Follow the Instructions: Episode 113

The Voice of Bob: 0:13

Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike and Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining and help you keep your modeling mojo alive.

Mike: 0:49

All right, Dave, it's 1.13.

Kentucky Dave: 0:51

We are well into 2024 now, man.

Mike: 0:55

I know April's here. We've had the 12-minute model sphere. It's time for this first episode this week and looking forward to this one. You mean this month? Yes, this month. Well, it's the second thing we've dropped this week. Looking forward to this one? You mean this month? Yes, this month. Well, it's the second thing we've dropped this week.

Kentucky Dave: 1:08

Yeah, that's true.

Mike: 1:10

Got a Mike and Dave spectacular tonight. There you go. Hope we pull it off.

Kentucky Dave: 1:14

Yep.

Mike: 1:15

Well, man, what's up in your model sphere?

Kentucky Dave: 1:17

Well, as you can imagine, my model sphere is full. I've been reading the latest detail and scale on the P38, which really, really, really makes me want Tamiya to downsize their 48 scale P38. I've been organizing the additions that I picked up from HeritageCon and putting them in the proper places. I've been prepping for amps. I've been trying to. You know I'm pulled in a lot of directions, but it's all good, it's all feeling right. You know, let's put it this way, there's Mojo and that's what it's all about.

Mike: 2:04

How about your model Sphere? I hope there's Mojo. That's what it's all about. How about your model sphere? I hope there's mojo. That's the name of the podcast yeah, I know, I know but I understand I'm pulled in a lot of directions too.

Mike: 2:14

I've been trying to get my build mojo going. We'll talk more about that in the benchtop halftime report. That's uh. Despite my desire, I've had a little trouble getting things moving on the bench this past week. So again more on that later. We've got a few things done, but you know, behind the scenes, like you said, we're getting ready for amps. Unfortunately we don't have to give the Roscoe Turner show the skip this year, but if anybody is in a commutable distance to that show in the uh greater Indianapolis area up there, I can't remember. Where is it? Lebanon, indiana, is that right?

Kentucky Dave: 2:51

Yeah, I believe that is correct, that's correct Uh Northwest Indiana, indianapolis.

Mike: 2:57

That's right. Please go to that show, it's a good one. Michael raggy, special agent 001. Uh, actually, uh posted some show information to the plastic model dojo uh, just today in fact, and I had to let him know that we weren't going to be making it. Yeah, buddy asked if you're going to be in south bend. I said probably, so we could see him anyway listen.

Kentucky Dave: 3:19

If it wasn't for amps being in south, we would definitely be at Roscoe Turner. It's just. There's no way we can pull off Heritage Con, Roscoe Turner and Amps and survive.

Mike: 3:34

In four weeks.

Kentucky Dave: 3:35

Yeah.

Mike: 3:36

Yeah, that'd be a bad plan man.

Kentucky Dave: 3:38

Yeah, that would be.

Mike: 3:39

Those days are over. Yeah, really, man, that's all I got. I've been trying to get the hotel lined up. We're going to take my car to South Bend, because it's not so far, so there's no rental car. Looking forward to that trip. It's going to be kind of a shotgun one because we can't get a very early start. We'll be heading up there on Friday morning and that's just the way it's got to be.

Kentucky Dave: 4:02

Yeah.

Mike: 4:02

We are getting there, and it's been a long time coming.

Kentucky Dave: 4:05

Yes, absolutely so, Mike. I am assuming that you have a modeling fluid for this episode.

Mike: 4:13

I do, I am drinking a bullet, but I'm drinking their 10-year. Oh, good choice. I found a new staple, so we'll have to see how that compares at the end of the episode. But we'll do that, but for now I think it'll get me through the episode. What about you?

Kentucky Dave: 4:31

Well, I am drinking something new and different from the brewery Beak and Skiff out of New York. I am drinking their Light Up the Night. Black Cherry Premium Hard Cider. I like black cherry as a flavor. This is new to me, so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure it's going to be good.

Mike: 4:56

Well, I hope so. Sounds at risk for tasting like NyQuil, but we'll see at the end. Yep, well, dave, folks have been sending in some listener mail man Good, and we probably ought to get into that. Yes, well, scott Huber from State College Pennsylvania wrote in last episode and he wanted to make a clarification. He's the one that mentioned that your Tamiya Engineering favorite, 72nd scale Zero, had lineage to their motorcycle kits and I guess we kind of thought maybe that was a little facetious or maybe we came across that way. Okay, but he's actually quite serious. So think about this a minute. A motorcycle has nowhere to hide anything. Alignment is pretty critical. Nowhere to hide anything, alignment is pretty critical. So if anything's out of whack anywhere, it's going to cause visible fit issues and frustrating fit and alignment issues all throughout the build. So Scott contends that when they started cutting their teeth on these motorcycle kits 20 years ago, that they were laying the foundation for what would become exemplary engineering across the product line.

Kentucky Dave: 6:05

I would not argue with that. That analysis makes sense to me. I think that that's absolutely true that motorcycle kits are complex and because of the fact that they are so exposed, I think it makes perfect sense that the experience that Tamiya gained doing those and making those kits better and better definitely shows itself in their other kits, their other military kits, post the motorcycles.

Mike: 6:46

Yeah, and I suspect maybe the Formula One stuff kind of crept in there as well.

Kentucky Dave: 6:49

Yeah, I could see that argument as well.

Mike: 6:53

It's an interesting observation and thanks for raising it. Well, dave Tony at Horizon Models is making us aware of their 72nd scale Atlas Agena. Yes, so, folks, if you're into real space, this is hot on the heels of our last episode, making us aware of their 72nd scale Atlas Agena. Yes, so, folks, if you're into real space, this is hot on the heels of our last episode.

Kentucky Dave: 7:09

Yes, and I mentioned in that episode that the Atlas Agena are the first spaceship or the first US rockets. That I truly remember as a kid. That I truly remember as a kid. I remember the program and I remember how cool it was that they were going to dock in space. That hits all the member berries for me and I truly cannot wait for this kid. Member berries. Member berries. Don't you ever listen to film criticism? They talk about member berries all the time.

Mike: 7:46

Yeah well, 16-year-old Dave needs to think about that statement.

Kentucky Dave: 7:50

Ha, ha ha.

Ian MacAulay: 7:54

Oh please.

Mike: 7:55

Mark Doremus from the greater Seattle area. Dave Mark is still in the hotel after his residential fire.

Kentucky Dave: 8:03

Yeah.

Mike: 8:04

So that's unfortunate. That's probably going to take a little while.

Kentucky Dave: 8:06

Oh listen, that's a slog Well.

Mike: 8:09

I hope they gave him a deal. Well, he's got a couple of musings here he'd like to make us aware of.

Kentucky Dave: 8:15

All right.

Mike: 8:16

Well, he says his temporary living quarters are the same distance from work as his house, but it's on a more heavily trafficked route so he has more time in the car to listen to podcasts. You might think that's a good thing. Well, it isn't. Someone asks a question and it gets him off trying to answer the question. He misses several minutes of the conversation. A couple of times he's had to pause a podcast and compose a reply as he's driving along, or someone may make something controversial, a statement controversial. That's not our show.

Kentucky Dave: 8:45

Yeah, no.

Mike: 8:46

And he's got to argue with them. But the worst is and this is probably where we come in the worst is when someone describes a technique or a tool and he can't stop to take notes.

Kentucky Dave: 8:58

Well, that's the nice thing about a podcast as opposed to live radio. You know that you can always go back, fast forward through it, find that section when you're sitting safely at your desk at work, where you can with a piece of paper and you're not in danger of getting in an auto accident. We don't want any of our listeners to get in auto accidents listening to our podcast.

Mike: 9:25

He also says that we've talked about reading in the past. Inspiration we get from reading you in particular, less so me.

Kentucky Dave: 9:32

Absolutely. You're a photograph man. I'm definitely a reading guy.

Mike: 9:37

I like picture books. I'm still a kindergartner.

Kentucky Dave: 9:39

Well, I wasn't going to go there, but yeah.

Mike: 9:47

Well, he was having trouble seeing the connection, probably because he wasn't reading enough, as he says here, lacking an adequate modeling bench because, yeah, he's on a hotel desk-ish kind of arrangement. He's been spending an hour or two every evening reading mostly World War II histories, in particular some research on the M3 Lee's building at the hotel. It's 72nd scale, so it fits onto this tiny table. Yep, I hope you get better accommodations real soon, mark.

Kentucky Dave: 10:11

I do too. But listen again. Once again proving that 72nd scale is the perfect scale. If you're burned out of your house, in your model room and you're forced to go live in a hotel, 72nd scale is just the right scale for building something on one of those little tiny hotel desks.

Mike: 10:34

Not to wish anybody's house burns down.

Kentucky Dave: 10:36

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, and we hope he gets to a more permanent accommodation soon.

Mike: 10:43

Well, he's inspired to try all sorts of new things, like a PB2Y Coronado Flower Class Corvette and maybe several M3 Lee Grant variants.

Kentucky Dave: 10:55

You know the M3, if you watch the YouTubes of the Australian Armor Museum, they have because the Australians used a lot of m3s and because a lot were used in in burma and india and all uh. They have a number of them and those vehicles are fascinating up next, dave rock rozak.

Mike: 11:17

All right from detail and scale. Now you mentioned your p38 book, and that's exactly what we're going to talk about here. Oh okay, uh rock is making us aware in more ways than one of their new detail and scale series, volume 18, the p38 lightning part one.

Mike: 11:33

So there's more to come, dave yes the xp38 prototype through the p38 h variants, also covers the f4a and f5a photographic reconnaissance variants. The book's about the P-38 Lightning folks and it's a really cool plane. This is a really good book, so pick it up if you're into such things. Yep, absolutely, and he was at WrightCon vending.

Kentucky Dave: 11:55

Oh, and I wish you and I had been able to do the Bachelor.

Mike: 11:59

The Bachelor model world tour.

Kentucky Dave: 12:01

Yes, that would have been way cool.

Mike: 12:04

It would have been would have been way cool. It would have been well, you know, we need to keep that in mind. See if those shows are same weekend next year. They probably won't be. Yeah, but uh, you never know, we could still do michigan toy yes, that's true. Also known as the hughestad up next jason campbell, our uh tennessee gundam guy. He went to Atlanticon 2024. Oh good, with a bunch of his Friday Gundam group buddies nine of them total made the trip down to Atlanta. They had a great time.

Kentucky Dave: 12:31

Well, that's fantastic.

