Zactoman

Zactomodels is now open again and it's good to be back! During our move last year I injured my right shoulder. After months of living with it, I finally had it checked. I was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, but it turned out to be really bad bursitis with bone spurs. The MRI was excruciating because I had to hold my neck cranked to the side. A week later my neck was aching, my left arm began falling asleep and my left thumb tip was completely numb. I went almost 2 months like that before I found a chiropractor that was able to help. I was almost healed but kept re-injuring myself doing small tasks. Spending almost two weeks in bed with COVID was just what my body needed to recover. Another couple of weeks to take care of things and now I'm ready to go! My apologies to those who have had emails go unanswered. I've done my best to reply to anything related to orders that were placed, but skipped almost everything else... No new products for a while. While the casting area is temporarily set up (still in the dining room and not the garage), my office/modeling room is in-progress. The new home is quite a drive from the Post Office, so orders will be shipping on Mondays and Fridays only. UK is still blocked from purchasing due to VAT regulations. Does anybody know of any small business that has successfully signed up for VAT or found a way around this? EU can order but you'll have to pay your own VAT when your package arrives. Australia and New Zealand are both back after COVID restrictions. Russia and Ukraine are blocked from ordering due to the war. AIM-9X Sidewinder is in limbo until I can get more MV Lenses (or find a replacement). F-16 MCID (large mouth) intake will not be available until after the garage/shop is up and running and I re-engineer the mold. I will be doing a short run re-release of the Revell MiG-29 correction and combo sets in the near future. I'll be casting sets until the current molds wear out and then it's gone. Contact me if you are interested in reserving one. Su-27 and A-7 canopies are not available, but I do plan to re-release them early next year after moving my shop to my garage, even if the parts aren't "Perfect" (I've realized I was too much of a perfectionist when rejecting minor flaws). Chris

www.Zactomodels.com The store is now open for business! Thanks for all the well-wishes, but it didn't go as smoothly as planned (Do moves ever go as planned?) Readers Digest version can be found here: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?/topic/318865-zactomodels-is-back/

I'm currently packing up the shop and moving in a couple of weeks. I'll do my best to get things up and running after the move, but anticipate setting up the new shop may also take a couple of weeks. I'm hoping to be back in business by September 1st or sooner. Contact me if you need something before then. I do have a few items in stock and will help if I can. My apologies for any email replies I may have missed during the past few weeks/months. It's been hectic... UK orders are still blocked due to their VAT regulations. I'm hoping to find a solution, at least for orders over $180, before re-opening. EU customers will need to pay VAT and any fees due on delivery. I do not intend to sign up with IOSS. Customers from any other countries that add taxes or fees will have to pay those taxes and fees on delivery. I have a hard enough time keeping track of my own taxes and don't need the extra headache...

Thank you for sharing another stunning build and for expanding my vocabulary.

Indeed it is. For a better pic, close-ups, alternate markings and some cool animation, this page is worth having a look at: https://peterfor.com/projects/Vg3Go8

Cats and models don't mix...

I miss the bars and clubs packed with cute college girls. Oh wait, that was 30+ years ago... I was locked in my basement casting parts long before this started so not much has changed for me. I do miss going out for those occasional dinner and a movie nights with the wife, but then I've taken up cooking and have had some wonderful dinners with her here at home.

In trying to keep it non-political, I found a good article about this as it relates to US businesses: https://esellercafe.com/how-a-new-vat-rule-from-brexit-now-impacts-every-us-seller-shipping-to-uk-customers/ My current plan for UK purchases: Under £135: a Zactomodels eBay store. eBay charges customer the VAT during purchase and eBay does the dirty work of paying VAT to HMRC. Over £135: The customer pays VAT upon receipt in the UK. A minimum purchase over £135 will be required on my website (once I get the coding worked out). Or customers can email me a list and I'll send a PayPal invoice. I am considering charging slightly higher prices on the eBay store to cover eBays high fees. You UK guys that want to make small orders might want to consider coordinating with one another and placing a larger order together to save a few bucks.

