Dear IPMS Chapter Member,
I am writing to you personally from Sam Publications in the UK with an offer exclusively for IPMS Members in the USA.
Sam Publications is the publisher of Scale Aviation Modeller, one of the leading scale model magazines recognised Internationally along with its sister magazines Model Aircraft Monthly and Scale Models International. Our magazines are currently distributed through Kalmbach and Squadron MMD in the USA.
You may also be familiar with our Modellers Datafile range of books, known as The Comprehensive Guide for the Modeller, which can be seen on our secure website www.sampublications.com. Our books and magazines are also purchased directly from us by hobby stores across the USA who all deal with us on a regular day-to-day basis.
As an exclusive offer to all US IPMS Chapters we would like to offer you the chance to purchase any of our Modellers Datafile book series currently in publication at a much reduced price of 20 USD per book. We would also like to offer you the opportunity of purchasing these books on a post free deal providing all the books can be sent to one IPMS members nominated address in one shipment.
The titles currently available are:
The Supermarine Spitfire Merlin Powered by Robert Humphreys
The Avro Lancaster, Manchester and Lincoln by Richard A Franks
The Supermarine Spitfire Griffon Powered by Robert Humphreys
The Bristol Beaufighter by Richard A Franks
The English Electric Lightning by Richard J Caruana
The Gloster Meteor by Richard J Caruana and Richard A Franks
Unfortunately, The De Havilland Mosquito and The Hawker Hurricane are no longer available due to their demand.
If your members are interested in taking advantage of this offer please do not hesitate to contact me and I will be more than happy to send you any further information required.
Finally, if any of your IPMS members are interested in a separate deal on any of our magazines either for subscriptions or back issues, please also let us know.
I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.
Sincere regards
Amanda Elliott
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Friday, February 11, 2005
IPMS/USA, Region 1 2005 Approved Event Dates
This just in from Doug, RC1:
IPMS/USA, Region 1 2005 Approved Event Dates
12 March: IPMS Southern Maine
2 April: IPMS Long Island - RepLIcon
3 April: IPMS Niagara Frontier – Buffcon
3 April: IPMS Wings and Wheels – Valleycon
9 April: IPMS Champlain Valley – Can-Am-con
23/24 April: IPMS MASSCAR
6-8 May:Noreastcon – IPMS Rochester
20-23 July: IPMS Nationals – Atlanta GA
10 September:IPMS Patriot – Patcon
18 September:Rocon – IPMS Rochester
25 September: IPMS Cape Cod
16 October: Granitecon – IPMS Granite State
22 October: IPMS Mid Hudson Valley
6 November: Baycon – IPMS Bay Colony
12 November: IPMS LIARS
IPMS/USA, Region 1 2005 Approved Event Dates
12 March: IPMS Southern Maine
2 April: IPMS Long Island - RepLIcon
3 April: IPMS Niagara Frontier – Buffcon
3 April: IPMS Wings and Wheels – Valleycon
9 April: IPMS Champlain Valley – Can-Am-con
23/24 April: IPMS MASSCAR
6-8 May:Noreastcon – IPMS Rochester
20-23 July: IPMS Nationals – Atlanta GA
10 September:IPMS Patriot – Patcon
18 September:Rocon – IPMS Rochester
25 September: IPMS Cape Cod
16 October: Granitecon – IPMS Granite State
22 October: IPMS Mid Hudson Valley
6 November: Baycon – IPMS Bay Colony
12 November: IPMS LIARS
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Useful Links
Here's some related links:
The IPMS Home Page:
IPMS USA
The BPMS Pages:
BPMS Club
Frank C's Modern Military Aircraft
Scott's BPMS Gallery
The IPMS Home Page:
IPMS USA
The BPMS Pages:
BPMS Club
Frank C's Modern Military Aircraft
Scott's BPMS Gallery
Hatching Hasegawa’s Harrier By Frank C.
