High Plains Gazette - River Rock Commons

High Plains Modelers
High Plains Gazette
Volume 1, Issue 5
March 2011
March Meeting Notes
Reminders from Pablo:
Denver Club Rob Wolff is
holding its annual club
auction on April 6th at
7pm.
Our auction is in May at
the May meeting. Please
donate a kit, and bring
some extra money to help
out the club. By the way
Pablo is going to donate
the book he reviewed.
(See page 2)
April 16th is the Hobbytown contest. This will be
Hobbytown’s only contest
this year.
The website is up. Pablo
wrote an article on the
history of the club, this is
our 25th Anniversary.
This week Mark should
be able to book the contest room! That is great
news for us. Hopefully we
get the date we want.
Because of the county
fair, we might have a possible early meeting in
July. For those who miss
the next few meetings
keep reading the newsletter and we will keep you
posted.
Cheyenne Super Day in
the Park. Saturday June
25th, 10am-4pm. It costs
$1 to park. Car show (full
size), and a model car
display. This gives us a
chance to hand out club
flyers and contest flyers.
That concludes our business for the month, the
Contest update is below.
High Plains Con XXII Update
This month the club was
updated on the sponsors,
and Special Awards.
So far we have 9 paid
sponsors: Hobbytown
USA, Colpar Hobbies,
Kahuna Designs, M&S
Hobbies, Mig Productions USA, Ideal Scale
Models, IPMS Legacy,
Hersh Consulting and
Chuck Holte. We also
have verbal commitments from IPMS Rob
Wolf Chapter and IPMS
Commies.
We still want at least six
more sponsors, which will
cover the cost of the six
remaining Best of
Awards.
We have some more special awards to announce:
THEME: Cool Cats
SPECIAL AWARDS:
Best Weathered Finish
Best Race Car
Best Star Wars Subject
Best UAV
Worst Model
For the Worst Model
category, we are not being
mean, we will have a special table for people to
enter this category. Do
your best to build a nasty
model.
We have a budget for the
medals, and hopefully by
next months meeting we
can have a sample for
you guys to look at.
We have a flyer, and by
the end of this week or
early next week we should
have a confirmed date!
The only way I got to
keep them Tigers busy
is to let them shoot
holes in me!
Inside this issue:
March Meeting
1
High Plains Contest 2011
1
Book Review
2
Omaha IPMS Update
2
ChileCon2 Update
3
Pablo’s Review
3
Dragon’s M-16 GMC
6
What’s New This
Month:
 March’s Meeting Notes
 High Plains Contest Update
 Monthly Contest Winner
 Part II of George’s M-16 Build
 ChileCON 2 Region X Contest
 Book Review by Pablo
 Sponsors For HPMCONXXII
 Model Gallery
High Plains Gazette
Book Review: To the Last Bullet
By Pablo Bauleo
Publisher: Firefly
Books
Product: To the Last
Bullet: Germany's
War on Three Fronts Part 1, The East
By Dennis
Olivier
25 pages, 6 B/
W photos with over 70
color illustrations
Limited Edition of 1000 copies
ISBN 978-09806593-4-4
This book is
recommended
for German
late war AFV
modelers.
This review was first published in the IPMS/USA
website http://
www.ipmsusa.org
Review
This book is the first of a
series and they look very
promising for the AFV
modeler. The book is
clearly focused on armored fighting vehicles
camouflages and mark-
ings, having over 70 full
color illustrations of German late war machines.
The book includes 4
pages with a write-up on
the Eastern Front starting
in 1944, but it is not intended to be more than a
general description of the
Army groups located in
each sector of the front.
Two large maps are included, one showing the
Eastern Front prior to the
1944
Soviet
attack
(Operation
Bagration)
and another one showing
the Oder Front, previous
to the Soviet thrust
against Berlin.
The main content of the
book are the 70+ color
profiles of armored vehicles. There is a little bit of
everything, mainly Panthers, with some Tigers,
several 251s and a few
odds and ends, including
a few turrets that were
used as pill-boxes in the
Battle of Berlin, and a
couple of American captured AFV in German
markings.
The print quality is out-
standing and the profile
details are excellent. A
good selection of camouflages and markings are
displayed, including two
and three tones camouflages, ambush schemes,
white wash and even
some single color latewar machines.
All the profiles have a
short description on the
vehicle and units and
most of them also have a
detailed drawing of the
unit badge
It should be noted that
the author makes an effort to make clear when
interpretations or assumptions were made in
the creation of a profile.
