Iron Modeler

Author: Ralph Nardone

  • Modern Music, Plastic Insights, and an Update

    Howdy, all…

    A few weeks ago, I traveled to the Big City of Atlanta.  Normally at this time of year, a trip to Atlanta would be to go to the Airliner Collectibles Show at the Delta Museum.  Not so this year.

    A few years ago, a couple of friends turned me on to a band.  At first, I was lukewarm about them–the videos they pointed to were a little outside my tastes.  But one day, YouTube decided to throw another one of their live videos into my daily mix.  I had to stop what I was doing to see who was behind the music I was hearing.  I listened, and then replayed the video several times.  And I gotta tell you, I was hooked.  As I explored their YouTube catalog, I became more and more impressed with this band.  Now, 20 years ago there would have been no way I would have taken such an interest in a new band, primarily because “new” music 20 years ago sucked rocks…

    So, what is this band?  None other than Band-Maid.  Yep.  A J-Rock band comprised of five thirty-something Japanese women who dress in maid costumes and play some kick-ass music.  There’s more to it than that, but that’s what catches people’s attention.  If you look up their history online, you’ll find out how the founder, Miku Kobato, after her Idol band fell apart, pitched a concept to the management company–she wanted to form an all-girl band that wore cute outfits and played cool music.  How the band came together largely because the founder saw a guitar player’s videos online and tapped her as the lead guitarist, how the lead guitarist knew the drummer, and the drummer knew the bassist, and the management company was working with the girl who became the lead singer.  You’ll hear about the early struggles–the lead singer would up having vocal cord surgery, the founder–who was the original lead vocalist–decided she needed to learn how to play rhythm guitar so she wouldn’t find herself the odd person out, or how the bassist wasn’t happy because in the early years they were playing music written by someone else…

    My original reaction was “A band in costume?  My hitch in the KISS Army ran out when I was 13”.  Another friend told me to approach it in this manner, and if any of you are curious, here’s how to become a Maidiac.  Pick a song.  A live version is better, I’ll explain shortly (and might I suggest “Play”, “Puzzle”, “Freedom”, “Real Existence”, “Ready to Rock”, or “Super Sunshine”).  Start the video, but just listen to the music.  Listen all the way through.  Now, go back and watch the video.  Watch how the band interacts with the audience (the reason for choosing a live version).  Then watch their faces.  They’re smiling, they’re laughing, they’re trying to get each other to break focus.  They’re bouncing around the stage.  They’re interacting with the audience.  In other words, they’re having the time of their lives…

    Why attend a concert, then, if the live videos give this to you?

    Let’s back up.  Band-Maid doesn’t do concerts, they do “okyuji” (“servings”) for the audience (whom are referred to as “Masters and Princesses”), all based on the maid cafés where Miku worked.  During the okyuji, they have a few MC breaks where the band members interact with the audience. During the first MC segment, they’ll introduce themselves, they’ll goof on each other, they’ll welcome all the Masters and Princesses in attendance.

    The second MC segment is called “Omajinai Time”, or Magic Spell Time.  It starts with chants or “Moe, Moe, Kyun, Kyun“, and from there it can get really goofy and really funny.  Miku leads Omajinai Time (), and the chants will cover things specific to the location like Coca-Cola, pecan pie, Georgia peach (to which Miku pointed to herself), and finally, as she makes hand antlers, Buckhead (the venue was Buckhead Theatre) as she gallops around the stage.

    The show following Atlanta was in Dallas, and Buc-ees got the Omajinai Time treatment, complete with Kobato hopping around the stage trying to imitate a beaver (looking more like a cross between a rabbit and squirrel)…

    Omajinai Time is the reason to go to an okyuji.  You can catch videos of it on YouTube, but there’s nothing like being a part of it.

    An interesting tidbit I observed as I was standing in line–their audience skews older in the States.  The guy in front of me had just turned 70.  I’m in my early ’60’s.  The guy behind me was in his mid-40’s.  I asked the guy in front of me what hooked him.  He said the following:

    “Think about what we listened to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  That music was rapidly swept aside by (and he rattled these off rather quickly) disco, punk, New Wave, New Romantic, Hair Metal, Second New Wave, Glam Metal, Hip-Hop, Rap, Speed Metal, Grunge, and ‘Alternative’–whatever you want to throw in that bin.  The bands we listened to that are still around haven’t released new material in years, and most of them are no longer the same bands–some of them don’t even have any original members.  And here comes J-Rock and K-Rock, with these bands taking 1960s and 1970s rock and metal and putting their own spin on it.  It is refreshing.”