They don’t carry much or fly very fast, and they crash an awful lot, but Harriers take off and land without long runways, so the Marines still love ‘em. The Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing (V/STOL) fighter-bomber is a complicated, interesting shape, and the Hasegawa 48th scale kit seems to have all the subtle curves and bumps of the real thing. Hasegawa’s first 48th scale jump-jet (Kit PT28) was the long-nosed USMC AV-8B Harrier II Plus with radar, night vision pilotage sensor, and a night targeting pod. The model has since been reissued as the plain AV-8B from Desert Storm, the Night Attack version with the nose-top sensor alone, and the British Harrier GR7 with yet another nose. It’s a state-of-the-art kit with engraved lines, fine details, and good decals, but not a project for impatient beginners. That said, the end result is handsome as a Harrier can be.
You'll see Frank’s Harrier in the forefront. Pic is from the 01/2005 BPMS Meeting
Construction starts in the cockpit with a six-piece ejection seat and nicely detailed instrument panel. Resin freaks are free to double the price of their kits with aftermarket cockpits, but I thought the out-of-the-box detail was fine. If you don’t like to drybrush tiny switches, the kit contains an instrument panel decal. Even though Hasegawa did not include seat harness decals on the sheet, I was too lazy to make straps out of paper. The instructions say the headrest should be black, but a color picture showed both headrest and seat cushion as light olive drab. A decal that represents the explosive cord buried in real Harrier canopies should be applied inside the kit canopy between Q-Tipped layers of Future before you attach the clear canopy to its separate rail. Once dry, the effect is really pretty nice.
The main fuselage of the Hasegawa Harrier is made up of two sides and a belly panel that require careful alignment. Set properly, the belly panel sits just right without filler putty. Just be careful before assembly to drill out the correct holes for the big belly strakes, gun pack, and centerline pylon, and the holes on top for the spine flare dispensers. I chose the aerodynamic belly strakes for my night laser bomber. I suspect the 25 mm gun is now out of favor because it takes the expensive, vulnerable Harrier into the lethal envelope of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles.
Two-piece dumbbells connect left and right jet nozzles and contain black plastic bearings. The nozzles themselves are nicely molded two-piece assemblies that squeeze into the bearings without glue so they can rotate without falling out. The front nozzles are for cold air exhaust, so they can be painted gray like the rest of the airplane. The rear exhausts are hot, so they and their protective fuselage plates are steel-shaded.
A crisply molded turbofan face and inlet shroud sit at the front of the fuselage cage. You should spray the inlet interiors white before assembly, but that calls for delicate masking throughout assembly and finishing. I hand-painted the inlet walls white and the fan face silver after assembly and overall painting.
The Hasegawa Harrier front fuselage and radar are separate left and right pieces. Rather than build a nosecone and just stick it on the fuselage, I glued each half-side in line carefully to eliminate the steps that usually require filling and sanding. The whole assembly with sandwiched cockpit cantilevers on the front of the fan face and intake shroud. For the first time in a Harrier kit, the intake cheeks have individual blow-in doors. You have to be careful to put the doors in just right with tube glue or some other slow-setting adhesive to get the top doors to open all the way and the rest to deflect progressively less until the doors close on the bottom half. The intakes, nose, and cockpit deck all fit the fuselage somehow. With a little sanding, the seams disappear with almost no putty.
The wing fit is another story. Top and bottom halves sandwich fine and snap into the fuselage with a little push and shove. The aggravation comes with the Leading Edge Root Extensions (LERX) behind the cockpit and in front of the wing. To make different versions of the Harrier, the LERX plate is a separate piece that mates at the front with the cockpit deck and at the rear with the wing. To make all edges meet, the plate has to float up and down, left and right, so it never sits right. A nasty seam is inevitable right on top of the airplane in the middle of some subtle fuselage/wing curves. Filling, sanding, refilling, and re-sanding got me swearing, but under a coat of paint, the mess finally disappears. Some lightly engraved panel lines are lost, but you can restore them with a dark pencil after painting.