Mike: 12:33

He even taught Gundam with some people who were intrigued by one of his builds and the markings on the kit which he'd used, some embossed dry transfer gilding on some of the armor sections. Jason, send us a picture of that. I think I know what you mean, but I'd like to see it.

Kentucky Dave: 12:49

Absolutely, and post it in the dojo.

Mike: 12:52

Now, as we all do at Scale Model Shows, he had some questionable financial decisions. That's like I'm not even going to say half, that's like 61% of the fun of going to scale models.

Kentucky Dave: 13:05

Yes, absolutely.

Mike: 13:07

Well, thank you, and their next show is going to be the Knoxville show in late May. I think that's where we're going to feature in our model show showcase, so our spotlight coming up a little later this month. The Knoxville club, and I don't know, man, we'll have a little drought after after amps. Maybe we can get down there, I know Well, again on the real space theme. Dave, this is actually a response from Mike Ida-Cavage, who's our guest in episode 112, talking about real space. It's proved pretty popular. Yeah, extremely. I'd sent Mike Ida-Cavage a question because I'm probably going to pick up that new Artemis kit from. I guess it's an AMT branded kit from round two. Yeah, Maybe MPC, but I think it's AMT. Yeah.

Mike: 13:53

Doesn't really matter. Round two and that rocket, in its current configuration, like the several before it, including the later shuttles, the external fuel tank is orange. Yeah, and I'd asked him about you know, hey, what's the current thought on the kind of the color of that, because I think I'm going to get this Artemis kit and it's got the same kind of deal going on and that stuff is a spray insulation.

Kentucky Dave: 14:20

Yes, it is.

Mike: 14:21

That starts out a pale yellow and as it ages in the sun and UV light, from whatever source, it starts creeping toward rust, brown and orange.

Kentucky Dave: 14:33

Yep.

Mike: 14:33

So another one of those. It depends, or whatever color you want to paint it.

Kentucky Dave: 14:39

Right.

Mike: 14:41

Artistic license Would seem so. Dave, mike, thank you for the, uh, the information. He sent me. A lot more than that, but uh, we'll leave it that for now. Sure, finally, easter greetings from michael carnalco all right happy easter to both of us. Hope we squeeze in some modeling time and uh, we did not too productive, but uh, we got a little in.

Mike: 15:04

I ate too much. That's the big thing. Well, I'm glad I watched that. I did not eat too much. Oh, I ate way too much. I was a spectator. His question is in regards to recent manufacturers which recent new manufacturer did you miss getting a kit from before it vanished or folded up shop? Now he is referencing a kit from Di park. You remember them? No god, they had some vespa scooters, kind of vietnam themed oh yeah, yeah, right, yep, uh.

Mike: 15:35

And then he also references a soviet stz tractor and then one with a katusha rocket on the back of it that seems to have vanished, and he's also late in the game for the 35th skill Vickers light tank. Well, I can answer a few things on some of these Diopark. I don't know what happened to them. I know Gecko is starting to release some Vietnam war themed diorama friendly figure sets and accessory sets.

Kentucky Dave: 16:01

And I think they have that three wheel.

Mike: 16:04

They got like yeah, the little taxi thing.

Kentucky Dave: 16:06

Yeah, the little taxi, not the two-wheel Vespa thing, but the three-wheel scooter thing that you see all over China. If you go to China, so I would watch out.

Mike: 16:18

Yeah, I wouldn't pay the eBay ransom price for the Dial-A-Part Vespa because I think that's probably coming somewhere else. Now that the Soviet STZ was, it's either Rish or Vulcan, I can't remember. Yeah, I could go back to my stash and I could answer this, but we're not going to do that. They released an STZ tractor in Soviet and German markings. The Katyusha version was to be released by one or the other, but not the same one along with their own STZ. So when the STZ came out, from whichever one of these actually released it, another company was going to do it as well and they never released the kits. So there was an STZ release, two boxings. The only difference was the nationality who was operating the vehicle. But the Katusha launch version was never tooled, never got released, and that second SDZ kit, soviet, from that same manufacturer, never got released. So you really didn't miss that one. It never happened.

Mike: 17:12

Now the Vickers, I think, is from Vulcan and that thing's readily available on eBay and it's really not terribly expensive. I don't know if anybody else is making it or not, but those things are out there. Now, is there anything that I missed? Personally, I can say that the Katusha version of the STZ was one that I thought I'd missed, until it turned out on ScaleMates that it never appeared out of the vapor, so I guess I didn't miss it. I don't know. The things I typically miss are aftermarket resin items that I push off and push off, and push off and off and then they're gone. Now let me tell you an out-of-production scale model kit is way easier to find than a piece of aftermarket yes, yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact, mr.

Kentucky Dave: 17:55

Mr hughes dad was looking for a edward photo x set that was no longer in production. He was finally able to find it, but yeah, it was a slog locating, and you're right, the model kits are actually a whole lot easier to locate.

Mike: 18:14

What about you, man? Is there anything you missed?

Kentucky Dave: 18:17

There's nothing that comes in off the top of my head that I missed, but I'm with you. The things that I know that I've missed have been photo etch resin or decal sheets. I think one of the reasons I have the obsession with the decal sheets that I do is the fact that I have passed on decal sheets and then later regretted it. And you know, decal sheets tend to be very short runs. They're one run and when they're gone they're gone. There are several of those over the years that I've gone. Darn, I wish I'd gotten when I saw them at this show or that show.

Mike: 19:05

It's probably something you wish you had doubled up on, so you'd have some barter material down the road.

Kentucky Dave: 19:09

That too, yes, absolutely.

Mike: 19:12

Well, dave, that's it from the email side. What's been happening on direct message? Well?

Kentucky Dave: 19:16

on direct message. Really, the direct messages have fallen into two categories. Direct messages have fallen into two categories. One category is people who've direct messaged to say they absolutely love the real space episode Dave Goldfinch, john Chung, a number of folks saying they really really liked the real space episode, real Space episode and in with those are the people who saw us at Heritage Con and shouted out to us on DMs, either while we were traveling there or while we were traveling back On the other side. We've got the folks who are looking forward to seeing us at AMPS People Brandon Jacobs just DMed yesterday. Oh yeah, I saw that one. So the DMs haven't been as much substance as they normally are. They really just have fallen into the categories of hey, I love the Real Space episode, hey, hope to see you at HeritageCon, glad I saw you at HeritageCon. And then folks are saying really looking forward to seeing you at AMP. So it's been a lot of short back and forth as opposed to more long form discussion.

Mike: 20:39

Well, folks, we love the email, we love the DMs, even if they're about you're looking forward to seeing us. We appreciate that very much.

Kentucky Dave: 20:46

Absolutely.

Mike: 20:48

But that aside, please send us your questions, send us your recommendations, send us things you'd like us to look into. Whatever man, we don't care. We like this segment a lot and we look forward to your emails and direct messages. If you want to email, you can do so at plasticmodelmojo at gmailcom, or just send us a direct message through Facebook and we'll sort those out and get them on the air folks by now.

Kentucky Dave: 21:36

You know what I'm gonna say next, which is, if you haven't given the podcast a rating in whatever podcasting app you're listening on, please do that. Please give us five stars. It helps drive the visibility and we appreciate that. Also, the way we get new listeners the most is current listeners telling their modeling friends. Every one of you out there has a modeling friend. Some of those folks are not listening to podcasts or aren't aware of Plastic Model Mojo podcasts or aren't aware of Plastic Model Mojo. Please recommend us show them how to download a podcast. The best way for us to get new listeners is to have our current listeners evangelize for us, and they do a great job, so please keep that up.

Mike: 22:20

And after you've done that, please check out all the other podcasts out there in the model sphere. You can do so by going to wwwmodelpodcastscom. That's model podcast plural. It's a consortium website set up with the help of Stuart Clark, the host of Scale Model Podcast up in Canada. He's aggregated all the banner links to the podcasts who are participating with us in the spirit of cross-promotion. You can go to that website and find all the links there. The one at the top of the list changes at random. You can go there and click those links to go directly to the other shows. In addition to the podcast, we've got a lot of blog and YouTube friends out there in the model sphere Chris Wallace, model airplane maker. He's got a good blog and a good YouTube channel.

Kentucky Dave: 22:58

And we just got to see him at HeritageCon and had a blast.

Mike: 23:02

We did. Jeff Groves the Inch High Guy, all things 72nd scale Great blog. He does a lot of cool stuff in that scale Batch, builds some bigger projects and he's going to be an upcoming guest here soon. So we're finally going to get an inch, the mysterious Inch High Guy on Plastic Model Mojo. Yeah, steven Lee Spru Pie with Fretz long and short form blog, mostly 72nd scale. Again, steve's got a lot of stuff to say about the hobby and around the hobby. You can find those blog posts almost daily at steve's spru pie with frets blog. And also evan mccallum, panzer meister 36, just teased us all with the april fools episode on his youtube channel. And jim bates scale canadian tv some interesting.

Kentucky Dave: 23:40

And Jim Bates of Scale Canadian TV Some interesting commentary on the hobby can be found on YouTube If you are not a member of IPMS USA, ipms UK, ipms Canada or whatever national IPMS organization where you live, please consider joining. They are organizations of volunteers dedicated to trying to make the modeling community and the modeling experience better. And if you are an armor enthusiast, please consider joining the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society, amps, a-m-p-s. They have their national show coming up in South Bend in two weeks or week and a half, I guess by the time this drops you definitely want to go.

Mike: 24:35

Well, dave, our special segment tonight is a potpourri of things. We recorded a couple of segments at Heritage Con and then we've got a topic we're going to pontificate on a little bit, and I think the first up is going to be a special segment from our friend, ian McCauley, from up in Ottawa, who we saw at HeritageCon. Well, dave, we made it. Yes, we did. We made it to HeritageCon again HeritageCon 16. Yes, we did. We made it to Heritage Con again Heritage Con 16. And part of all this, the best part, is getting to see all our Canadian friends that we only see online for the rest of the year. So we got one here, ian McCauley.

Ian MacAulay: 25:13

How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing well, good to see you guys, that's right.

Mike: 25:18

Good to see you, and you're up here representing Hobby Center, the shop up there, up your way, right that's right, that's right.

Ian MacAulay: 25:24

After I retired, took a job there two days a week with Bill, great guy, great store, lots of fun. We've got lots of deals up here, so it's been busy. This is the first time I've been able to walk around and see what's going on, not just standing behind the table.

Mike: 25:38

Well, that's good.

Kentucky Dave: 25:39

Now, how many tables did Hobby Center have here at the Six Six?