As mentioned, I don't know eBay. I'm not trying to skirt their rules or fees and wouldn't want to fake anything like shipping cost. If I were I wouldn't be asking about it on a public forum. I had hoped that maybe they allowed custom invoicing, like PayPal, to where a customer could request and receive an invoice and eBay would get their full cut on the sale. That or an ability to add additional unlisted items to the purchase of a listed item, again with eBay getting their full cut. I've avoided selling on eBay for 2 reasons: 1. Through the years I've heard and read lots of stories of idiots filing bogus claims and/or leaving fake bad feedback. I'm hoping this is overblown and not much of a problem. 2. I've been warned away by a few other vendors because of the high fees eBay charges, particularly if you have an eBay store. After some initial quick research it doesn't look all that terrible. With my new website coming online I was planning to look into starting an eBay store, but was only going to list a few items with the hope of reaching a wider audience that would ultimately shop at my website. With this UK thing and the EU coming in July, I'm thinking it might be best to just pull the trigger and list my full inventory. I'd like to do more research, but need to decide ASAP for my British homies. Looks like a few more sleepless nights ahead. I'm just hoping it's easier starting an eBay store than it is registering with HMRC... Thanks for all of the input, Chris

Sadly, I just did this. Now I've got the UK, one of my favorites, on a short list with several unsavory and third world countries. I am considering something similar and have questions to those who know eBay (I've never sold anything there...). If I were to start an eBay store and just list a few items, could I send an eBay invoice (I assume you can do invoices there?) to a wanna-be UK customer for any item in my catalog, even if it's not listed on eBay? Chris

Frustration bump. I only found out about this on Monday, Jan. 11th when Stamps.com emailed me a notification about it. I did a search and found this thread before creating a new one. What a mess!!! I just spent about 2 hours registering with HMRC, before giving up (they don't make it easy!). I got all the way to the payment "schemes" section before my brain shut down. I didn't even get to this part: Non UK residents must provide one piece of primary evidence which consists of a copy of government issued photo identification which can include: passport photo drivers licence national identity card You must also provide two additional pieces of evidence which can be copies of: a mortgage statement a lease/rental agreement a birth certificate a marriage or civil partnership certificate a decree absolute or decree of dissolution certificate an official document from an employer that contains your name, date of birth and Tax Identification Number Seriously??? This after they already got all of my business info and SSN? I skipped to the next section which was bank info. I only glanced at it before walking away but I gather that I needed to have a UK bank Account??? I don't know... When I returned the page had reset and when I logged back in they started me back at the very beginning. Have any of you successfully applied for this? Please email or PM me if you can help guide me through the process! Zactoman@Zactomodels.com In the mean time what to do? Block UK customers? What happens to the packages I already shipped this year not knowing about this? Will those customers be able to claim them if I haven't registered for the VAT? Will they be able to pay the VAT themselves and if not, what happens to the packages?

I found myself so distracted by the rivet work (in a great way!), that I had to take a second look to appreciate what a nice build this is otherwise. Bravo! Chris

We need an Su-57 to sit next to that 1/32 F-22 kit.

Thanks for all the nice feedback! Thanks for the suggestions that were messaged or posted here. I haven't had much time since launching to work on the website but have made few small changes thanks to those recommendations. As previously mentioned, it's a work-in-progress and I've still got a lot of work to do on it. This is the first website I've ever built (my old one was started by an old roommate for me and I just updated but never learned) and it was much harder than I'd anticipated. I looked at my options and decided to learn WordPress using online tutorials and lots of searches for answers, just to make a basic site. What is frustrating is that so many seemingly simple things are much more involved or in some cases not possible without actually learning to code (and I don't have time for that). I just now (temporarily) removed that line. When time permits I will add a page that lists all of my products with links to pdf instructions for each product. I had hoped to do that before launch but didn't find the time. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Mark and Tim, PMs sent. Thierry and Tom, thanks for the orders. Both shipped the following day. Notifications of orders received and orders shipped (including tracking info) are now automatically sent. If any of you don't receive those please let me know so I can investigate and fix the problem. Cheers Chris