The tailplanes set themselves at the correct dihedral, and the wing pylons need little filling. However, the Harrier is covered with little intakes, antennas, and lights. The kit apparently has ‘em all, so take your time to locate them properly. Every Harrier kit is tough to set on its landing gear. I suggest you attach the front leg first, then the wing pogos. The main gear should then be attached with white glue or slow-setting tube glue to slide in as the model sits on a flat surface. The idea is to finish with all the wheels on the ground. The small pogo doors are another complication, so make sure you’ve got the correct door facing the correct way under each wing.
With typical generosity, Hasegawa gives the Harrier builder only two fuel tanks, two Sidewinders, and the Lightning night targeting/laser designator pod for underwing ordnance. I found a photo of an AV-8B Plus on deck with the targeting pod and one 500 lb laser-guided bomb (LGB) on the inboard stations, tanks at the intermediate stations and ‘Winders outboard. A GBU-12 LGB came from the most recent Hasegawa weapons set. (“One Shot, One Kill,” like Marine Tom Berrenger in those Sniper movies.) The fuel tank holes had to be enlarged to move the tanks to the middle pylons, but the end result is a nice, cluttered warplane with modest firepower.
I painted my Harrier with Tamiya acrylics. Follow the kit instructions and most pictures, and the low-viz decals in the kit will disappear into the medium blue-gray recommended for the top of the wing. Instead, I used German Gray as a Gunship Gray facsimile for the top, Sky Gray for the middle, and a pale gray-polluted white for the belly. Silly Putty masking lets you feather the pattern edges if you spray at an angle. The effect has enough subtle gradation to look like the current Harrier Tactical Paint Scheme.
With a pair of Laser Maverick missiles in the foreground, an AV-8B Harrier with Marine Attack Squadron 542 taxis for take off at Al Asad, Iraq, 11/11/04
Decals are provided for a fin-flash VMA-231commemorative scheme and my plain, operational VMA-223 bird. Neither aircraft uses the big MARINES included for the upper wing surface. The decals are thin, and their film disappears totally between sprayed-on layers of Future. A final coat of Testors acrylic flat finish blends colors nicely.
Like the real Harrier, the Hasegawa AV-8B Plus is a complicated airplane, but the finished replica has the right look of a Marine machine ready for war. The kit is more complete and more refined than the older, cheaper Monogram AV-8B which also required plenty of filling and sanding. Take your time and check your directions and you’ll have a convincing Jump Jet.
You'll see Frank’s Harrier in the forefront. Pic is from the 01/2005 BPMS Meeting
Construction starts in the cockpit with a six-piece ejection seat and nicely detailed instrument panel. Resin freaks are free to double the price of their kits with aftermarket cockpits, but I thought the out-of-the-box detail was fine. If you don’t like to drybrush tiny switches, the kit contains an instrument panel decal. Even though Hasegawa did not include seat harness decals on the sheet, I was too lazy to make straps out of paper. The instructions say the headrest should be black, but a color picture showed both headrest and seat cushion as light olive drab. A decal that represents the explosive cord buried in real Harrier canopies should be applied inside the kit canopy between Q-Tipped layers of Future before you attach the clear canopy to its separate rail. Once dry, the effect is really pretty nice.
The main fuselage of the Hasegawa Harrier is made up of two sides and a belly panel that require careful alignment. Set properly, the belly panel sits just right without filler putty. Just be careful before assembly to drill out the correct holes for the big belly strakes, gun pack, and centerline pylon, and the holes on top for the spine flare dispensers. I chose the aerodynamic belly strakes for my night laser bomber. I suspect the 25 mm gun is now out of favor because it takes the expensive, vulnerable Harrier into the lethal envelope of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles.