Ian MacAulay: 25:43

Yeah, that's pretty good.

Kentucky Dave: 25:45

That's pretty good.

Ian MacAulay: 25:46

Business. Brisk Business has been extremely brisk yeah well, they take this funny plastic money. It's great, it's great, but it's easy to tell apart.

Kentucky Dave: 25:56

Yeah, so did you bring something to enter in the contest?

Ian MacAulay: 25:59

I did. I brought five different cars and a BMP-1 and an AMX-30. Oh, okay, they're all on the table now. I haven't even had a chance to go and look at the table yet, so I'll have to go do that soon.

Kentucky Dave: 26:15

The models are great. It's slightly fewer than last year's unbelievable record number, but the categories are full. It's a little less crowded so you can get to actually see the models yeah, that's the best part.

Ian MacAulay: 26:30

And there's a still a ton of vendors like oh yes, unbelievable amount of vendors, yep, they've gotten.

Kentucky Dave: 26:36

They've gotten a fair amount of my money. I see that they've gotten a little of yours, a little bit of mine.

Ian MacAulay: 26:41

Yeah, yeah is that the only thing you've bought? No, I bought. Um, one of my buddies won a okay, I'm gonna make a fool of myself here won an airplane kit. Remember the one I was talking to you about? I said, when it comes in british markings and american markings, and it had just come out by to me, again with british marking, uh, I don't know which one I don't remember anyway one of the guys in the group won that as a door prize. He didn't want it. I bought it off him. All right.

Ian MacAulay: 27:09

So I've got. It Shows how much I know airplanes. So you're getting deals, I'm getting deals, I'm getting deals. Yeah, and I got a Hasegawa 68 Toyota Corolla for $20. Oh good, I was happy with that too.

Mike: 27:21

Good, well, that's interesting. I think that's a do you build? I don't want to call them real cars, but normal street cars much, you know.

Ian MacAulay: 27:31

what's funny is I've always built American cars. You know rods, street rods, stuff like that. But I've been hanging out with guys that like to build European and Japanese cars and it sort of turned me on to them and I've been building them now and they're fabulous kids, amazing kids.

Kentucky Dave: 27:49

I'll tell you what. For car builders, car modelers, this show is a great show. Not only are there lots of cars entered, but a fair number of the vendors have lots of car models and car accessories which at some shows you might not see quite as much.

Ian MacAulay: 28:09

No, exactly no, it's good there's been quite a turnout for the cars, which is nice to see.

Mike: 28:19

Got hecklers, hecklers.

The Voice of Bob: 28:21

Who is that guy anyway. Hecklers, who is that guy anyway?

Kentucky Dave: 28:27

well, uh, so now you all are vending until close the show.

Ian MacAulay: 28:32

close the show, and then we're packing up and we'll probably do dinner with you guys, yep, and then head out to the dojo and uh, we're, we're staying over the. We usually pack up and head for home, but I talked Bill into staying an extra night primarily because you guys were here, okay, and I knew I wouldn't get to see much of you before.

Mike: 28:50

All right, Hopefully we'll see you this evening. Yeah, so we'll have some fun this evening.

Ian MacAulay: 28:53

Talk about all the fun we had. Sounds good, man.

Mike: 28:56

All right. Thanks for stopping by. We'll catch up with you later. Well, dave Ian was pretty busy with the Hobby Center, but he did come by that last night and went to dinner with us and hung out at the dojo.

Kentucky Dave: 29:09

Had a great time. It was really good seeing Ian.

Mike: 29:17

Dave, we cooked this one up on the way to and on the way from HeritageCon.

Kentucky Dave: 29:22

Yeah.

Mike: 29:23

We were talking about model kit instructions kind of the good, bad and ugly around that and thought that might make an interesting discussion. Yes, I'm sure the listeners can relate to this and hopefully they'll get back with us and give us some feedback about what they think about kit instructions. But to start this off, let's frame this a little bit so folks will have some context as to where each of us are coming from, because they probably overlap a little bit but they're probably not exactly the same place. What type of instruction follower?

Kentucky Dave: 29:55

are you Not as good as I should be? What? Ironically, after 30 plus years building models, I am now getting to the point where I follow the instructions more rather than less. Now I still look through them and I still think, no, I don't want to do this in that order, especially on aircraft, where it comes to landing gear, which, if you can, you almost always want to add it at the end. Some kits don't allow that, and if you look through the instructions ahead of time, you'll know that, so that you don't get caught in that trap. But I'm actually becoming more and more of a believer in closely following the instructions than I used to be. When I first started modeling, I glanced at instructions and basically took them as nothing more than a suggestion for the way a particular kid ought to be built.

Mike: 30:56

How about you? Well, before we get to me, I would say for you, though, that that's interesting. I would think you would learn to experience to deviate for the very reasons you said, where things might be better put in somewhere else. Like you mentioned landing gear, you know, especially from from when I was building a lot of when I was a kid, mind you a lot of 72nd scale, two and four engine planes, almost all those old kits. When you assemble the wings, you got to put the landing gear in right, you had to.

Mike: 31:30

They were trapped landing gear right, so you know what happened later down the road oh, yeah, oh yeah, they got broken off. Now there's some engineering you probably do on the side there and figure out a way to put those in later, and that's a whole different topic.

Kentucky Dave: 31:45

But for me I'm kind of a ish instructions person Now you're barely a kit person to begin with, surprising that instructions are maybe less important because, heck you, you're many times not using half the parts in a kit.

Mike: 32:09

Well, that's probably another topic too, but I would think, well, for aircraft, particularly multi-engine versus single engine, some of those things are are pretty different. You know, there's some traditional build steps and some of those kits that are like, again, the trapped landing gear versus a single engine plane probably puts them in later, right Right, armor kits for the most part tend to follow the same build sequence, regardless of the manufacturer, regardless of the subject. Regardless of the manufacturer, regardless of the subject, typically it's lower hull running gear, upper hull fittings, turret gun, and that's kind of the way it goes, right, right. So you can kind of get mind numb to some of that, especially if you're doing a lot of research and you kind of know the subject pretty well and think through a project which maybe that's another show topic later down the road. But typically the armor type instructions are pretty straightforward. Now we'll get into some examples here where they're not so much, but for me I'm still kind of they're not rules, they're guidelines, to quote Pirates of the Caribbean.

Kentucky Dave: 33:19

Oh, a movie reference rather than a song reference.

Kentucky Dave: 33:22

That's right, let's talk about where this discussion first started. We acquired the Flyhawk BT-7 kit in 72nd scale. Yep, we did, and this kit's instructions are really really good. I mean very much state-of-the-art. It's a booklet. Each instruction shows the assembly of the parts in that step, but they're color-coded and each part is called out, color-coded, at the top of the step, in addition to showing the parts being assembled. It's really state-of-the-art instructions. And you, because of what you do at work, you have to, you know, lay out instructions, and you were saying you were going to use these as an example at work to show people a really, really good set of instructions, really clear. Oh yeah, really step by step. And I think you and I were both impressed by the level of quality. I mean, this is a 72nd scale Russian BT-7 tank. It's not that big, that's like four inches long, yeah, and this instruction booklet is just really one of the best things I think I've ever seen come along as far as that regard goes.

Mike: 35:05

Well, it's interesting because I have a Flyhawk, dauntless Uh-huh and the instructions in that are good, but they're not like this tank kit.

Kentucky Dave: 35:13

Yeah, and that Flyhawk Dauntless. That's only two years ago, maybe two and a half.

Mike: 35:22

I guess my fear is we're sitting here raving about this BT kit. Now it was released last year. Right, it's the first fly Hawk armor kit I've ever had in my hand. So I don't know what you know, like their FT 17, some of their first ones, what, what they, what the instructions for those look like. I don't know if this is new or if it's old hat. So if it's old hat and we're talking like it's brand new, sorry folks, but it's new to us. It's new to us. We were ignorant before and we opened this kit up and we're like holy crap, man. This is why can't they all be like this?

Kentucky Dave: 35:54

Well, and this kind of caused you and I to reminisce we're talking about back in the 60s and 70s with the early Matchbox and early Airfix or Revell or whatever, where you didn't get a set of instructions, all you got was an exploded view of all the parts, that kind of suggested where they all went together, suggested how where they all went together. But nothing there, you know, there was nothing step by step by step about a lot of those early kids. It was just here's all the parts, what they look like off the sprue, and you kind of put them together so that they all look like this at the end.

Mike: 36:39

Well, that's kind of my next bullet. Examples of bad instructions. Oh god, which, in this early, early era of plastic modeling, uh, but all I could, by contemporary standards, they were all bad yeah and ones that come to mind is is when we were up at columbus I picked up two airfix bristol bloodhounds yes. Not the new vintage classic release.

Kentucky Dave: 37:03

These were original pressings.

Mike: 37:05

I got one from the 60s and one from the 70s and it's interesting back to this real space if you listen to the latest OTB. Dave Goldfinch just picked up one of the new Bristol Bloodhounds as well. Yes, I know. Well, back to the old ones. Uh, the 60, the sixties version of the kit I picked up. The instructions for that thing are all verbiage. Oh really, there's a drawing off to the side of that that shows the parts with numbers.

Kentucky Dave: 37:37

Yeah.

Mike: 37:38

But it's not an exploded view. Yeah, but it's not an exploded view. An exploded view would, in my mind, in my engineering mind, has dash trace lines back to the intersection and interface points on those parts. This is just an outlay of the parts with numbers next to them, and then the assembly instructions are verbiage. So if you couldn't read your, you're up the Creek man. I don't know how many people out that out there that would include in the scale model world, but uh, certainly, uh, you, you would uh need to be literate to uh to follow these instructions. Literate and English literate and English.

Mike: 38:16

Now, by contrast and comparison, the 70s kit did away with the verbiage and pretty much just had exploded views with the dashed lines. It kind of went wholly the other way. So the instructions in my 70s pressing of the Bristol Bloodhound, it's kind of reminiscent. It's probably the exact same instructions that would have been on a carded blister airfix kit. I don't know if they boxed the Bristol Bloodhound that way or not. I don't think they did. I don't think they did either, but I've got a couple in the stash that are some other subjects that are. I looked at them before we started tonight. So, yeah, that's what they did.

Kentucky Dave: 38:56

Well, and that's interesting because I can guarantee you, between those two releases of that same kit, they did little or nothing to the molds or to the kit itself, but the one thing they did go back, apparently do and redo was the instruction sheet Yep, which I think is kind of interesting. And also I would speculate, given how bad most all of the instruction sheets in the 60s and 70s were, maybe one of the reasons that modelers don't follow the instructions is that we all grew up with really bad instructions and so we got used to not paying attention to them or paying less than full attention to them.