This book is recommended for German late
war AFV modelers. I
would like to thank Firefly and Dragon Models
for the review sample. By
the way, Bison Decals is
announcing in their website that decal sets in 35th
and 72nd to accompany
this book series will be
available soon.
Omaha IPMS National Update
www.ipmsusa2011.org
Everything is going great
here in Omaha-maybe too
great. We are out of double bed rooms at the Embassy Suites and almost
out at the Marriot. There
are still plenty of single
bed rooms. At the Embassy Suites every rooms
has a fold out couch, so
there are always two beds.
If you have any problems
Page 2
with reservations drop me
an email and I’ll work it
with the hotel.
Vendors Alley is still full!
We do have a waiting list
so if you want to vend
drop the Vendors Chairman an email. Seminars
are coming together.
There are a lot of great
speakers and seminars
planned. I plan to have
this whole thing running
like a clock so I can check
a few of them out. I’m
especially looking forward
to the some of the Airbrushing seminars and
war stories from a Top
Gun pilot who flew Tomcats in The Final Countdown. Like I said, everything is going great! Got
any comments or questions –drop me an email.
Scott
ChileCon 2: Region X Contest
First off, let me apologize
to the organizers for using the word Chili instead
of Chile.
Now, down to business.
We are a little over a
month away from the
Region X contest in Albuquerque.
There are going to be
some real full sized World
War II vehicles at the
contest.
They are having a special
category called
“Hangarside”. Basically
this is curbside for
planes. It is all about the
paint job on this one, it
has nothing to do with
the cockpit or underneath
the plane. I for one hope
to judge this category just
to see what it is like.
There will be a banquet as
well, it costs $30. The
Volume 1, Issue 5
fees are cheaper if you
register before April 15th.
The hotel stay includes a
free hot breakfast and
two complimentary drink
tickets.
I for one can’t wait to go
and have some fun. Besides how can you pass
up free breakfast and
drinks?
The editor is sorry I
misspelled Chile
last month. JB
Product Review: Hasegawa Isuzu
By Pablo Bauleo
Hasegawa Isuzu Tx40
Type 97 Truck (Kit
X48-15)
This review was first
published at the
IPMS/USA website
(http://
www.ipmsusa.org)
The Hasegawa Isuzu
Tx40 Type 97 (boxing
X48-15) includes a very
neat truck, plus two figures,
drums, aircraft
chocks and a very nice
toolbox. Options are few,
you can model an Army
or a Navy truck (minor
modification on the truck
grille), and the flat bed
can be assembled with or
without a tarp cover.
Engineering of this kit is
remarkable good. There
are neither sink marks
nor visible ejector pins in
any external surface,
however there are a few
ejector pins in the underneath surfaces. Regarding
assembly of this kit, the
fit is outstanding; there
was no need to use filler
at all in this kit. Make
sure that you carefully
follow the instructions
when putting together the
flat bed. There is a definite order in which you
are supposed to do it and
it is clearly marked in the
instructions. By the way,
the wooden flat bed has
gorgeous engraved detail
that benefits of careful
painting and weathering.
Interior cub detail is reasonable for the scale, with
a couple of levers, steering wheel, separate seat,
and raised detail for the
instruments bezels together with a decal for the
instruments dials.
Tires are molded in plastic and have a tiny mold
seam that needs to be
sanded. The tires are
molded together with the
wheels hubs. I wish they
would have been individual parts as to facilitate
painting.
Just a heads-up for purist: The kit does not include a full engine, just an
oil-pan. It looks busy and
convincing enough when
looking from underneath,
at least to my eyes.
Clear parts are provided
for the head lamp, windshield and cab cover. The
parts are thin, very clear
and free of any optical
distortion.
Something a little bit
strange is the location of
the spare tire, which
blocks the driver door. I
couldn’t find any historical picture supporting or
denying this, but I just
decided to build the kit
without it.
Although marketed as
part of the aircraft series,
this kit stands for its own
merits as a vehicle model.
It took me about 12 hs to
finish this project, with
about half of it devoted to
painting and weathering.
In a few words: this kit is
a joy to build. Highly
recommended.
I would like to thank Hasegawa for the review
sample and IPMS/USA
for allowing me to review
it.
Page 3
High Plains Gazette
Red Five standing by.
May the Force be with you. X-Wing
This month while at the
build and bull I started
building my 1/72 Fine
Molds X-Wing.
ing it next to my Y-Wing,
but the next one will be
gears up and on the flight
stand.
It is a wonderful kit to
build. And went together
with no problems.
The kits decals allow you
to build 5 versions. (Red
1,2,3,4 or 5) Depending
on which version you
build there are different
engine combinations.
