinement. I think it looks like a better starting point than the PCM kit. It all depends on your budget and what is important to you.
  12. This all rings so true to me... In general I strive for quality over quantity, partly because my display space in my man-cave is very limited and I don't want to crowd it with 200 models anyway. This equates to complex, large scale kits, often with aftermarket accessories. The downside is I often get bored with the tedious details of these kits, and walk away from them for a while. If I don't feel like working on a kit, I usually don't. The result is that I generally only finish one or two models a year. The other thing that really hits home....the model I finish and have in my hands never lives up to the completed model that I envisioned in my head when I started. Never. I have come to accept that fact and can manage to be happy with the result sometimes regardless.
  13. It's around 14" long...weighs about 5 pounds because most of the parts are metal.... Thanks for all the comments guys.
  14. I think it is sad that a long term member has been frustrated to the point of bailing out, and hate to see anyone go, but I am sure he knows what is best for him and once he cools off and can think clearly will decide accordingly. Beyond that, I think the less said about the incident the better. Things take on a life of their own on the internet because the usual moderating influences of face-to-face contact are absent. I know I have unintentionally offended and pissed off people, and others have certainly done the same to me. I just drop it and move on...but that's just me. It's hard to stay pissed off very long. And I know online moderating is a thankless job.
  15. Looking fantastic in every sense. When I built mine I was a bit disappointed with the....minimal...landing gear detail that comes on the Revell kit, but too lazy to do anything about it. Yours are coming along brilliantly.
  16. It is amazing too how even the apparently most "informed" opinions can be wrong.... My grandfather (long deceased) was the foreman of his shift on the P-47 assembly line. As a kid I had a fascination to warbirds similar to what I have now, so I talked to him about it as much as possible. He told me over and over again how the P-47 had a gun that fired through the center of the prop spinner. When I was young and insensitive (rude) I corrected him a couple of times...."no grandpa....that was the P-39...." He would insist and probably wondered how he could have a grandson who would be so uppity as to question his knowledge of the aircraft he built for so long. He was not senile or anything at this time, but he somehow had the strange idea about the spinner gun.... When I finally approached my teen years I wised up a bit about people and my place in the universe and stopped arguing with him. I know for a fact that he was not embellishing his role building the P-47, because my mom remembers visiting her dad at the factory and seeing a finished P-47 (remembering "that thing was so huge I didn't believe it could fly"). When I wasn't pushing him about the accuracy of his beliefs, he did admit that his team had nothing to do with installing actual guns, and that the aircraft were moved to a more secure area some distance from the main assembly line to have guns installed. But you would still have thought he would have know where the guns went on the aircraft. Somehow, he didn't.
  17. C'mon man....if you are going to cast a negative spin on an innocuous and harmless discussion like this....well....I guess I don't really know what to say. I guess we all must be too fragile to have any discussions....
  18. This is one of my biggest pet peeves also... I have seen so many otherwise immaculate builds, that were lessened because the "non-flattened" tires are a dead giveaway that I was looking at a 5oz object.... It particularly surprises me because flattening the tires a bit is so easy to do.
  19. Beautiful.... The 935 has been my favorite car since I was a teenager and used to watch Peter Gregg, Danny Ongais, the Whittington bros, etc racing them at Laguna Seca and Sears Point in the late 1970s. A few years back I modified the Tamiya 1/12 kit and used custom decals to build it into Peter Gregg's 1978 season car....still one of my all time favorite models. Looking at pictures on the 'net, I am always amazed by how good those pre-built diecast models are. For the amount of hand work that must go into them, I don't understand how they can sell them for the price that they do....
  20. Thanks for all the comments guys. As I said, I am facing a serious space issue for completed models. I figure four completed 1/35 AFVs will fit in about the same space as one 1/32 WWII fighter. I have been waiting years for a good 1/32 Tempest....now I have one sitting in my stash...and I don't want to start it because I will have no place to put it when finished.....
  21. On my continuing "sabbatical" from LSPs I have been dabbling in armor. This is the Tamiya 1/35 King Tiger, modified to represent the final production version of the vehicle. It has a lot of aftermarket brass fiddly stuff, and Fruil tracks. I think I keep hesitating to jump back into 1/32 aircraft because my display space is about maxed, and cars/armor takes up quite a bit less room. Thanks for looking.
  22. You are doing a brilliant job on this, I will be following with great interest. I didn't even know that Eduard made a 1/32 P-47. It sure looks like a fantastic kit.
  23. I think that's where it goes downhill. People take differing opinions as a personal attack. The "you're either with me, or you're against me..." sort of thinking. I am as passionate about this hobby as anyone, but it is just a hobby. At the end of the day we are discussing the finishing/painting of a few ounces of plastic, that has no function when completed other than display. None of this is worth hard feelings of any kind. But some people are competitive by nature.
  24. The passion of these sorts of discussions always surprises me....it is certainly not just on LSP. I am currently building a King Tiger, and the German armor guys are maniacs about this detail stuff...late war paint schemes...color of hull mounted tools....weathering...rust...you name it. Feelings get hurt and guys go into defensive/offensive mode at the drop of a hat. I don't really understand it....We all make an attempt at accuracy, but I don't understand how a topic like late war German armor paint colors brings out the aggressive/competitive nature of some personalities. I just do the minimal amount of due diligence/research so I am not miles off, then build/paint what I think looks cool. It works for me, but I know that approach really pisses some guys off. When they tell me I am "wrong"....I ask them to prove it. They almost never can.
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