Two-piece dumbbells connect left and right jet nozzles and contain black plastic bearings. The nozzles themselves are nicely molded two-piece assemblies that squeeze into the bearings without glue so they can rotate without falling out. The front nozzles are for cold air exhaust, so they can be painted gray like the rest of the airplane. The rear exhausts are hot, so they and their protective fuselage plates are steel-shaded.
A crisply molded turbofan face and inlet shroud sit at the front of the fuselage cage. You should spray the inlet interiors white before assembly, but that calls for delicate masking throughout assembly and finishing. I hand-painted the inlet walls white and the fan face silver after assembly and overall painting.
The Hasegawa Harrier front fuselage and radar are separate left and right pieces. Rather than build a nosecone and just stick it on the fuselage, I glued each half-side in line carefully to eliminate the steps that usually require filling and sanding. The whole assembly with sandwiched cockpit cantilevers on the front of the fan face and intake shroud. For the first time in a Harrier kit, the intake cheeks have individual blow-in doors. You have to be careful to put the doors in just right with tube glue or some other slow-setting adhesive to get the top doors to open all the way and the rest to deflect progressively less until the doors close on the bottom half. The intakes, nose, and cockpit deck all fit the fuselage somehow. With a little sanding, the seams disappear with almost no putty.
The wing fit is another story. Top and bottom halves sandwich fine and snap into the fuselage with a little push and shove. The aggravation comes with the Leading Edge Root Extensions (LERX) behind the cockpit and in front of the wing. To make different versions of the Harrier, the LERX plate is a separate piece that mates at the front with the cockpit deck and at the rear with the wing. To make all edges meet, the plate has to float up and down, left and right, so it never sits right. A nasty seam is inevitable right on top of the airplane in the middle of some subtle fuselage/wing curves. Filling, sanding, refilling, and re-sanding got me swearing, but under a coat of paint, the mess finally disappears. Some lightly engraved panel lines are lost, but you can restore them with a dark pencil after painting.
The tailplanes set themselves at the correct dihedral, and the wing pylons need little filling. However, the Harrier is covered with little intakes, antennas, and lights. The kit apparently has ‘em all, so take your time to locate them properly. Every Harrier kit is tough to set on its landing gear. I suggest you attach the front leg first, then the wing pogos. The main gear should then be attached with white glue or slow-setting tube glue to slide in as the model sits on a flat surface. The idea is to finish with all the wheels on the ground. The small pogo doors are another complication, so make sure you’ve got the correct door facing the correct way under each wing.
With typical generosity, Hasegawa gives the Harrier builder only two fuel tanks, two Sidewinders, and the Lightning night targeting/laser designator pod for underwing ordnance. I found a photo of an AV-8B Plus on deck with the targeting pod and one 500 lb laser-guided bomb (LGB) on the inboard stations, tanks at the intermediate stations and ‘Winders outboard. A GBU-12 LGB came from the most recent Hasegawa weapons set. (“One Shot, One Kill,” like Marine Tom Berrenger in those Sniper movies.) The fuel tank holes had to be enlarged to move the tanks to the middle pylons, but the end result is a nice, cluttered warplane with modest firepower.
I painted my Harrier with Tamiya acrylics. Follow the kit instructions and most pictures, and the low-viz decals in the kit will disappear into the medium blue-gray recommended for the top of the wing. Instead, I used German Gray as a Gunship Gray facsimile for the top, Sky Gray for the middle, and a pale gray-polluted white for the belly. Silly Putty masking lets you feather the pattern edges if you spray at an angle. The effect has enough subtle gradation to look like the current Harrier Tactical Paint Scheme.
With a pair of Laser Maverick missiles in the foreground, an AV-8B Harrier with Marine Attack Squadron 542 taxis for take off at Al Asad, Iraq, 11/11/04
Decals are provided for a fin-flash VMA-231commemorative scheme and my plain, operational VMA-223 bird. Neither aircraft uses the big MARINES included for the upper wing surface. The decals are thin, and their film disappears totally between sprayed-on layers of Future. A final coat of Testors acrylic flat finish blends colors nicely.