The entire fit went together very well, and the
S-foils actually can be
posed open or closed. I
choose to model mine
with the gear down, as I
am planning on display-
I choose to mask and
paint Blue Leader. Who
the heck is Blue Leader?
Well, here is some trivia,
originally the name of the
X-Wing Squadron that
attacked the first Death
Star was Blue Squadron,
but the blue markings
had trouble showing up
against the blue screen
they used for filming. The
markings were changed
to red, and thus the name
was changed to red
squadron. Hopefully it
turns out as nice as my YWing did.
Hobbytown USA Contest April 16th
APRIL 16th
Hobbytown
Contest
Hobbytown USA is having a model contest on
April 16th at the Fort
Collins location. This will
be the only Hobbytown
contest this year.
This is a good opportunity to get the word out
about the club, and to get
the word out about our
contest.
I am planning to attend.
It would be nice if we had
a decent club turnout,
and after we drop off our
models we can head over
to Tres Margaritas for a
few drinks and some
lunch while the Hobbytown staff judges.
I’m looking forward to a
good contest from Hob-
bytown.
Remember they are sponsoring our contest, so it
would be nice to have a
decent turnout for their
contest.
Also, this will be the debut of our contest flyers
as I am printing them on
April 15th.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...
We needed an article,
but since none of you
wrote one we had to
go with this!
Page 4
The Editor takes no position on which is which,
we will let you the educated reader decide.
IPMS Handbook: Ships
Ships
Basic Construction
1. Flash, mold seams,
sinks marks, ejector-pin
marks, and similar molding flaws eliminated.
2. Seams filled.
3. Contour errors corrected.
4. Ship configuration correct for the time period
being depicted by the
model.
5. Alignment:
A. Superstructure components (platforms, cabins,
funnels, etc.) aligned with
the vertical when viewed
from stem to stern.
B. Masts parallel to the
vertical axis of the ship
when viewed from stem
to stern. Rake of masts
uniform, unless the real
vessel’s masts had varying rake angles. Rigging
tension must not cause
the masts and spars to
bend.
6. Cylindrical crosssection of gun barrels and
masts (if applicable)
maintained.
7. Glue marks removed.
Detailing
1. All small parts
(including masts, bulwarks, splinter shields,
railings, and rigging)
should be as close to
scale as possible.
2. Small details sanded
off during construction
should be replaced with
scratch-built or aftermarket material.
3. Gun barrels and vents
should be drilled out
whenever possible.
4. Sailing ship rigging and
lines should be correct for
the era being modeled.
Volume 1, Issue 5
rightside-up, and rigging
lines and blocks should
be in proportion to each
other.
6. Photo-etched parts:
A. Nubs and burrs where
parts are removed from
sprue must be eliminated.
B. Parts should not be
unintentionally damaged
or bent.
C. Glue marks and buildups should not show.
D. Parts (e.g., rails and
stanchions) must not
overlap.
All small parts
(including
masts,
bulwarks,
splinter shields,
railings, and
rigging) should
be as close to
scale as
possible.
E. All railings should be
straight when viewing the
model bow to stern (no
wavy railings).
F. Railings must line up
horizontally and vertically
where they join.
G. Corner seams created
when parts are bent to
shape should be filled.
5. Deadeyes should be
Monthly Contest:
Once again we had a nice
turn out for the monthly
contest.
Dave won with his nicely
built Focke Wulf. At least
this time we only had one
winner which made it
easy for me to choose
which picture to use.
According to the Excel
spreadsheet I created we
have a six way tie for first
place in our overall standings.
I like seeing all of the
models each month. It is
nice to see the variety as
well. Cars, tanks, Star
Wars, planes, and even a
bulldozer.
We need to discuss the
possibility of a tie at our
next monthly meeting.
My two cents is that if we
have a bunch of club
members still tied at the
end of the year we should
give them all a gift certificate.
Dave’s Focke Wulf, this
month’s winner.
Page 5
High Plains Gazette
Detailing Dragon’s M-16 GMC Part 2
Detailing Dragon’s M16 Multiple Motor
Gun Carriage Kit No.
6381
By George Slack
PART 2: THE
CAB
“Oh well, at least I
know it’s there.”
Figure 1: The cab before
painting. The brake, clutch
and gas pedals received new
arms from 0.025” copper
wire. The brake and clutch
pedals were made from
0.020 plastic sheet; the gas
pedal is the kit part. The
emergency brake lever received a thin wire brake cable and the generator cooling
tank new end rings and a
second cap.