    As an aside, that is one thing that kept coming to my mind–my favorite band to that point was Jethro Tull.  I like the unusual, sue me.  But in the past 40 years or so, that band had been stagnant.  Heavy Metal Grammy aside, they stopped releasing albums in 2009 (The Christmas Album).  The founder and lead vocalist, Ian Anderson, can no longer sing–between his own vocal cord issues and a recent diagnosis of COPD, he cannot sing.  At all.  Then came 2011, when IA gathered the band in a room during the US leg of their tour and told them that Jethro Tull was done.  He was tired of “making money off a dead man’s name” and wanted to tour solo.  He had already branched out with some different musicians for some tours, so he already had The Ian Anderson Band in place.  The big shock of this was how casually he tossed the band’s long-time lead guitarist, Martin Barre, to the curb after 43 years.  And the big insult to the injury came in 2016, when IA resurrected the Jethro Tull name an released several albums with the new band…

    Other examples:

    • Townshend and Daltrey appearing as The Who (my wife and I call them The Why)
    • Mick, Ronnie, and Keith touring at the tender ages of  83, 79, and 82
    • Styx without Dennis DeYoung and Chuck Pannozzo, headed by a 76-year old James Young and 73-year old Tommy Shaw
    • A reconstituted Rush without Neil Peart–Anika is good, but the band should have honored their decision to end once Neil died
    • REO Speedwagon and Journey have both finally pulled the plug after most of the founding members moved on, were levered out, or died.

    The one “legacy” act I give a pass to is Ringo and his All Starr Band.

    Anyway, check these ladies out.  They’ve quickly become one of my favorite bands.  They’re taking a touring hiatus in 2027, but their 15th anniversary as a band in 2028–I’m expecting they will embark on a World Tour, and hopefully the North American leg will be longer than it was this year…
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    As I near the completion of the 1/350th scale USS New Jersey, something dawned on me.  Back in the 1980-1981 time frame, I remember buying a Revell 1/32nd scale F4U Corsair.  I had just read an article in Scale Modeler magazine by Shep Paine where he unleashed his superdetailing mojo on this kit.  I had been following Shep’s models since I got one of the Monogram kits with the diorama brochure in the box (the B-29, if memory serves).  The Corsair was (and still is) one of my favorite airplanes of all time, and I wanted to see what I could do.

    I remember some of the thoughts I had as I embarked

    “This is going to be a lot of work!”

    “What if I mess up?”

    “Can I pull it off as well as Shep did?”

    I was just entering my “serious modeler” phase, so doing a good job on this was important.  Not getting something just so could be a deal-breaker.

    I remember the project for another reason, too–I went out and bought my first Squadron-Signal “In Action” title.

    As I progressed through the model, there were some things I didn’t do–he modified the engine using one from a Revell P-47.  I couldn’t find one, and even if I could, it was outside my modeling budget.  He added Waldron doo-dads, which again fell outside my finances.  He folded the wing.  I was going to try, but in the end I could not find enough clear reference photos of the areas in question, so I glued the wings in the spread configuration.  If memory serves, I also left the flaps retracted, although I did cut the ailerons, elevator, and rudder free so I could reposition them.

    I decided to do Tom Blackburn’s “Big Hog” because it featured the mid-1943 insignia with the red outlines.  Couldn’t find acceptable decals (and again, my wallet had a say in the matter), so I took a 3/0 brush and thinned Testor’s Flat Red enamel and “converted” the kit items.

    For the paint scheme, the only paint I had at my disposal were the Testors square bottles.  I tried mixing my own colors, and was marginally successful, but in hindsight I know the colors were way off.

    The most important thing about the model?  I worked through my issues and got it finished.  Was it perfect?  Far from it.  But I learned stuff–which should be the goal of every modeler on every project.

    How does that relate to the New Jersey?  The New Jersey is the largest ship model I’ve built where I incorporated a lot of aftermarket.  Now, I had used ship photoetch before–mostly railings–but nothing that required some of the folding and bending that these parts did.  And I faced some problems along the way.  How did I deal with them?  I used everything I had learned on every model I had built previously and applied those lesson learned.  Again, is this model perfect?  Nope.  None of my models are perfect.  But it is a handsome model of the ship named after the state in which I was born.

    Which is what I wanted from the beginning.

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    I’ve got the Olympic Airways 737-400 on the base, it just needs placards.  The Revell 1/72 Gannett T.5 is close, too–the decals are on, it needs final clear coat, final assembly, and the base needs to be finished.  The Tamiya 1/48th M8 HMC is in the same boat.  Here in a few weeks (if I get off my fourth point of contact) I should have some pictures.

    The parts for the F-80s have been removed from the runners and are ready for clean-up.  Then, away we go…

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    That’s all for now.  Thanks for reading.

    Until next time, be good to one another, and, as always (now more than ever), I bid you Peace.

  • Catching Up, and what happened to the South Carolina Scale Model Mega Show…

    Howdy, all!