Have a look at my new website!!! https://zactomodels.com A big thank you to the modelers whose pictures you'll see on my homepage. A huge thank you to Marcel and Miro who took multiple pictures of their kits until the lighting and pose of the images worked together so that I could merge them for the hero-pic. Thank you for tolerating my AMS! My old website was cluttered, crowded, not mobile friendly and way beyond obsolete. Not having a clue about building websites made this a real challenge. The site still needs a lot of work. I was mostly focused on making the homepage and store before going live. The "about us" page and "shipping details" are temporary and will be filled in when I get the time. The "privacy policy" and "terms and conditions" are copy/pasted standard legal mumbo-jumbo that nobody reads or cares about. I do plan to eventually add a customer build gallery and probably a few other pages for faqs, news, tutorials, etc. Just need more time... Please let me know what you think, if you find any problems or have any suggestions. Happy New Year!

Hi Rob (and others this may pertain to!), My sincere apologies for not replying. In your case Rob, I really thought I did (and wondered why you didn't e-mail requesting an invoice). To answer your question, yes the A-7 intake corrections are available, as are all other items on my website. Any items not available have either been removed from the website or are listed as currently not available. The past few months have been my busiest in my near 15 years of running Zactomodels. As Seiran mentioned, I'm a one-man-band and sometimes in the chaos things get missed. Yes, sometimes life gets in the way. I do try to reply to all e-mails but when things get hectic and the inbox gets flooded it can be difficult. I try to always reply to order/business related e-mails first and get to the others when I can, but sometimes they get buried and forgotten. If something you consider urgent hasn't received a reply, please re-send it. Family issues happen with everybody and family always comes first. Maintaining a 90 year old house and its contents can also be a challenge. The good news is that there's not much left that can break (knock on wood) that I haven't repaired. And then there's Mother Nature... While Preston Idaho doesn't get an overwhelming amount of snow, I have a two-car wide 120' driveway and I'm armed with nothing but a shovel. Not fun when you have a bad back. Add in having to shovel doggie trails in a big back yard and the result can be slowed down work and necessary recovery time. As mentioned, I've been busier than ever. I do my best to get the orders out as quickly as I can. Normally this would be the next or following day, but lately it's been 2, 3 even 4 or more days depending on the line. If the delay is longer than a few days I always try to contact the customer and let them know the status of their order. A huge "Thank you!" to all that have been supporting the business. It is much appreciated (and much needed!). Cheers, Chris

Thanks guys! Now Available!!! www.Zactomodels.com

I think the cowl shape may look more off than it is because the cowl flaps are open. I did a quick photo-shop with them closed: Again, I do think the shape is off, just maybe not as bad as it appears. I'm more concerned about the other shapes and details. WARNING: Cold Water alert! If you don't want to read about potential problems with the kit please skip the rest of this post. I'm not kicking HB, just the kit that I have seen in the pictures... First, they're calling it an A-26C but the box art shows an A-26B which was featured on a Bombshell Decals sheet (page 2 of pics, last pic): http://www.hyperscale.com/2012/reviews/decals/bombshell48bs013reviewbf_1.htm The canopy on the kit appears to be the early flat top rather than the bulged clamshell version. I assume they will include both in the box as the box-art plane had the clamshell canopy. It also has the ventral turret, so I assume they will include that in the kit as well. As for shapes: The upper nose glass looks much too bulbous. It's pretty streamlined on the real thing. High-rez pic here: https://media.defense.gov/2010/Jun/18/2000556599/-1/-1/0/090609-F-1234K-005.JPG The canopy side panes should extend further down as should the lower corners of the windscreen. If you draw a line along the lower side pane it should be just below the top of the wing intersection (or is the top of the wing too low?). The continuous curve shape of the windscreen intersection leads me to believe that the forward fuselage is too rounded or the windscreen itself is mis-shapen. The side panes should be flat and almost vertical. They appear to be curved and angling inward. The upper fuselage sides (between the windscreen and rear glass) should be flat with a relatively small radius on the top corner. This is pretty obvious when looking at the corner intersections of the glass areas. The kit appears to have curved sides with a pretty big radius along the top corner. Pic found here (lots of good pics!): https://hiveminer.com/Tags/douglas%2Cinvader/Recent The turret also appears to be too small in diameter. This is likely what they had to do to accommodate the fuselage shape that they made. Had they made it a larger diameter it would have appeared to dive down too much on the sides because of the larger fuselage corner radii. The shape of the turret also looks off. It should have a flatter curve. What they have looks more like the turret was replaced with a fuel tank as shown on the Bombshell sheet listed above (3rd pic in review). I'm going to stop here for now... Disclosure: I know almost nothing about the A-26 but I do like the plane. I built the Airfix kit when I was a kid. I more recently began gathering reference material for a 1/48 project that never got off the ground and in gathering those references became somewhat familiar with the plane.