DRIVER’S SIDE DETAILING
Dragon’s halftrack cab is
good straight from the
box, but as with most
injection kits there is
room for some super detailing. As I planned to
have the driver’s door
open with an empty cab,
the molded-on floor pedals were the first detail
that call our for improvement. This turned out to
be a fairly straightforward
fix. The pedals were carefully sliced off with a flat
chisel blade (save the gas
pedal) and the floor
sanded smooth. Using
reference photos, two
rectangular openings
were cut for the brake
and clutch pedals and
new arms made from
0.025 copper wire. These
were epoxied onto the
back of the firewall for
greater strength. New
pedals were made from
plastic sheet. The accelerator pedal was an ever
easier fix; 0.025 copper
wire was pushed through
a hole in the floor and the
kit gas pedal epoxied onto
the wire.
The emergency brake also
received some extra detail. I opened up the
channel in front of and
behind the brake lever,
and then added a brake
cable from thin lamp cord
Page 6
wire.
I wasn’t happy with the
kit gear shift lever; the kit
part didn’t have all of the
angles I saw in my reference photos. A new gear
shift lever was bent from
0.025 copper wire and
the kit gear shift knob
glued to the new handle.
Finally, sheet plastic end
rings and another cap
were added to the generator cooling tank. (Figure
1.) (Note: there is some
controversy as to when
the generator tank was
removed from the cab. I
found one source that
indicated it was only used
on M-series halftracks
produced from 1941 to
1943. If this turns out to
be accurate, the cooling
tank would be inappropriate for the M-16 as
they were manufactured
between May 1943 and
March 1944.)
PASSENGER’S SIDE
DETAILING
Dragon molded the radiator louver handle in the
closed position so I built a
new position lock with an
open channel for the louver handle. Then I
moved the handle to the
rear of the lock so it was
in the correct location for
the open louvers I
planned to install over
the radiator. (Figure 2.)
The bad news once the
dashboard is installed the
louver handle can’t be
seen through the open
top. What is it we all
claim after a super detail
effort no one will ever
see; “Oh well, at least I
know it’s there.” If you
decide to build one of the
Dragon halftracks don’t
bother with this extra
work unless you plan to
leave the passenger door
open.
Dragon depicts the map
case on the inside of the
passenger door as a solid
rectangle. This lump of
plastic was scraped off
and the door sanded
smooth. A new map case
was built from 0.010
sheet plastic and four
bolts from an old Tamiya
Marder III kit. Once
painted, a Verlinden map
I had lying in the parts
box was cut to size and
stuffed into the opening.
(Figure 3.)
DASHBOARD
Dragon’s dashboard is
very good and represents
a typical White/Autocar/
Diamond-T halftrack. In
my usual AMS style I decided to make a few improvements. The windshield wiper motors are
depicted as lumps on the
clear windshield part so I
replaced them with
scratch built and wired
items on the dash. I also
drilled out the pull
switches below the instrument clusters and
made three-dimensional
pull switched from
stretched sprue. The basic process is simple;
stretch the sprue slowly
to get a distinct cone
shape, cut to size, then
mushroom the wide part
of the cone to create the
switch. In practice creating four nearly identical
switches was quite time
consuming. I finally used
a wood burning tool as
my heat source to mushroom the ends of the
switches as this gave me
better control over the
heat than I could get with
a candle flame. (Figure
Volume 1, Issue 5
Dragon M-16 (continued)
4.)
Archer Fine Transfers
were used to decal the
dashboard. These are
exceptionally well researched and printed.
And they have somehow
developed a process
whereby decals can be
applied as a traditional
dry transfer or rubbed
onto a special wet media
paper and applied like a
regular decal. I used the
wet media process for the
dashboard and as can be
seen in Figure 4, the results are outstanding.
The decal sheet also provided a placard for the
fire extinguisher seen in
Figure 6.
UNNECESSARY COMPLICATIONS
After finishing and painting the cab I discovered
the Dragon goofed big
time. Nearly all of the
photos I found of the M16 showed it with the
winch installed. Several
interior photos of the Mseries halftrack also
showed a lever next to the
transmission tunnel labeled “power take-off.”
Honeycutt’s book provided my next headache;
on page 38 he writes “A
power take-off on the
transmission supplied
power to the winch.” My
power take-off lever was
Figure 3: The map case was constructed from sheet plastic and
four bolts shaved from an old
kit. The door handle is flattened
copper wire bent to shape and
super glued in place. The map in
the finished case is an old Verlinden item cut to size.
built from sheet plastic,
rod and bolt heads
trimmed from my trusty
Tamiya Marder III. If
you are building any of
the Dragon halftracks and
you plan on installing the
winch, add the power
take-off lever before you
paint your cab. Matching
the paint and weathering
turned out to be a far bigger job than it needed to
be. None of the magazine
builds of the M-series
halftrack mention this
omission so it caught me
by surprise.