Mike: 39:46

Certainly the folks in our demographic.

Kentucky Dave: 39:48

Yes, exactly.

Mike: 39:50

Maybe the Evans of the world are spoiled.

Kentucky Dave: 39:53

You know what I'd love to hear from, because I don't know and have never seen them the Gundam builders. Oh yeah, I would love to hear from you all about what the gundam instructions are like well, I've built one.

Mike: 40:08

I built that musaru gundam. Oh, that's right, you did and it's. The instructions are good. Uh, I think the thing that's the challenge there is there's just so many sprues yeah yeah, so you can, you can get, uh, you can get a little bit of an overload, but the instruction is generally good. But I would like to hear some hardcore Gundam builder expound on that a little bit.

Kentucky Dave: 40:29

Yeah, really, and you know that's another point you raised you talked about with the Gundam kits with so many sprues we're seeing, particularly in armor. You're seeing armor kits with five and 600 pieces. Are the instructions on those commensurately complicated?

Mike: 40:49

Well, I think a lot of that's burned up in the tracks which is kind of handled in one step, so sure. I don't know. Maybe and you know, I've got this examples of bad instructions bullet on my outline here and we've talked about these Airfix kits. Another one from my memory are the instructions. Now, I experienced them in the 1970s, mostly with their 48 scale aircraft kits, but the instructions were a legacy from the 60s, maybe even earlier. Where they were the dark photograph, oh yeah. Where they were the dark photograph, oh yeah, and the verbiage instructions and the things had been copied so many times that the photos were almost useless. Yeah.

Kentucky Dave: 41:30

It was all the not screen printing I forget what they call that like the old photographs in newspapers.

Mike: 41:48

Yeah, newspapers yeah, and man, generationally, those things did quickly become just unusable. You got an example any other example of bad instructions. I've got one more, but I'll let you jump in here man, uh, I.

Kentucky Dave: 41:54

I have burned into my memory several matchbox kits where the the problem that you had and this is probably across all of the or many, I don't want to say all that many of the 60s and 70s and maybe even early 80s kits were the vague placement instructions that you know. Here's the part and here's where you put it, here's the part you attach it to. But yeah, these are both butt joints and somewhere in about here. Just, the placement was so vague on so many of those kits it was easy to mess them up. So vague on so many of those kits it was easy to mess them up, whereas you'd look at, say, the Flyhawk kit or the Arma Mustang that I did for the Musaru, and their placement is pretty darn exacting and it just makes it so much more pleasant to build.

Mike: 43:04

Well, you mentioned Moosaroo, the one. I just finished that ICM kit and I'll talk more about it in the Bench Top Halftime Report. But for this segment on instructions Julian raised it in his dish on OTB the one that particularly irked him, and it did me as well, was there are a couple of parts three or four that have to be placed by measurement Right. There's no demarcation on the parts or locating features on the mating surfaces for these things. You have to actually measure from a point on the chassis to make this all work and, uh, if you're wrong it won't work. So I came up with a little workaround I'll talk about later for one of those Not that big a deal.

Kentucky Dave: 43:48

But is this a take on the old measure twice glue once instead of measure twice cut once?

Mike: 43:55

Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah, you probably should. And then, just another aspect of that build was the uh. Because of the vagueness of not so much part location but sequence, uh-huh, sequence was very important. There were a couple places on that kit that, uh, you could assemble yourself into a corner and that's a completely different, a completely different area.

Kentucky Dave: 44:21

Where not are the bad instructions, but the instructions are actually wrong. I don't want to wrong may not be the word. They're badly engineered.

Mike: 44:33

Right, they weren't wrong, they were just not. There was not enough detail.

Kentucky Dave: 44:38

Yeah.

Mike: 44:39

So you're assembling A and B to C? Yeah, so you're assembling A and B to C. Well, if you assemble B to C before A, you can't fit A on there because B's in the way.

Kentucky Dave: 44:49

Right, and there's no indication in the instructions that you should do A first.

Mike: 44:54

Right, because it's not sequenced that way, right, you know, luckily experience got me through that, but that's not always the case, right? Right, you know, luckily experience got me through that, but that's not always the case, right? Right, I could see somebody newer to modeling building that kit and then putting the running boards on the cab, and now they can't fit the cab interior in without some modifying the part no-transcript.

Kentucky Dave: 45:47

Generally, you should do this before you do that, hence all my aircraft questions to you.

Mike: 45:54

Well, that's what I'm here for. Well, another example of what I would consider bad instructions is just dragging.

Kentucky Dave: 46:05

Oh, those are legendarily bad instructions.

Mike: 46:10

And it's so unnecessary. I think that's what gripes a lot of people. Right, how to say this. They have probably saved a lot of money internal to their company. By the way. They have kitted subjects and their sub variants Mm-hmm Right. Problem is you end up with a kit that has like a really high percentage of unused parts.

Kentucky Dave: 46:37

Right, Because they've taken two sprues from kit A, three sprues from kit B, two sprues from kit C and thrown them all in a box to make variant D, which only uses about half of the parts from each sprue Exactly, and I completely get it.

Mike: 47:01

Oh yeah, from a manufacturing standpoint that makes great sense the problem is you get a kit that's got eight sprues in it when it should have had six, right, or could have had six I won't say should have and then where this kind of bites them in the butt is the instructions. So you've got a, a sprue diagram that's got all this blued out area of crap You're not supposed to use, right, well, that takes care of some of it, but it would appear that they're pulling and picking from, uh, multiple instruction sheets sometimes to create the new one.

Kentucky Dave: 47:37

Gotcha.

Mike: 47:38

And just stuff falls through the cracks and wrong parts, wrong part numbers, wrong part placement, and it's just a litany of those those type of errors through their instruction sheets and it just it frustrates a lot of people. Now I got to say I've I mean Dragon Kids. I even built in my snail's pace modeling career. There's a few I can think of. There probably is, and most of them weren't terrible, because I've probably never built any Dragon Sturmgeschütz or Panzer IIIs or SDKFC 250s or any of these that they have 10 variants of. That's got to be frustrating.

Kentucky Dave: 48:20

Yeah.

Mike: 48:22

So for those subjects you kind of really need to know. Kind of like Evan in the Sturmgeschütz right, you got to know what that particular sub-variant was built with.

Kentucky Dave: 48:32

Yeah, you got to have a real familiarity.

Mike: 48:36

You got any more bad instructions?

Kentucky Dave: 48:38

Well, okay, this is. It's not really bad. It is an example of a company doing the right thing. A few years ago, Arma released a series of 72nd scale Wildcats F4F3, F4F2, or I mean F4, F4, FM 2.

Kentucky Dave: 49:03

And in their instructions, the Wildcat has a very complex landing gear.

Kentucky Dave: 49:11

You know, it's just really complex, and their initial set of instructions for these kits or at least some of them I think they may have actually corrected it in the instructions later they weren't wrong, but they just weren't as clear as they could be, and so a number of people had real frustrations with it, and what ARMA did was they drew attention to this and then they did a blog post on their site where they said here is a much more clearer and fuller explanation of how this should work in order to get the end result.

Kentucky Dave: 50:00

And I got to give them credit for doing that, Because a lot of model companies just push the stuff out and shut up, and you know if people criticize them down the road, they do. They live with it. Arma, actually, those guys are really pretty customer sensitive and they realized this was an issue and they did what they could to help clarify the instructions, and I wish more companies would do that. It would be great if companies, when they produced a kit, would not only give you an instruction booklet in the kit, but if they did a build blog post where they showed you, with very clear photos and verbiage, what the instructions were meant to illustrate. I think that would be fairly low cost and would be a great aid to modelers.

Mike: 51:05

It's interesting Now you mentioned Arma. Now there was some issues on the P-51 for the Moose Root Cup build.

Kentucky Dave: 51:13

And this is not because the instructions were bad. The instructions were excellent, were excellent. The thing is that one kit can be built in six or seven different variants. Arma included all sorts of variations in that one kit, so you could produce all these different variants. Well, these all had real subtle changes in many places, including things getting down to the detail of eliminating certain panel lines or certain, you know, like fuel filler caps or something that were engraved into the fuselage if you were building version three. And the thing is, the instructions are very, very good and very, very clear, but there were so many branching variants at a couple of steps that it was really easy, if you didn't pay super attention, that it was really easy for you to make a mistake, not because of the fact that each instruction step was very content, dense, and really the thing could have benefited from almost being twice as long, with each step being a little less dense so that the variation stood out more. But it was a great kit.

Mike: 52:51

I think one thing I remember you mentioning was that might have been a, have been a benefit to, to, to rectify, and some of that was if just the thing was printed bigger.

Kentucky Dave: 53:04

Yes, yes, absolutely. Some of those, some of those notations and variations, it I mean, cause you again. They were packing a lot into each step, so the print for some variations in a particular step were particularly small. And so, yeah, could have benefited with either the whole instruction set being twice as large, set being twice as large, which might have been a little crazy, or the instructions being twice as numerous and each step simplified down a little bit so there were less choices to be made in each construction step.

Mike: 53:50

Yeah, so like an index of the variance, and then you just skip ahead to A, b, c, d or E, which had a bigger diagram. Yeah, so like an index of the variance, and then you just skip ahead to A, b, c, d or E, which had a bigger diagram and only included those parts.

Kentucky Dave: 54:00

Exactly.

Mike: 54:01

Okay, well, maybe somebody from ARM is listening.

Kentucky Dave: 54:04

Yeah, listen, if you are, please. We'd love your feedback. I love your kits, so what can you think of as good instructions?

Mike: 54:13

Well, there's good and good enough, right? I mean, if you're, like we've already established, coming at this, from the way I come at it, there's a good enough instructions, that kind of outline, the suggested sequence of things, right, so I think I'm always going to think it's going to be a good enough kind of instructions. But you know, good, good enough. Whichever, um, I tell you, most modern manufacturers Now I'm speaking from a position of 35th scale armor, most of the major manufacturers, even the ones who've only come on the scene in the last 10 years or less, yeah, generally all of those have pretty good instructions, other than the, the, the nuances that we've talked about around the, like the dragon instructions, right, and I only mentioned that.

Mike: 55:02

You know those, those kits now are are probably most of them are outside this 10 year window I just established. But, right, dragon seems to be reconstituting their armor line and a lot of the stuff's getting re-released again and you know, I seriously doubt they've modernized their instruction sheets, right, so to me is is a no-brainer, right? Right, they tend to break their assemblies down into what would be a logical sequence of assembly and they kind of limited each step to a manageable number of parts.

