Iron Modeler

Author: Ralph Nardone

  • 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.