PMM Twelve Minute Modelsphere: February 2025

Well, Dave, it's February and it's time for a 12-minute model sphere or some other duration of time that starts with a T Can you believe that January has already flown by. No, but I'm glad it has.

Well, yeah, I can understand that, but still, honest to gosh, I blinked my eyes and January is just a blur to me.

Well, I think it was that lingering snowfall.

I do think a lot of it had to do with that. It made you compress time.

It sure seemed like it. It did Well, even though the first month of the year has gotten off to a supersonic start. As far as shows goes. We're kind of behind the time a little bit. We've not been anywhere because we've not had anywhere to go. We talked about going to Chattanooga, but they ended up canceling and rescheduling their show because of the weather. It was kind of attached to the weather. We got, yeah, and the next one up close for us is Columbus, yep, and I'm not going to be able to make that one my friend, but you may carry the flag to Columbus.

I am going to make every effort to represent PMM at the Columbus show. I may get Substitute Mike aka Skippy to go along with me and go up there and at least give a good show report for the dojo and meet up with Inch High and many of the other listeners, and I'm going to make every effort. We'll see what happens, but right now I'm planning on it.

Well, I'm going to miss inch and gosh. You asked who else would be there.

Oh gosh, any number of people. It depends, it's, it's Ben.

Ben.

Pluth would be there, ben will be there, barry numeric usually shows up.

Ah man, now I'm wanting to go more than I did before.

Well, family obligations come first. We all understand that.

Well folks, if Dave makes it to Columbus, stop by his table and say hi, yes, please. Well, dave.

February is a short month, yes, but we're going to get in the required two episodes.

Yes, we're going to get into, along with this TMM, and probably a model show spotlight as well for shows coming up in March. But we do have two episodes. The first one is episode 134, and this was the Shop Talk promise for last month. But I guess these TMMs have become kind of guidelines for what we might do.

Yes, yeah, always subject to change, always subject to change. It's the lawyer language. Always notes.

Yes, it's like a concert poster exactly dates subject to change, but in the shop talk room, of course we're going to tackle some modeling topics, but we also, as promised, we're going to pick up one of the journaling prompts from steve anderson's scale modeling journal that we talked about a couple episodes ago. Yeah, which has gotten some good, gotten some good traffic on the Dojo and direct message and emails.

Yes, it has, and, as a matter of fact, I've started jotting some stuff down in it, so I'll be anxious to talk.

Well, I'll disclose the one we're going to take on in the shop talk and in the outline for that episode.

All right.

Maybe I'll give you a little better warning than that. There you go. Well, you know that episode was kind of different. It was nice to see that there were some folks out there who appreciated that line of activity. I guess Modeling adjacent, modeling adjacent activity I thought it was a great thing and anyway we're glad folks are getting some inspiration from that. I know some folks have ordered the journals and sent us pictures of them after they've received them and Steve sent us a nice email and thanked us for having him on and it's just going to be a fun thing to tackle those during these shop talks. Dave.

Yep, looking forward to it. So what's 135?

Well, let me back up Steve Anderson's episode, which I think was 132, was a little unusual and interesting for our listeners. Well, we've got another one coming up, Dave, For episode 135, we have Mr Mark Copeland as our guest and Mark is part of the travel entourage from the greater Minneapolis area with Steve Hustad. In fact he's the one that prompted us to have Steve on for the first time.

Yes, yes, I am forever in his debt.

Well, since then and since us getting acquainted with Mark and Steve, mark has taken on a new job over the last year or so I think, maybe two, yeah, year and a half, something like that. Mark's the director of educational travel for the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force out of Savannah, georgia. Now Mark's in Minnesota. The museum is in Savannah and I've been to it. It's a fabulous thing to go see if you're in the Savannah area. But Mark's going to come on the show and he's a modeler as well, make no mistake about that. We'll talk a little bit about his modeling and talk a little about this really interesting and seemingly wonderful new career track he's on.

We've spent time with him at different shows and all, and he has some absolute fantastic stories from just conducting tours, getting to meet veterans yeah, places he's been, Places he's been and so it'll be nice to talk with him and get not only a picture of what he does and how that's related to modeling for him, but also to get the wider picture of supporting the museum going on these tours. I'm really looking forward to it.

Well, I know he's excited too, so we're going to have a lot of fun having Mark on finally. Yes, well, dave, the dojo has gotten a little bit electric over the last couple of weeks. The new member requests have ticked up.

Yes.

Which I really like that, but what else has been going on?

have ticked up, yes, which I really like that. But what else has been going on? Well, members have apparently been listening to the podcast and actually responding. The two things I want to point out this month on the 12-Minute Model Sphere for the dojo are my request for book reviews has been heard. Warren Dickinson recently posted one Inch High is going to post one. I've got one to post.

This is a great way. Not all our time is actual modeling time. Some of it is modeling adjacent. Many of us are historians or history motivated in our modeling, and books are a great part of that. And it's another resource where in our community we can let people know hey, I read this, it's a good book. Hey, I read this, I don't think it's worth the money. Hey, don't spend your you know whatever. And because of the fact that we're not a money-making business, unlike many magazines who you never see a bad review in them, we don't have that problem. We want people to be polite, but we want them to voice their actual opinion on what they've read and what they think about it, and so Warren and Inch have done so. Others of you out there, if you've recently finished a book, please post the other thing that's shown up a lot in the dojo with the kickoff of model contest season have been reports from model contests.

Special Agent 003 posted a winter blitz report which I got a DM from him. He apologized that it was a little bit late but he had a modeling-related accident to some of his models and that kind of put a damper on the post-show enthusiasm. But there's a report photos on Winter Blitz. In addition, steve Hustad went to the show in Rochester, minnesota, the Hope it Don't Snow show, and apparently it didn't, because they had a great turnout. They had something like 547 models on the table and that is amazing for a show in early February. That's a lot that far north. That's just amazing to me that they pulled that off and apparently it didn't snow, at least not on the day of the show.

There was probably snow on the ground.

Yeah, there's always snow on the ground in winter in Minnesota. So he posted. In fact, he took so many pictures he had to break the post up into three separate posts. Again, if you all attend shows, particularly shows that Mike and I can't get to, we would appreciate you posting photos and a brief report in the dojo to let the community know where, what's out there, what you're seeing on the tables, how the show was. A show report.

We appreciate it, we do, and if it's a show we're at, you can act on our behalf, because I'm not one of those guys that goes around takes a lot of pictures of the models.

I try and post on shows we go to. I try and post for a board. I'm not always successful.

I'm not one of those guys that comes back from a show with just about a picture of every entry there was. Yeah, I appreciate the folks who do, but that's typically not my thing. Yeah, so thank you to everyone who does that. Absolutely so, thank you to everyone who does that?

Absolutely Well, dave, I'm going to deviate here from our outline and normal format and make one call to action, because I know I've seen Ed Barrett's name pop up from either from Ed himself or someone who he's interacted with in the last 24, 48 hours or so, and I know Ed's going to be our third chair for the next installment of the Wheel of Accidental Wisdom and I want folks who have a question that like to see us tackle on the wheel to go ahead and start submitting those via email. Yes, please Via email, even if you already have Now some folks have sent in seven or eight at once. Please re-curate those. If we've addressed it either directly or kind of adjacently, either take those out or think up something new.

We have to re-curate the list and I've got a bunch of email to go through, but I want to make sure we have enough to make a good episode, and I think we do, but a bunch more would not hurt things. Well, that's the one thing. I want to deviate and get out there, dave. So let's get on with our February.

Let's go ahead and get to modeling Bye.