    It has been a while, but we’re still alive and well and living in…

    As I have had time, I’ve cleaned up a lot of the posts that were migrated from TypePad, and I think I got them squared away. I’ve had several ideas, but as I began to type the premise started to fall apart–call it a form of writer’s block, after I started drilling down into the subject at hand the idea lost cohesion, or I lost focus, or both. So, we’ve been radio silent for almost a year…

    I hope to change that in the upcoming months. Part of the issue is that I write for a living all day, every day, and once I shut down from work I would rather head upstairs to the workbench rather than continue to sit in front of a computer. As a result, I’ve completed several projects:

    • The 1/48th scale P-51Ds and PC-6 Turbo Porters mentioned in the 29 March 2025 post are done. I need to take some glamor shots.
    • The 8 November 2025 post mentioned the 1/72nd scale F-16A and 1/48th scale EA-6B–again, I need to schedule a photo session.
    • Since then, I also tackled an Eduard 1/48th scale P-39Q–I attempted to correct the kit’s biggest deficiency, which is the wing. As molded, the trailing edge is too think and the leading edge is too blunt.  Some Evergreen styrene, some CA glue, and some modeling skills came together to make things better.
    • I also completed a Tamiya 1/48th scale M8 Howitzer Motor Carriage. I like these kits, and have told people that, had 1/48th scale armor been as prevalent when I got back into the genre I would have chosen 1/48th scale over 1/35th scale.
    • For fun, I built a Tamiya 1/48th scale Me-262 to represent the Blue Öyster Cult “Secret Treaties” album cover.

    Currently underway (no pun intended) is the Tamiya 1/350th scale USS New Jersey I mentioned last November.  I have a few more sessions to go before I have everything assembled.  I incorporated the Pontos Models and Eduard detail sets–well, as much of each as I felt I needed.

    As a side project to the battleship, I pulled a Daco 1/144th scale Boeing 737-400 from the stash.  Our Mighty Tiger Junior gave me the kit, with Aviagraphics Olympic Airways decals, as a Christmas present many years ago.  I had built the Minicraft kit back in 1999 using the same decals, and sold the model to a customer at the hobby shop. I guess Junior figured I needed to replace it.  It is finally done, all I need to do is whip up a base.

    The final WIP is a Revell 1/72nd scale Fairey Gannet T.5. The kit’s roots (this one is from 2016, so says the box) are with the 2006 Gannet AS.4, if I recall correctly, but time was not kind to the molds.  It required a lot of clean-up, especially where the weapons bay met the cockpit and fuselage.  My copy also has some funky issues with the plastic in the form of flow marks and the like.  The canopies have magazine racks full of issues, too.  I managed to clean most of the boogers up, but it was a lot of work for what I started as a “popcorn” model (like the P-39 and M8, the Gannet was the subject of a club build day).  I have painted the model, and need to make some touch-ups and paint the anti-glare panel, apply decals, and do the final assembly.  Between the Revell and Trumpeter kits of the Gannet, the Revell is supposed to be the easier of the two, but I can’t see that the Revell kit is *that* much easier…

    Oh, well, at least I’ll have a Gannet for the display case.

    What’s next?  Since I got the Florida Air National Guard collection re-started with the Tamiya P-51D, I pulled a pair of Monogram 1/48th scale F-80s off the shelf.  The FANG flew the Shooting Star until they were reequipped with F-84Es and sent to Korea, and again after transitioning from F-51H’s after they returned from Korea.  The main difference, other than the paint and markings, were that the later batch were the refurbished F-80s that used the Sargent Fletcher tip tanks…

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    The South Carolina Scale Model Mega Show (at least in its current form and format) is dead.

    The decision was made to pull the plug at our last meeting.  As the saying goes, “The maths weren’t mathing.”  It takes a fair effort to host a show, both in money and manpower, and over the years both of those aspects showed a decline.  The slow declines were fairly steady and didn’t appear to be improving, so the best course of action was to call it a day.

    There were external forces at work that influenced the decline as well.  I could go on at length about the problem with the major scale modeling organizations in the States, but I won’t.  Suffice to say, the vocal majority holds a lot of sway over the success or failure of a model show. We stuck to our format regardless, but in the end, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

    Does that mean there won’t be an event to replace it?  No, but in order to have any event–from a swap meet to a full blown show with contest–requires finances and manpower, and we found ourselves short of both.

    My personal vision is to have a day-long scale modeling exhibition with seminars and maybe) a raffle.  Come to the event, put your models on display, socialize, and learn from the seminars.  No contest, no awards.  I’d love to do it.  But it won’t sell as long as the big organizations emphasize contests and awards over just building models for enjoyment.

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    That’s all I have for now. Since I have the website to work with, I will do my best to get all the glamor shots of the completed projects and create the gallery page I talked about last time.

    Thanks for reading.  Until next time, be good to one another, and, as always (now more than ever), I bid you Peace.

  • Welcome to the new digs!

    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.