Howdy, everybody!
For those not in the know, the former host of the Iron Modeler blog, TypePad, shut down at the end of September. I had a choice–shut down the blog entirely or migrate the content to a new host. Since I had experience working in WordPress, and since I know someone who had some bandwidth, I decided to migrate over.
The good news? The URL is the same, so you can’t get lost.
The bad news? Most of the images didn’t make the trip. In time, I’ll upload some of the photos to a gallery. Will I re-embed them into the blog articles? Stay tuned.
Wait, did he say “gallery”? Blogs don’t have galleries, do they?
That’s the other bit of news. This blog is now part of a website. Which is good.
Why, you ask? Because I can do more within the structure of a website than I can with a simple blog.
I’m still cleaning things up from the move, but I have some ideas.
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As far as actual hacking of plastic goes, I finished the 1/72nd scale F-16/101 using the 1976-vintage Revell kit and Caracal Models’ wonderful “F-16 Viper – The Early Years” decals and the exhaust nozzle from a Tamiya Block 50 kit. It goes nicely with the Revell 1/72nd scale F-15A model (from the original 1974 issue) likewise decorated as an early aircraft during flight tests (and again using a Caracal Models decal sheet).
I also finished a first-issue Kinetic 1/48th scale EA-6B Prowler. The kit came to me from a friend at work, with the only constraint that I use the kit-supplied decals for VAQ-140. It was a fun project, and a challenging project at times. But isn’t that part and parcel of model building?
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So,what’s next, you ask…
As discussed once or twice, I was born within an hour’s drive from where the USS New Jersey (Geek Stuff: Iowa-Class battleship, BB-62) was built at the Philadelphia Navy Ship Yard and where she sits in her retirement in Camden, NJ. I have had plans for a series of models of the ship as she appeared between her launching in 1942 and her retirement in 1990. At one time, I figured six models would do a good job of visually telling the story of the ship’s history. Well, I’m doing this in 1/350th scale, and in order to maintain my sanity and have sufficient space to display the models, I’ve pared it down to three–one as she appeared during most of World War Two using Tamiya’s 1985 WWII-era USS Missouri kit with a Tom’s Modelworks enclosed round nav bridge, one as she appeared off the coast of Vietnam in 1968 from a combination of parts from the Tamiya Missouri and New Jersey kits, and one as she appeared a year or so after her final modernization and recommissioning in 1983.
I’ve started on the later fit first, using the venerable Tamiya kit from 1984. I’ve also procured an Eduard photoetch set and a Pontos Detail Up set. I’ve removed parts from the trees and cleaned them up, and now I’m at the “eating an elephant” phase–assembly by assembly, I’m removing molded-in details that will be replaced by photoetched, resin, or wood parts from the detail sets. So far, so good…
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In the meantime, we’ve also been adopted by another cat. This one turned up under the hood of my wife’s car in August. She kept hanging around the house, so we contacted one of the local Trap-Neuter-Release organizations and scheduled a trap date. In the meantime, she began to warm up to us. Oh, yeah, and one of her friends showed up. Her friend is still kind of spicy–feral cats do that–but the original cat really started hanging close to the house. In order to get them into a routine for the trap date, we’d put food out. Every morning, as we fed the first cat, she would come closer to us and watch. By the end of October, my wife said, “I bet if we left the door open, she would walk right in.” And, on October 26th, we did just that–we left the screen door open, and she walked right in.
The funny part of the whole thing is that Smokey, the self-proclaimed Mountain Lion, melts when he sees the new cat. Gilda isn’t so enamored of the idea of a little sister–yet, but we’re sure she’ll warm up in time.
The new kitty is named Tabitha. When I was in college, my parents adopted a black tabby that we named Samantha, after Samantha Stephens from the TV show Bewitched. Later in the series, they had a baby daughter that they named Tabitha. At the time, I thought it was a shame that she couldn’t have kittens. Well, 40 years later, we have Tabitha. I’ll post some pictures of her at some point, you can be sure of that…
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That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and, as always, I bid you Peace.