Kentucky Dave: 55:40

Yeah, and that I think is important, it is important.

Mike: 55:45

So the exploded view for any given step only has five, eight, ten parts in it max. Maybe before you move on to the next one, which I think that's important, like you just said, yeah, what about you? What? What uh in the aircraft realm or whatever genre you like to build, is, uh, is good or good enough?

Kentucky Dave: 56:05

anything in the last. Again, I'm like you. Anything in the last 10 years is generally, unless it's a real short-run manufacturer, going to be good enough. I think manufacturers generally are paying a little more attention to kit instructions and so I think that's contributed to an overall improvement. Airfix instructions anything in the last 10 years that I've built Airfix-wise the instructions have been very clear To me, of course is one of the gold standards. Arma like I said with the P-51B there were the fact that there were variants, but the instructions themselves were very clear about what part goes where and even having the sequence down correct so that you didn't build yourself into a corner. Airfix arma to me, uh, even the the latest icm and ibg kits are now icm, I'd say, is a half step behind the others, but that's, it's just catching up. They're. They're not bad, uh, although your truck experience, you know it demonstrates. That's an old kit.

Kentucky Dave: 57:34

That's one of their older kits. Ibg has really come on and their instructions are very, very clear. So you know, in general I think if you buy main run production kits from major manufacturers made in the last 10 or 15 years, unless there's just a goof by the manufacturer in the instructions, generally they're going to be pretty good or good enough.

Mike: 58:06

I agree with that. But I tell you, dave, there's something else out there for a small niche of the scale modeling world, okay, in particular large scalescale aircraft, 30-second scale, all right, and I would call this Instructions Plus. Now what I'm talking about is some instructions, some build guides actually, and I've got a couple of these. They're from a gentleman named Glenn Hoover. These are third party to these are third party instruction guides, and the two I have I have they're both for 32nd scale aircraft, because you know I'm way outside my comfort zone there. Right, I mean, small aircraft are one thing, big aircraft, are something else.

Mike: 58:50

I've got one for Kitty Hawks OS-2U Kingfisher.

Kentucky Dave: 58:55

Right.

Mike: 58:56

And I've got one for the Revell Arado 196A3, their float plane, right Right Now. Glenn Hoover is a retired system engineer with a long career in the defense and aerospace industry and he's got a lot of experience writing these things and I and I came across him, I think, uh, surfing around the large scale aircraft, uh website Large scale, large scale planes large scale planes.

Mike: 59:23

Yeah, I think there's maybe a forum there as well. Yeah, and these are really interesting, dave. What? What Glenn does is he takes the kit, instructions and the most apropos aftermarket, typically the Edward sets. Now for these. There's a big Ed set for the Kingfisher, which I know your favorite Edward sets. Yeah, for 30 second scale. They may make a little more sense.

Kentucky Dave: 59:52

Yes, I will concede that.

Mike: 59:54

And then he's got multiple sets for the Revell Orado 196. And he takes the assembly sequence and basically dispenses mostly well, not mostly he dispenses with the manufacturer's suggested sequence and he reorders things where it makes sense to right through through the experience we've talked about Right. So you know, maybe 80% of this is still the same sequence. But where things are being assembled onto the fuselage or wings that are likely to get broken through further handling, uh, he moves those. So it's a whole. It's a whole new systems engineer approach to how to assemble this kit. Now what's interesting is where the Edward aftermarket comes into play. He brings those instructions in at the appropriate times of the build sequence for the plastic parts and gives you a plan to incorporate those items at the right time.

Kentucky Dave: 1:00:53

Yeah, which Edward does not do at all. Edward is. Here are the photo etch parts. Here's where they go, with no indication about where in the build sequence. You should actually be doing this stuff.

Mike: 1:01:08

So, for example, this Kingfisher one that I've got gosh how many steps he's broken the assembly down. You know he's parsing this pretty fine. It's pretty granular, right, right 952 line item steps. So he's cutting it pretty thin Right. And the Arado 196 is similarly done. I really like these things, and if folks are into large scale planes and want to check these out, it's uh, glenhoovermodelscom One word, glenhoovermodels and uh, he's got these books for quite a few subjects. There may be some 48 scale ones in there too, I can't remember. But uh, I picked these up because because you know, these are two if I ever build any 32nd scale aircraft and I hope I do, cause I've already accumulated the kits right, right, um, these are the two yeah.

Mike: 1:02:05

I love both of these airplanes, dave, I need all the help I can get. I hear you it's an interesting approach. I would like to see you know maybe some other genre. Try something like this.

Kentucky Dave: 1:02:16

Yeah.

Mike: 1:02:17

I don't know what it would be, maybe some complex armor build. That'd be kind of cool.

Kentucky Dave: 1:02:22

Yeah.

Mike: 1:02:23

Especially if it was an older kit and had a lot of aftermarket. I think that would lend itself to it, right? I don't know? Glenn's got something interesting going on here and I bought two of his books. I intend to follow them, should I get get around to these kits. But it's just another way to do this. And, uh, the system engineer and I've seen a lot of stuff written this way in my in my career. It's very yeah, this is Very typical in the engineering world.

Kentucky Dave: 1:02:51

Yeah, somebody who's been in that world a long long time.

Mike: 1:02:55

Yes, Somebody writing instructions for someone who may not have all the information. The investment of the information, I guess, would be a way to say it. Yeah, they can get right to the heart of the matter using this guide, so it's a good thing. Got anything else on instructions, dave?

Kentucky Dave: 1:03:13

No, so it's a good thing. Got anything else on instructions, dave, no other than and I'm going to touch on this more in our benchtop halftime report. I don't think I know a modeler who finishes a kit and doesn't go think to themselves. Go think to themselves okay, if I did this again, I would change this, I would do this, this and this differently, and some of that is either build sequence or stuff like that and that type of stuff. You know, you try and look at instructions ahead of time and anticipate, but you should wait and do it here. There's no way to get that, but from experience in some cases.

Mike: 1:04:33

Well, I agree with that. That.

Kentucky Dave: 1:04:34

It makes you wonder if you ever want to build the same kit twice um, you know what these people like barry numeric, who builds 109s like he's a bavarian flugelwerks or inch where he's doing a batch build. You know that is an advantage of doing that, is that you gain that experience.

Mike: 1:04:56

We'll have to ask him that. Yes, because that's a good point. If you're batch building, do you do it all the same way or do you learn from the first two and incorporate the change in your change and sequence? In the next four or five or six, you got in the batch.

Kentucky Dave: 1:05:11

Make a note. We'll ask him that.

Mike: 1:05:14

Well, Dave, we ran into another past guest at Heritage Con. Yes, we did Mr John Chung.

Kentucky Dave: 1:05:21

Yeah.

Mike: 1:05:25

And as you'll hear in this sequence, I didn't recognize him at first because he changed his hair up a little bit.

Kentucky Dave: 1:05:30

Yes, he did, so that was fun and he sounded a lot better too. Thank you, dave. So that was fun and he sounded a lot better too.

Mike: 1:05:34

Thank you, dave.

Kentucky Dave: 1:05:36

That wasn't your fault.

Mike: 1:05:38

Even well, probably was.

Kentucky Dave: 1:05:40

No, that was not your fault.

Mike: 1:05:43

Had I had the knowledge to not make it?

Kentucky Dave: 1:05:44

Yeah, we learned again. Like building through with instructions. We learned something.

Mike: 1:05:50

He didn't need to be the test plane, though. No that's true. Well, Dave, let's hear what John had to say at HeritageCon. Well, Dave, like last segment, part of the fun coming up here is talking to our Canadian friends and past guests. We owe a little something to you, Mr John Chung. How are you doing, sir?

John Chung: 1:06:15

I'm doing well, you guys don't owe me anything. Thank you so much.

Mike: 1:06:18

I know we had a little technical difficulty when you were on our episode and I think we know the cause of that now.

John Chung: 1:06:23

It's all good. It's really good to see you guys up here. Thanks for making the trip up to Canada again.

Mike: 1:06:28

I didn't recognize you with the haircut yeah.

John Chung: 1:06:31

It's what happened after COVID. Right, Things change. Gotta shed the COVID hair.

Mike: 1:06:35

Well, how's it been, since we last talked to you, Been doing?

John Chung: 1:06:39

well, yeah, it's. You know, like life's busy, work's busy. I've been shifting gear from the space shuttle, working on the 48 scale F-16.

Kentucky Dave: 1:06:47

Oh wow, the kinetic kit.

John Chung: 1:06:49

No, the Tamiya kit. , yeah, it's a nice little kit. Anybody who's built it knows that it's typical Tamiya fashion, except I'm backdating from a Charlie to an Alpha, so a bit of a scratch building going on over there, oh man.

Mike: 1:07:06

You're a scale scriber. I can only imagine you're cutting lines on that thing too.

John Chung: 1:07:10

Yeah for sure. Yeah's a little bit of a scribing job on the spine. You have to shrink the vertical stabilizer base a little bit and then got to reposition the surface panel lines on the spine, but yeah, it wasn't too bad. Well, what state is the shuttle? In the shuttle is a little bit more than where I left it off a year or so ago.

John Chung: 1:07:36

So, the aft end is just about done, where the heat shields are for the engine bells, and I am just about ready to go into the main wings. That does require a little bit of a surgery to get the shape correct the camber and the you know the, the elevons etc yeah, yeah, that needs to be trimmed down a little bit, but um, hopefully after that I can get into scribing it's impressive work, man.

Mike: 1:08:05

It always is. We're really enjoying the shuttle and I've seen some of the f-16 yeah, thank you appreciate it.

John Chung: 1:08:12

The shuttle I can't wait to get back to it. But you know what, though? Every time I take a pause on the shuttle to do something else, I'm actually a little thankful for it. Since I paused on the shuttle, I've got a new computer, which means that I can turn up the resolution on the Smithsonian 3D model, which will be helpful when I get into the tight spot for gathering references, and also I've been downloading a lot of new photos, historical photos of, say, the cargo bay interior. That will come in handy when I go in and detail the cargo bay itself.

Mike: 1:08:49

So you're faced with a lot of work on that. I mean still the road's long right.

John Chung: 1:08:55

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Mike: 1:08:57

So glad to hear you're still enjoying it and I don't know how does taking a break from it, how does that help you out?