Like the real Harrier, the Hasegawa AV-8B Plus is a complicated airplane, but the finished replica has the right look of a Marine machine ready for war. The kit is more complete and more refined than the older, cheaper Monogram AV-8B which also required plenty of filling and sanding. Take your time and check your directions and you’ll have a convincing Jump Jet.
BPMS Member Lanny Reinish Passes Away
Hi All,
Some sad news:
Lanny passed away on Monday February 7th and this is the obit from the Staten Island Advance.
http://www.silive.com/obituaries/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1107787730171120.xml
His wife's name is Alicia Reinish and the address is 19A Melissa Street, SI NY, 10314.
Some sad news:
Lanny passed away on Monday February 7th and this is the obit from the Staten Island Advance.
http://www.silive.com/obituaries/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1107787730171120.xml
His wife's name is Alicia Reinish and the address is 19A Melissa Street, SI NY, 10314.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
February 2005 Bulletin
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JANUARY MEETING!!!
New Regime: This was the first meeting with the new regime in place. Our new Prez is Vinny R., and the Veep is Jimmy T. Good work guys!
Model of the Year Competition: This was the final throw down to see who reigns supreme in each category. The three models with the highest vote counts by different modelers got to compete. Winners will be announced during the February meeting.
Kit Sale Night: Goodies were up for grabs and a nice variety at that. Plenty of deals that night.
First New Member of the Year! We voted in our first new member of 2005, Kay! Welcome to the fold!
New member Kay (center) flanked by Andy (left, a visitor) and your humble narrator to the right.
On the agenda: February
Contest Night 1st Qtr: This will be the first installment of the annual contest for 2005. Start racking up votes NOW!
Show Us Your Tool: Everyone’s favorite activity, and not nearly as vulgar as the name may let on. Just bring in some item that you use in modeling that you think the others might be interested in knowing about. It can be a tool, adhesive, putty, an adaptation of a technique, etc. Bring it in and let us know about it!
BTW: Don’t forget to fill out all your forms. There are models being displayed without the kit slips. I can’t keep track of the model count accurately unless all paperwork is filled out.
Our Current Location: Bergen Beach Sports Complex
From Belt Pkwy: Take exit 11N - Flatbush Avenue North. Go North on Flatbush Avenue and make a right onto Avenue U (Kings Plaza). Continue on Avenue U to Bergen Avenue, Make a right onto Bergen Avenue. Go straight on Bergen Avenue 3 blocks. Sports Complex on left.
http://www.bbyosports.com/
THEMES FOR 2005
In The Movies: Ted and Phil are sponsoring "In The Movies" in for June 2005. Basically build something, ANYTHING from a movie. More details will be forthcoming.
OTHER THEMES
We don’t have a theme for December yet. Do you want to sponsor something? Some concepts we’ve kicked around are: Experimental, Take One for the Team, and Things That Suck. Contact the officers if you want to sponsor any of those or anything else for December.
Don't forget our homepage: http://www.bpmsclub.com/
Initial Offering
Hi all!
Welcome to the official Blog for the Brooklyn Plastic Modelers Society.
This will be the place to find all the latest info and activities for the BPMS.
It'll be easier for me to update news and information about the BPMS through blogspot as opposed to working on the html. I can update from work, home, and even on vacation.
There's not much going on here at the moment, but keep your eyes peeled as I will be updating this frequently.
Enjoy!
~Bob
Welcome to the official Blog for the Brooklyn Plastic Modelers Society.
This will be the place to find all the latest info and activities for the BPMS.
It'll be easier for me to update news and information about the BPMS through blogspot as opposed to working on the html. I can update from work, home, and even on vacation.
There's not much going on here at the moment, but keep your eyes peeled as I will be updating this frequently.
Enjoy!
~Bob