That title though... Sorry, couldn't resist. I've received several requests to make replacement parts for the nasty rubber bladder parts included in the Trumpeter 1/32 F-14 Tomcat kit. The rubber parts are difficult to glue, difficult to paint and some have even had them weep oils that ruined their paint. As with rubber wheels, there is the fear that they will deteriorate and completely fail in time. While there are basically 3 positions for the wings, extended, swept and over-swept, I decided to only offer two, extended and swept. Those who want to do over-swept will have to do some filing and sanding. Here are the swept position parts: The bladders inflate using air pressure from the engines so there is some variability as to how much they inflate. I've found pics at cat-launch where they appear over-inflated while in others they have relaxed and the ribs in the under-structure show. I have made the (extended wing) bladders slightly relaxed to where the sub-structure barely shows. Those who want it to be more prominent can sand away material and those who want them more inflated can add material. Here are the extended wing parts: The stock kit has the wing glove sealing plate intersection with the forward section of the fuselage flush and have the rubber bladder notched to allow this. In reality the intersection should not be flush the full length, but flush at the front and raised at the rear. I made the bladders without the cut-out notch forcing the parts to fit properly. The parts in the previous pics are just sitting on the kit. Here you can see how they will look when everything is glued: Also note that the gap between the sealing pates and wing in the previous photos shows the parts just sitting on the kit with only a little tape holding things together. The gap will be tighter on a fully assembled kit (sorry, no pics to show this). The actual bladders are a Teflon coated canvas. They do get scuffed up and show wear. In some cases slight wrinkles show and in some pics it appears as though they have had large sections patched with slightly different colored canvas. Check your references for the plane you are building. I chose to make the bladders smooth and clean. You can add scuffing, wrinkles and patching if you choose or just (have fun and) replicate this and the weathering with paint. I will be pouring more production molds in the coming days and making some simple instruction sheets (the parts are drop-fit so there's not much to write about). I'm hoping to have these ready to release in the next week or two.

English version(S): Page 1: http://soyuyo.main.jp/f4/f4e-1.html#bottom Page 2 (Darren's link): http://soyuyo.main.jp/f4/f4e-2.html

A "potential" customer asked if I could take pics of them on the Tamiya kit so I decided to do that little bit of work to confirm the fit. All that was required was removing a sliver of material from the top of the Tamiya pallets (they start to curve up where it should be flat). I also removed just a little bit of material from the outboard edge of my casting as well as on the resin-to-pallet mating surface and voilà: (Note that the scribing on the Tamiya fitted part was just a test piece. I cleaned up and enhanced it for the finished pattern and castings as seen on the Trumpeter fitted parts.) The Tamiya part is not that bad in shape but does have raised panel lines that need to be re-scribed. Scribing just one of those little panel latches wasn't fun, and there are 12 of them on the pair! Not having to scribe those makes it worth replacing them IMHO...

Nice catch. I hadn't noticed. The other 4 caps on this plane are all at about the 7:30 o'clock position. Only that center fuel cap was off.

My Take: "I look at the photos of the real thing and then look at the parts you make. Then I realize they are both photos of the model." Insane workmanship...

Very nice build so far! You may want to add the hand-hold on the right wing top as pointed out here: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?/topic/296183-148-ov-10a-bronco/&do=findComment&comment=2857038 Note that the cover is spring-loaded so it's normally flush with the wing surface. Also note that the oil filler cap you added to the right engine is also present in the same location (right side) of the left engine.