John Chung: 1:09:03

Just helps you. It's been good. I think I've always been an aircraft builder at heart and I always will be so to step away from a subject that is not because in a traditional sense it's not really an aircraft in its purest form. So be able to finish an aircraft once in a while, that really helps motivate me. It gets me back into the big picture of why I like model building and specifically aircraft building. It helps me to into the big picture of why I like model building and specifically aircraft building. It helps me to practice some of the skills I wouldn't be able to do on the space shuttle.

John Chung: 1:09:40

For instance, I wouldn't be able to do a detailed cockpit or on the carriage bay, I wouldn't be doing external stores, for instance, I wouldn't be able to exercise the same type of weathering, for instance. I wouldn't be able to exercise the same type of weathering, for instance, that I would be on a military aircraft versus a spacecraft. So you know, it's good to switch gears, cleanse my palate a little bit. So yeah, I'm enjoying it. Hopefully it's coming to me again soon, though it's been on my bench for over 10 months. I think, Okay, what's next? What's next? What's next? Hopefully back to this space shuttle.

Mike: 1:10:15

Okay, I didn't know if you have another aircraft in mind.

Kentucky Dave: 1:10:19

Now did you buy?

John Chung: 1:10:19

anything here at the show? No, no, no, not today, unfortunately. Oh, okay, I'm trying to restrain myself. I hear you. I did see another space shuttle here for $75 Canadian. Yeah, that is tempting me, but I think I will endeavor to finish my current one first before jumping to another vehicle.

Mike: 1:10:40

I hear you Now. Did you enter anything today?

John Chung: 1:10:43

No, no, I was hoping to finish the F-16, but I'm not going to rush it. I think I'm going to enjoy this process of building it to the way that I really wanted to be.

Kentucky Dave: 1:10:54

That's the best, don't rush it. Get it done when it gets done, then you can enter it the next contest that comes up.

John Chung: 1:11:01

Yeah, that's a slow and steady wins the race right.

Kentucky Dave: 1:11:04

I tell that to Mike all the time.

Mike: 1:11:06

Because I'm slow, maybe more slow than steady. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, hopefully that works out that way, but yeah, it's works out that way.

John Chung: 1:11:13

But yeah, it's been a good show. It's always a good show here at Hamilton and a lot of good entries. I think we're North of 700 entries. That's when I hear a lot, a lot of good uh good people coming up here from down South as well, and a lot of old faces, and it's always a good time.

Mike: 1:11:30

Any, any hopes or ability to come to Madison, wisconsin, in the summer.

John Chung: 1:11:36

Probably not this year. Yeah, you know family's going to keep me at home here in Toronto for the next little bit.

Mike: 1:11:40

Yeah, we talked a little offline about that. Bring the baby.

John Chung: 1:11:43

Family's getting a little bigger. Yeah, family's. I'm apparently moving on to another one-to-one scale model of myself.

Kentucky Dave: 1:11:48

There you go, so I'm going to try to yeah, but you're not finishing it.

John Chung: 1:11:54

That one's going to be a little bit of a work in progress.

Mike: 1:11:56

Yes, it is.

John Chung: 1:11:58

Hey, you never know right, maybe in a year or two we'll have an early adopter into the hobby coming down to a national Best of luck. Best of luck with that. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on again. Good to see you guys.

Mike: 1:12:16

Well, we're're gonna have to come up with a topic and have you on for real, uh, in this year, before it's out um, maybe you don't, maybe you don't have much time to model because of your family expansion. You can at least. You can at least get an hour and pick your brain and uh, oh, that'll be great, it's always always some topic out there. I'm sure we'll figure it out.

John Chung: 1:12:24

Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to talk to you guys. It's good to see you again. Good to see you.

Kentucky Dave: 1:12:28

Thank you, take it easy.

John Chung: 1:12:30

Take care guys.

Kentucky Dave: 1:12:31

Bye-bye.

Mike: 1:12:33

Well, I enjoyed seeing John again. Dave and we're going to cook up a topic and get him back on. He's got some amazing talent. Yes, We'll see if he gets that shuttle done.

Kentucky Dave: 1:12:44

Yes, yep, and he's working on an F-16 now, so we've got to get him back on and we can also get tips about raising babies and toddlers. See, we can become a more well-rounded podcast.

Mike: 1:13:01

We could, dave. It's the Benchtop Halftime Report brought to you by Squadron Folks. Head on over to Squadron for the latest kits and accessories, all at a great price and with some great service. If you're a modeler on the go, dave, you can check out the Squadron mobile app. It's available for both Apple and Android devices for easy shopping from just about anywhere.

Kentucky Dave: 1:13:25

It's a great app. It's really nice, although it leads you to shopping.

Mike: 1:13:29

That's right, Squadron. Add into your stash Yours too, Dave. Since 1968. My friend, what's on your bench?

Kentucky Dave: 1:13:38

Well, first let me tell you what's not on my bench Not on my bench any longer. I finished the Trumpeter 72nd Scale LCM3 kit, my first completion of the year. I really enjoyed it. First, this is a kit that I'm building for the September's group entry for the Nationals up in Madison. This is probably the first time in a long time I have finished a group entry ahead of time. It's also one of the few times where I've really enjoyed building it and it didn't become a slog that I resented halfway through it.

Kentucky Dave: 1:14:27

I've talked about before I have two goals when I build a model. One, I want it to be better than the last model I built, in my opinion, and number two, I want to try new things and learn new things, and in this case I was 50% successful. In my opinion it's not better than the previous models I've built. That's partly due to my fault, partly due to it being a new genre for me generally, but I learned a bunch To run through a few. This is the first kit that I have used nothing but Mr Color for exclusively in painting, and I love it and I'm going to continue to use it more and more and more. I used the VMS photo etch primer that I got from VMS and I learned that, even though it says you brush it on with a brush onto your photo etetch parts, that's not what you should do. If you're going to use this stuff, you should airbrush it on because it just does not self-level. So and I'm still not 100% sold on the product yet I'm going to give it a little more use to see and we'll see down the road what I think about the necessity of it. But definitely don't brush it on the part.

Kentucky Dave: 1:16:00

First kit, I've cut and used stencils for the markings and they're not perfect, but I'm just crawling up the learning curve on using the Cameo Cutter. I like it. I'm going to be using it more and more in the future. I think I'll be painting a lot more of my markings. I don't think I'm giving up decals entirely, but I do think that I will be doing more and more of my markings as stencils and masks. Like I said, I had real fun building it. That's ultimately the mark. It's a hobby and if you're not having fun, you really need to step back and say what am I doing wrong here? Why am I doing this if you're not enjoying it? And I enjoyed it pretty much from beginning to end.

Kentucky Dave: 1:17:01

So, it's off my bench. I also managed to take the Moosaroo from 2023 that I built and transported up to Heritage Con and had it break during transportation and so I didn't get put on the table at Heritage Con in 2023. I managed to, in a day, repair it so that I could take it and enter it at Heritage Con, which I did. So the Moosa Root actually got to Heritage Con and got entered and you know what I figured out? That thing sat in a little Tupperware container for just short of an entire year, when it would have taken me a day, less than a day to repair.

Kentucky Dave: 1:17:52

But I think that I was so frustrated by the fact that I had worked to get it done and that it had broke when I transported it and I just got so dang frustrated. There was a mental block created and I just finally said, with the Heritage Con coming up this year, I finally said to heck with it, I'm pulling it out, I'm putting this thing together and I did and I like it, and it's sitting in my display case. It got entered at Heritage Con and you know there's a mental block when a model that you finish gets broken, but it is more mental than anything else you can go back and repair it, and it's not nearly the problem that you make it out in your head.

Mike: 1:18:49

Now back to the group build the LCM. You had that kit already, right?

Kentucky Dave: 1:18:54

I did have that kit already, so it's not it's not like you.

Mike: 1:18:57

You sign up for a group build and you're like, yeah, I gotta go find a kid I might want to build.

Kentucky Dave: 1:19:03

Well, I did do some consideration of that, but I knew I already had it.

Kentucky Dave: 1:19:08

Right, but I knew I already had this kit. So it was like Right, but I knew I already had this kit. So it was like, yeah, I want to do this. So it was something I wanted to do, You're right Rather than something that the group build. Came and then I had to go out and buy the kit SAM, the fine molds kit partly with your help, because you took one look at the impeller that I stole from a Tamiya Focke-Wulf 190 kit and said I can do better than that in an hour and a half on CAD. And you did.

Mike: 1:19:51

Well, they're in the mail. Yes, I can't wait.

Kentucky Dave: 1:19:52

I should get them tomorrow or the mail. Yes, I can't wait. I should get them tomorrow or the next day. So I can't wait for those. I probably shouldn't admit this, given the other things that are still pending.

Kentucky Dave: 1:20:03

But I started that Flyhawk BT-7 kit. I just Tried to keep it a secret. Yeah Well, I did for a little bit. Just try to keep it a secret. Yeah well, I did for a little bit. First of all, you people who complain about 72nd scale aircraft, let me tell you some of the suspension parts on this BT-7 are tinier than anything I've done on a 72nd scale aircraft kit, so I don't want to hear any more complaining. Number two this kit is. Not only are the instructions really great, but boy, this kit is engineered well. I mean, it goes together, the tolerances are tight, the parts fit just I mean just incredibly well. I'm about, I'd say, a third of the way through the assembly and I'm super impressed by this kit. I really am, and it's going to give me a chance, once I get it all assembled, to go back to Evan's YouTube video of his presentation at the Nationals last year and helped me relearn, or learn, armor weathering. So yeah, my bench is rocking. I feel great about it.

Kentucky Dave: 1:21:20

I just wish I had more time, because of course, spring's here and now there's all the honeydew stuff and there's the yard and there's do-it-yourself and renovation projects. So I just wish I had more time. How?

Mike: 1:21:34

about you. Well, I haven't gotten a lot done since we got back from HeritageCon. I wish I had. But I do want to dish a little bit on the Moose Roo Cup. Yes, Because I kind of was saving that until the whole contest was over and everybody got their builds done. Well, first off, congratulations to Chris Maddings for his win.

Kentucky Dave: 1:21:55

Yes.

Mike: 1:21:56

He did a lot of work on that crappy little kit. I did too.

Mike: 1:22:02

He did a very nice job he did and interestingly I thought about this, no hard feelings. Would I have liked to repeat it and won again? Yeah, sure, but we really don't get anything for it except bragging rights. And I got a pretty good reaction on mine from the folks who saw it. I really appreciated that and that was a lot of fun. But we both kind of approached the build from opposite sides of the same coin. You have a kit that's not that great. You're so diplomatic now to expound on that a little bit.