With the cab finished it
was time to move on to
the fighting compartment, the subject of next
Figure 2: Wasted effort! The
new lever for opening or closing the radiator louvers is
much more accurate than the
kit part, but as you can see in
Figure 6, the handle sits so far
behind the dashboard that it is
almost totally invisible on the
finished kit.
Figure 4: The dashboard after
detailing (top) and after painting, decaling and installation
(bottom). The gauges and placards are from Archer Fine
Transfers and provide a level of
detail I would find impossible
to hand paint.
Figure 5: The fire extinguisher
with its Archer placard and
light weathering/paint chipping. To the left of the fire extinguisher is the lever for the
radiator louvers. As you can
see, all of my scratch building
was for naught as the upper
third of the lever, where all the
scratch building occurred, is
totally invisible.
Figure 6: The new power take-off lever
built from sheet plastic, rod and bolt
heads trimmed from a discarded Tamiya
Marder III. Now, if I can just get the paint
and weathering to match.
Page 7
The Workbench From Hell
“Oh, don't hit me
with those negative waves so early
in the morning.” Oddball
My first kits… I remember
them like it was yesterday,
mainly because I have a
photographic memory.
My dad helped of course,
mainly because I was impatient and wanted the tanks
for my war.
My dad took me to a hobby
store when I was 8 years old.
I had just received the “Guns
of Navarone” playset for my
birthday and wanted a better looking tank to go with
my army men.
After the tanks were built it
was time to paint, we used
the old Testors paints, and
brushed them on. We used
Olive Drab for the Sherman,
easy choice, the whole tank
was green, we painted the
boxes and tools brown and
dark grey. We then put on
the decals. There was no
gloss coat, no flat coat, no
weathering (unless you
count the real mud that
stuck in the tracks when I
pushed the tank through the
yard.)
My dad let me get three kits.
He bought me a Tamiya
Sherman, a Tamiya Tiger I
and a Revell Stuka.
By today’s standards all
three of those kits would be
considered failures in authenticity, but to an 8 year
old in the mid-70’s what the
heck did I care.
APRIL
“the one in Kelly’s Heroes”.
The Tiger was then and has
to this day always been my
favorite tank. It turned out
better than we thought.
Of course, in my world the
Germans won most of the
battles, especially since they
had a Stuka. Then one night
while watching TV my world
changed, “Baa Baa Black
Sheep” came on, and I had a
new hero, and a new favorite
plane.
My dad bought me a Corsair
and a Dauntless that actually dropped bombs. The
tides of war turned against
the Germans. That is until
he bought me the Focke
Wulf and the Panther. Isn’t
war grand?
The Tiger I had my dad
paint black and green like,
2011
SUN
3
MON
4
TUE
5
WED
6
THU
7
FRI
SAT
1
2
8
9
Build and Bull
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Hobbytown
Contest
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
HPM Meeting
High Plains Modelers
Our club has plastic modelers from Northern Colorado, mainly from the Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont area. We also have a few members from Wyoming.
Meetings are the last Tuesday of the month
at The Ranch in Loveland. They start at 7pm
and end around 9pm.
We build scale and plastic models of armor, airplanes,
vehicles, ships and anything else that we feel like is
worth a try.
Editor: Jeffrey Brown
[email protected]
Check out our meeting schedule and feel free to
drop by our next meeting!
President: Pablo Bauleo
Vice President: Gary Moore
Treasurer: Randy Robinson
Secretary: Jeff Brown
Check out the website for club information.
Website
http://ipmshpm.blogspot.com/
Please visit the IPMS USA Website: www.ipmsusa.org
Next Meeting April 26,
2011. 7pm at The Ranch.
Ads***
For Sale or Trade:
Jeff Brown has items for sale and trade e-mail for a list and pics: [email protected]
*** Posting Ads are free for High Plains Modelers Members to post items for sale or trade. If
you are not a member of the club it cost $2 to post an ad which goes towards our annual club
contest.
Contest Sponsors: Please Support Them (They Support Us)
Kahuna Designs Inc.
Chuck Holte is sponsoring Best UAV!
`
Hersh Consulting is sponsoring Best Armor!
IDEAL SCALE MODELS
March Model Gallery
Photos by Paul Linger