PMM Twelve Minute Modelsphere: January 2025

Well listeners, welcome to the January edition of the 12-Minute Model Sphere. Happy New Year, dave. Happy New Year listeners.

Happy New Year, mike. Happy New Year Dave. Happy New Year listeners. Happy New Year Mike. Happy New Year listeners. And yeah, we're getting this out a day or maybe after we meant to do it, but then again, you know, new Year's is kind of tough to get everything done with all the other stuff going on.

Well, that's for sure, we have a little spillover into what we tried to promise for December into January, but we'll get to that. Typically, we lead this off with where we've been and where we're going and we haven't really been anywhere because of the holidays. Right, I feel it's fortunate for us, and maybe you do for you as well, but we're kind of in the stay-home years of our holiday enjoyment.

Yes, yes years of our holiday enjoyment, yes, yes. Well, I'm particularly lucky in that the vast majority of my family lives within four or five miles of my house. So and sisters, their children, my mom I'm very lucky in that regard. So, yeah, not having to travel more than a couple of miles to do all that and the ability to spread it out from mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve all the way to the end of the day Christmas night, makes for a much more relaxed Christmas, as opposed to when Ruthie and I were first married and first had kids and we'd fly up to Baltimore, maryland, to go to Southern Maryland where Ruthie's family was. Man, you want to talk about doing airports at Christmastime? I do not miss that at all.

Well, the model show season is off to a rousing start. Yes, it is. I don't know if we'll get to any or not in January. We're trying to get to one. I'd love to. I will remind folks that the two shows outlined in the December show spotlight for the month of January still have not happened yet at the time of this drop. So on January 10th and 11th that's a half a day on the 10th and all day on the 11th the Chattanooga Club will be hosting the Chattanooga Model Con. That's the one we were tempted to try to get down to.

Yes.

So if anybody sees us that weekend, that's where you would happen to see us.

It just sounds like a good show. We need to try to get to that facility. I mean, I have such fond memories of that facility the Downtown Convention Center where they held the 2019 Nationals. The downtown convention center where they held the 2019 nationals. That's just such a great facility to hold a show in that. I have no doubt that that's just an awesome show to attend and I'd love to squeeze down there.

And the other one is in college station, texas winter blitz 25, or winter blitz 2025. Let me clear that up a little bit. Our friend of Brandon Jacobs show down there and that's a little later in the month, so you still got some time to plan on that one. So, folks, if you can get out and enjoy an early season model show, yes, absolutely. I said we have a little carryover from December, but we'll get to the main episodes, the feature episodes, first. We've got two in January, dave.

Yes, we do 132 and 133.

Something a little different for a guest, this time In episode 132, I hope. Scheduling pending, these may get swapped, but we'll see how it goes. But that's the plan for now, episode 132. We're going to be talking to listener Steve Anderson, and Steve has penned a. Well, I'll read the title a guided journal for the modeler, for modelers, making the most of your hobby. And what what it is is a book with, oh, quite a few, 50 or so questions to ponder and space to journal a little bit and provide some action steps going forward for your hobby. And then a little later in the book it's got some some project outlines and things like that. And, uh, you know, this is kind of unique. And and, uh, he, he mentioned this to us in a listener mail and I said, well, why don't you come on and talk about it? So we're going to talk about this. I don't know how many listeners like to write, but I'm sure quite a few do, or even note-taking can be beneficial. So, looking forward to seeing what this is all about.

Well, this has several things. I know there are a number of modelers who actually do keep notebooks on each of their projects. In addition to that, the other parts of this little booklet it's more a booklet than a book is kind of thought-provoking. You can sit down with it when you're not at your bench modeling but wherever, grab a few minutes, read through and ponder on a section. I think it stimulates the modeling centers in the brain and I'll be interested to talk with him about that.

Well, the other episode 133, as planned today will be another shop talk. So, dave, we've got to cook up some good questions and our good topics, and I've been successful at that. So I think that should not be a problem, given the amount of work we've been getting to at our benches here in the recent past.

I was going to say I've got one or two kicking around already in my brain.

Well, the model show scene stays hot going on into February and we'll have a model show spotlight sometime this month in January, and we'll know we're going to feature one show, maybe two, trying to line that up so folks can tune in for news on other shows out there in the model sphere. And then finally in December we actually gosh it's back in November. We'd hope to have Dr Strangerbush on in December for a short on types and applying of primers and we still intend to do that and I got to get him scheduled and really hoping to drop that in January as well.

Yes, I think that would be a useful discussion. In fact, modeling friend Scott Skippy King came over on New Year's Day to have a modeling session and some black eyed peas and cabbage and he's at the stage where he's about to prime his current project. So we had a little bit of talk about that just between the two of us and I'm really looking forward to Dr Strangebrush's words of wisdom on that subject.

So folks join us for all that and hopefully we'll all learn something new. So folks join us for all that and hopefully we'll all learn something new. Dave the dojo is pretty active over the holidays. What's been going down?

Yes, me excepted. Unfortunately, the dark time applies not only to me not getting the modeling I wanted done, but I was not on social media nearly as much and so I didn't get into the dojo. But I'm going to cure that. But yes, thank gosh, others were picking up the slack, like me. Yes, yeah, well, you were modeling because you had what? Almost two weeks off, ten days.

Ten days, counting the weekends.

And you actually got some modeling done, man, I'm telling you. But yeah, the dojo is very active. We're well over 5,000 members racing toward 5,100, which is our next goal. So if you are a current member of the dojo and your Facebook friends with other modelers, please go through your friends list and invite all the modelers to the dojo.

The posts, particularly in December, tended to center around two things. One, we got a lot of people posting this is what I finished in 2024. And those are always great. I love seeing that. You know I'm not as productive as a lot of people, but I love seeing the people, particularly the people who have modeled a great range of stuff, people who've gotten a lot finished. It just was really great.

And then a lot of people are posting the projects that they're starting to get a running start into 2025. And man, there are some great modelers out there. On the dojo, I could draw attention to a bunch of posts, but I want to draw attention to one that was just posted today by Joshua Scott, and he posted a Gundam. And if you want to see what Gundam modeling can be, exercising all of the not only building and painting, but the weathering and chipping, and it's just a really, really nice model and I'd encourage everybody, when you listen to this episode, flip onto Facebook, go into the dojo and scroll back until you find Joshua Scott's post and take a look at that Gundam that he posted.

And I'd also like to remind the folks hosting shows in January to send us a photo essay of what showed up and share that with us. It'll help encourage folks to attend shows in their geographies and might help get folks to yours, and will certainly encourage us all.

And, in addition, if you've got a show coming up in later January or early or any or all of February and you have a show flyer, please post a PDF of that show flyer in the dojo, let people know about your show. We got a lot of eyeballs in the dojo and they are spread all over the US, in fact all over the world. So if you've got a show coming up the world, so if you've got a show coming up, go ahead, post your flyer in the dojo and you know let people know what's happening.

Well, Dave, we probably wrap this up and get back to our benches for January. Yeah, yeah, we got to. We're coming out of the dark time, man, we got to get a running start.

All right, well, we'll see you around, man.

You got it.