Mike: 1:22:39

There's been a lot said about it. Tj holler said a whole bunch about it. Yeah, none of it wrong, none of it wrong, that's exactly right. I'm not going to disagree, uh, with any of that. Everything that has been said about that kit from the folks involved is accurate and true.

Mike: 1:22:54

I think where some of us are different is I cut my teeth on some really crappy Eastern European kits 20 years ago. So when I was faced with that, you're kind of like you're at the optometrist, right, you can start throwing those lenses in front of your eyes and change the way you see things. I was well, I was well aware of what I was getting into. Uh, maybe some folks who were, uh, into some more contemporary kits, saw that as a total train wreck. They wouldn't be wrong. There's a little perspective there as to how you maybe digest that and uh, work your way through it.

Mike: 1:23:29

But back to what I was saying about two sides of the same coin. You've got this kit. That's not that good. So I guess the approach I would say to simplify it is if you can't fix it, feature it, all right. So there's two ways to do that. Well, maybe there's more than two, but the two that Chris and I took are different, but there are two. Two ways to do it. You can take this kit that doesn't fit that great and doesn't have that great of detail and, uh, you can chop it up and make a derelict out of it, kind of uh, get around some of the uh non niceties about that kid Right. Right, that's one way to do it and he did a great job of it.

Kentucky Dave: 1:24:08

Oh, absolutely.

Mike: 1:24:10

And the way I took was all right. Let's not try to make this crappy kit look good. Let's instead of making it not look like a toy, let's make it look like a toy, make it look more like a toy, make it look more like a toy. So that's the approach I took, and there is a little bit to that. So how do you make plastic look like die cast metal? Well, you put about fricking 18 layers of paint on it, followed by about 18 layers of gloss, and uh, you start softening the corners on all the details and and uh, it starts looking like a clunky piece of die cast metal.

Kentucky Dave: 1:24:50

And then you have to figure out how to put red stripes on the tires.

Mike: 1:24:53

Oh, we'll get to that in a minute. The other thing I did was you got some plastic parts, you know, like a Hot Wheels, Hot Wheels or Mashbox toy. You've got some die cast parts and you've got some molded in color plastic parts, Right so? And none of the kit was molded in green or whatever Right it, and none of the kit was molded in green or whatever right it was light gray or black.

Kentucky Dave: 1:25:14

Right.

Mike: 1:25:15

So how do I make parts? I want to look like plastic, look like molded in color plastic. Well, again, that's multiple layers of your color, not as much as trying to make it look like die-cast metal and then like 15 layers of satin varnish.

Kentucky Dave: 1:25:31

Right.

Mike: 1:25:32

To start making it. Have that translucent soapy. Look to it, Mm-hmm. Worked out pretty well.

Kentucky Dave: 1:25:38

Oh yeah, no, absolutely Everybody who saw it A loved the idea, the fact that you looked at this kit and said this is a mess, what can I do with it. And the great thing is that you, evan, and I, were driving down to San Marcos and you opened this kit up on our drive down and, within 15 minutes of you having opened it and us sitting there in the car, you came up with this presentation idea. Up with this presentation idea and it just it. Really it worked, to the kid's weaknesses as opposed to its strength.

Mike: 1:26:19

Yeah, I think so, and I think Chris did that as well.

Kentucky Dave: 1:26:22

Yes, yes, you're right.

Mike: 1:26:24

The other way to do it is take the vehicle and dissect it Right and yeah, take it apart like a frog and you know, to our topic of instructions, another thing that I'll bring up. That was, uh, I noticed when folks were posting in, uh, dave goldfinch's moose roo facebook group, um, the front wheels. Uh, the instructions were really vague and there was an issue with the front wheels, that on the front axles there are two steps. You got a small diameter, then it steps up to a medium diameter, then it steps up to what's essentially the I think it's the brake hub. A lot of folks who built this stopped at that first step on the front axles. So they have these front wheels which are sticking out past the front fenders Right and they're at a wider stance than the rear wheels. That's not where they go.

Kentucky Dave: 1:27:20

And it's just not the instructions made no note of that.

Mike: 1:27:24

The instructions really made no note of it. You really had to size those holes up a little bit bigger and get the wheels to sit up against the brake drums, which is where they should be, and all six wheels should be along the same track, right, and that was easy to miss. I mentioned it before. There was a point in the instructions, especially with the cab construction. If you didn't think about what you're doing and work it out in your head, if you put the cab steps on before you put the interior in, you would have to go back and modify the kit interior to get it to fit past those, because there was no room to get it on there. Now in my build I wanted to have this interior module that was the dashboard, the steering wheel and the seats, like a Hot Wheels car. That was all one part molded in one color. So I had to figure out how to glue those things all together, slip it in at the end, which I was going to put that in in a different order. That I think maybe the kit instructions intended. So I modified it so it fit past the cab steps. But again, if you weren't paying attention and that was not your intent to do what I did, you could build yourself into a corner and I think there was an issue there. The thing has fender liners on the front fenders. I think if you put those in too soon as well, that's going to be problematic for you.

Mike: 1:28:44

Yeah, but the other issue with that kit is the the black plastic parts have one. It's probably like a high percentage of regrind or recycled material. That's part of the problem. The other problem is it has way more color in it, pigment in the plastic. You're sanding these black plastic parts and you sand for like 10, 15 minutes and your hands are just covered with this stuff. It's like you've been scooping coal with your hands. Just a really unpleasant material to work with. It reacted strange to liquid cement. I get it. Everything everyone said about the kit is absolutely true. I think I gave it a little more grace because of some past experiences with the early Eastern European kits. But yeah, that could be an unpleasant build if you weren't prepared for it. So congratulations to everybody on that who got it done.

Kentucky Dave: 1:29:36

Yes, In fact, I think the only one that didn't finish was Julian, and I certainly understand his frustrations with the kit.

Mike: 1:29:47

But he wasn't really undone by the kit. He was undone by some material incompatibilities and some right and some stuff that they're at the very end, which that really sucks. Yes, cause he had a kind of cool idea too, I liked it, I did, I liked, I liked his idea. Well, buddy, you're on deck next. I know I know what are we going to get. I don't know, but I I think what else is on my bench? I got the under.

Mike: 1:30:11

The pawl. I've got the underside touched up from my sanding from last episode. I'm ready to paint the topside green. I'm just thinking through this and I'm just scared to pull the trigger right now. I got to think through this.

Kentucky Dave: 1:30:25

Experiment Remember, remember what Steve says, experiment.

Mike: 1:30:30

I know I probably need to do a little experimentation. So up next is the topside green. And again, why did I pick a float plane for my first aircraft in 40 years? I don't know.

Kentucky Dave: 1:30:40

That's okay, this is going to turn out great. And listen, you don't see many of these built. When you have it done and you put it on the table, is that people will notice it? Simply because you hardly ever see those things built.

Mike: 1:31:00

That's interesting. So that's a little motivation. We'll get it done.

Kentucky Dave: 1:31:03

Yeah, you'll get there.

Mike: 1:31:05

The KV 85, nothing, nothing new on that. I need to do the ballast work on the tracks. I've got the ballast in hand. I've got the color shift I want to do on it figured out, I just need to do it. But I want to get this airplane done. I hear you. I want to get the thing finished.

Kentucky Dave: 1:31:26

Hey Mike, have you spent any money modeling kits or supplies lately? Any money modeling kits or supplies lately.

Mike: 1:31:35

You know the answer to that. Yes, I was there for it. We went to a major contest and show.

Kentucky Dave: 1:31:41

Well, okay, let's start at the beginning and feature the unicorn that you found. Because you found a unicorn, you found something that is nearly impossible to find, and you found it at a price that was astounding, and if I didn't already have one, I would have murdered you in the car on the way back to Louisville, because you did great.

Mike: 1:32:05

I did. I found a Fine Molds KI-43 Oscar.

Kentucky Dave: 1:32:12

Right, the one that goes in the Model graphics magazine and has not been sold separately and apparently will not be sold separately.

Mike: 1:32:23

Well, I don't know about that. I'll take your word for it. But I know, with a, a safe search on eBay going on a year now, probably 10 months at this point, I've never there's never been one come up for sale.

Kentucky Dave: 1:32:36

Yeah, and that does not shock me.

Mike: 1:32:39

Now we were at the show, we set up our podcast equipment. It was like let's go shopping, Dave. And those are dangerous words we weren't, but in the first really we were at the first aisle.

Kentucky Dave: 1:32:54

Really, we were the first aisle.

Mike: 1:32:54

It's the first aisle, the first table that I I walked up to. It's harvey low of all people, yep, and I look down this box and I see this. I'll call it brown paper box.

Kentucky Dave: 1:33:04

It's a little fancier than that, but not much right it's a brown cardboard box, rubber banded together with a magazine, japanese magazine.

Mike: 1:33:14

So I'm looking at the top of it and I'm thinking, please don't be one third of the of the. What is it Type 95 tank? Right, that they also did with the armor version of the magazine. Right, that one, that kit is available. I've got one already in the three part magazine edition anyway. Right, I'm like, don't be a third of the tank, don't be a third of the tanks. I reach in there and pull it out and it's the stinking Ki-43. Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking I'm glad Harvey builds 48 scale. Yes, for the most part, I don't know, man, I'm going to have to take him some more money.

Kentucky Dave: 1:33:48

Yeah, no, that was a great deal. I am glad you picked that up. And again, if I didn't have one I'd have killed you for it, because I have one. I'm nothing but thrilled that was the unicorn. Frankly, it would have been worth the whole trip just to find and buy that kit. I didn't stop there, man. I know I was going to say, but I'm assuming that's not the only thing you bought. I'm trying to think what else I bought.

Mike: 1:34:18

I bought a Bronco. I can't remember the designation, it's the little Italian tankette.

Kentucky Dave: 1:34:26

Oh, CV-33.

Mike: 1:34:27

Yeah, I think that's right, Except you bought the Hungarian CV-35, right. Right, it's got a different arrangement on the machine gun setup. It's a.

Mike: 1:34:35

Hungarian vehicle. That was the one I was wanting. I found it finally. That one's been kind of hard for me to find for some reason and I bought a A-10 cruiser tank from Gecko Models. We were talking that was Chris Meddings too. We were talking about Gecko and Bronco and somebody else I can't remember. But uh, he was giving us the ins and outs on those kits and what had happened and recommended it as the better kit. End up.

Kentucky Dave: 1:35:00

Picking that up, that's boy, that kid's got a lot of sprues yeah, and, and not only that, you picked it up in the boxing that has the german markings on the cover, but it's the. You really wanted the British, but it's the exact same kit and even has all those British markings. They just feature. They released it twice, once with the British markings and once with the German markings on the box art, and I suspect that's because the German markings sell better.

Mike: 1:35:37

I wouldn't know on a tank like that if it would or not, but the decals there's three British versions and one German on the sheet, so it's still primarily British and it has a British crew figure in it. Yes, it does. So it's the exact same kit. Yeah, I'm thinking. Is that all I bought? I think so. Well that's not bad. No, it's not Not bad at all. What about you?

Kentucky Dave: 1:36:01

Well, let's see. Even though I didn't buy a Fineinmolz Ki-43, I did buy a Fujimi Judy, the version with the upward-firing cannons, where they took this dive bomber aircraft and converted it into an attempt to convert it into a fighter using the German style two cannons pointing upward where you come in, underneath the bombers. I picked up a 3D printed stand for flexifile. So I've got multiple flexifiles and I keep a different grit on each one, so that way I can just change back and forth without having to stop and change the tape. I picked up for like $6 Canadian this really nice, really well thought out and well printed 3D stand that holds up to five of them. In addition, I got a picked up another Tamiya Zero. You have a problem? I've got a problem. Okay, I admit it.

Kentucky Dave: 1:37:22

I picked up four Chinese submarines in 700 scale. I really like 700 scale submarines. I've got a collection of probably six or eight already built Russian, japanese, us submarines. I just they're perfect little models for conversation pieces and that scale they're small enough that they're really quick, easy and doable. And I had never seen these before and I came across them at the barrel store table and ended up buying those. And then the folks at Alpha Abrasives, the guys who do the Flexifile stuff. They're out of Canada so they're always at that show and one of the things that they had that I stocked up on again at good Canadian prices. They had all of the Albion alloy tubing, so they had the different very, very small diameter tubes and then they had the sets, where they give you two sets of tubes that that fit into each other telescoping tubing. So I picked up like six or eight sets of that, I think I know I think that's everything I picked up.

Mike: 1:38:46

Well, I mentioned everything. I got a hair just gone, but I've I've spent other money well, I've spent a little bit more.

Kentucky Dave: 1:38:52

I did I last last episode I mentioned that, uh, bronco had that chinese launch vehicle and that I had ordered it. It came in, so, uh, so that that I can count that as breaking my wallet this time, even though I ordered it last time, but I didn't have it in hand until this episode. Yeah, you spent some money on some books, didn't you?

Mike: 1:39:20

Yeah, david Doyle, they did a second printing of Son of Sherman. Yes, and I missed it the first time. Back to Karnalka's question. I've missed a kit, but there's been a few books I've missed along the way. Yeah, because books can be kind of expensive and you kind of think about it, but you think about a limited print book and it's gone and you're not going to see it again unless they reprint it. They did a second printing and I pre-ordered it and I got it a few days ago. Two volumes man it's a bunch, man, it's a lot that book's pair is almost overwhelming.

Kentucky Dave: 1:39:58

Yeah, and the funny thing is there's still other Sherman related stuff that isn't covered. You would think in two volumes of that size and depth that everything would be covered, but there's still some canadian and british variants that that aren't in there and I think that's the.

Mike: 1:40:21

The crux is that they, it's, it's the the american sherman story for the most part, right, right, the Canadian Rams are in there, which are, I don't know. That's less of a Sherman than a Canadian Grizzly in my opinion, right? That's interesting, I don't know. It begs to wonder if there's going to be maybe an addendum at some point that covers that's the same thing.

Kentucky Dave: 1:40:42

I wondered is if maybe there would be a separate third volume type thing where he does those.

Mike: 1:40:50

I don't know, but I'm glad to have it. It was expensive. That was probably the most I've ever spent on books outside of college. Yeah, but I'm glad to have my copy and I look forward to diving into that and seeing what kind of inspiration might come out of that series.

Kentucky Dave: 1:41:08

There are a lot of rabbit holes in that book, man oh yeah, there are.

Mike: 1:41:12

There are for sure.

Kentucky Dave: 1:41:13

Anything else, that's about it mike, have you uh finished your your modeling fluid, or at least gotten it worked down a little?

Mike: 1:41:26

I have man and I'm betting bullet tenure was pretty good it was pretty good, but it's kind of uh, juxtapositioned against the, the russell's tenure I've been enjoying over the last several months almost a year now, I guess. Bullet is known for being high rye content in the mash bill, right, right, and I think that comes out even more in the 10-year. It's pretty spicy.

Kentucky Dave: 1:41:49

Okay, Compared to the Russell 10-year price point, the Russell's slightly more expensive.

Mike: 1:41:55

No, it's cheaper than the-.

Kentucky Dave: 1:41:57

Is it actually cheaper? Yeah?

Mike: 1:42:00

I think Russell's reserve 10-year is about the most affordable 10 year. That may be a absolute statement or it's. It's definitely a a bottle. I'm willing to even try a statement.

Kentucky Dave: 1:42:15

Gotcha.

Mike: 1:42:16

There may be some other 10 years out there there may be an old granddad 10 year, I don't know. A rebel yell 10 year.

Kentucky Dave: 1:42:23

Yeah.

Mike: 1:42:24

I don't know, but this one's good, it's good, it's good. It's a different palate than the Russells. The Russells is a lot more sweet, so both good. I think I prefer the Russells, but you can't go wrong either way. If you're a budget guy, the Russells for sure. How's the Black Cherry man? It was actually really pretty good.

Kentucky Dave: 1:42:42

It's both sweet and tart. It is a cider. So again, you're not having a beer, you're having a cider. You expect the sweet With cherry, you expect some tart. It's 6.9% alcohol by volume, so it's heavier than a little more alcoholic than most ciders, but not a lot. Most hover right around five. I enjoyed it, you this I mean. You know I might not be something that I would drink every day, but it is definitely something that I would drink on the regular well, I'll have to look at the link in the show notes I'm sure you're gonna put, because oh yes that's a flavor I might actually try yes, you'll have to try it maybe the pears with just the general apple ones.

Mike: 1:43:30

I've had those and, uh, they're not. They're not for me. They're all right, but they're just, they're not for me. I hear you mike.

Kentucky Dave: 1:43:42

uh, we are truly at the end of the show now and all we got left are some shout-outs. Do you have any shout-outs?

Mike: 1:43:49

I do. We probably have some overlap. Most of these stem from our trip to HeritageCon. I got to shout-out Chris Wallace, model airplane maker, for setting up the accommodations for all of us. He is the man. We talked about it, I think a little bit in the 12-minute model sphere, but we're going to mention it again here. I don't see how we could have got any closer without a tent.

Kentucky Dave: 1:44:10

Yeah.

Mike: 1:44:11

And sleeping on the museum grounds or in an airplane. I mean literally. We were maybe 300 yards from the museum, maybe four.

Kentucky Dave: 1:44:21

Yeah.

Mike: 1:44:22

Pretty amazing. So, chris, I hope that place is available next year, because that's where we want to stay buddy. Yeah, pretty amazing. So, chris, I hope that place is available next year, because that's where we want to stay buddy.

Kentucky Dave: 1:44:30

Yeah, and it was a fantastic. Just the right size and it was obviously brand new yeah, in it prior to us and, man, it was perfect for hosting the late night activities. Sit around, get together, talk, modeling and drink some adult beverages gathering.

Mike: 1:45:02

It just could not have been better from every standpoint.

Kentucky Dave: 1:45:04

Well, you got a shout out. Yes, I want to shout out our friends Mark Copeland and Steve Hustad, who made the journey to HeritageCon, at least partly because we praised it so highly last year. And those guys live far, far away, far enough that the trip was a two-day trip each way for them.

Mike: 1:45:26

so they're they really committed time and resources to make the track yeah you got like, uh, well, probably wasn't two full days, but by the time you had it all up it was probably close to three full days driving.

Kentucky Dave: 1:45:40

Yeah, and that's a lot for a one day show yes, for a one day show, but a great one day. A one-day show, but a great one-day show, that's right. And we had a fantastic time with them. We spent time at the dojo, talking, sharing. I get to check off my bucket list that I've now had a Steve Hustad martini and that's an experience that I won't soon forget. And it was just great seeing the guys. I'm glad they came. I'm glad they made that effort.

Mike: 1:46:13

How about you? Well, you talked about the after hours. We had a couple of nights of that. From the Model Geeks podcast. Darren Cook, d-ran and El Presidente Tim Holland hung out with us two nights, went out to dinner with us two nights. You know we saw a lot of Darren last year and his wife at HeritageCon 15. And just nice to sit down with those guys and hang out with them a little more than we get to like at the IPMS Nationals because there's just so many more people and so much more going on that we don't get to do that quite to this degree. But, guys, it was fun having you guys around and enjoying your company and hopefully we'll do it again.

Kentucky Dave: 1:46:51

Yeah, and sympathies to Darren on his father-in-law's passing. That happened right as Heritage Con was ending, so our thoughts and prayers go out to Darren and his lovely spouse. You know that's a tough thing to go through Anymore. One final one, and this one is to the guys at Roscoe Turner. We are not going to be there this year. That hurts our soul because that is the first contest Mike and I ever took the podcast to, ever recorded at. It was, you know, the first contest we attended post-COVID. That just has such a place in our hearts and if we were single men who ruled our weekends unreservedly, we would no doubt be there. But because of the way HeritageCon, Indie and Amps fall, we just could not make it happen. We look forward to being there next year. So even though we're not there, I hope you all have a fantastic show. I have no doubt you will.

Mike: 1:48:08

Well, dave, as always, I'm going to shout out all the folks who contribute to Plastic Model Mojo through their generosity. We've got several avenues folks can do that. We've got PayPal, we've got Patreon, we've got Buy Me a Coffee and, of course, we've got the Plastic Model Mojo merchandise store Mojo merchandise store. If you'll go to wwwplasticmodelmojocom, pick out one of the top latest three, four episodes, because we've been getting this in the show notes, and in those show notes you will find links to all this stuff and that's the best way to find it and we really appreciate it. It really helps us push forward in 2024. And we hope to bring you more and better content because of it. So thank you very much.

Kentucky Dave: 1:48:44

Thank you, content because of it. So thank you very much, thank you Well, dave.

Mike: 1:48:50

we were at the bloody end.

Kentucky Dave: 1:48:52

Yes, we are.

Mike: 1:48:53

Episode 113 is coming to a close. Folks, as we always say, so many kits, so little time, all right, man.

Kentucky Dave: 1:49:04

Well, let's get our bags packed to head to South Bend. Dave, you got it. See you soon, all right.