THE PATRIOT. August Meeting Info. In This Issue. IPMS Patriot Chapter Newsletter

Transcription

1 THE PATRIOT IPMS Patriot Chapter Newsletter Pip Moss, Editor August 2011 Billerica, MA Meeting Info The next Patriot Chapter meeting will take place on Friday, August 2, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Parish Unitarian Church in Billerica, MA. The church is located on Concord Road, just as it meets Route 3A (Boston Road) at the Billerica Town Common. The August meeting will be a build session with a business meeting, Show- and- Tell, and a raffle. It s always a treat when David Hamel turns up with one of his beautifully built models. Here s another Thunderbolt, this time a P-47D-30 bubbletop, built OOB with Alclad NMF and decals from Aeromaster. Markings are for the 509th FS, 405th FG, 9th AF. In This Issue July Meeting Minutes...2 Show and Tell List & Raffle Report...2 New England Air Museum Trip...2 Show and Tell Gallery...6 Question of the Month...7 Upcoming Events...8 IPMS/USA Membership Form...8

2 Minutes from the July Meeting CHAPTER President Dave Schmidt called the meeting to order at 8:00. Ten members and one guest were present. Ben Stuart introduced himself and said that he is trying to get back into the hobby after a break of several years. Dave discussed the planned trip to the New England Air Museum. Logistics of the trip and transportation were discussed. Planned meeting time at the museum is 11:00 AM. About ten members are signed up for the trip. [See report on Page 4. ed.] Dave read a letter informing the club that long time member Steve McDonnough passed away in June. At the end of the business meeting, Dave held a special raffle of three admission tickets to the New England Air Museum.. After the business meeting, there was a brief break, followed by Show and Tell and then the monthly raffle. After the raffle, the meeting broke up for the night. Rick Lippincott, Secretary Show and Tell David Hamel P-47D-30 (Tamiya) Pip Moss...1/48 F11C-2 Hawk (Classic Airframes) John Walker...1/35 Sherman Mk.IC Firefly (DML) Raffle Report July winner: Alan Beeber 1/35 Bronco Staghound. Turnout for the meeting was low, so we only sold $25 worth of tickets. As a result, we lost $3, resulting in a year-to-date profit of $ I wasn t at the July meeting, but Alan Beeber took care of getting the raffle kits to the meeting in my absence. Thanks again, Alan! The Styrene Gods clearly appreciated Alan s volunteering, too, and rewarded him with the winning ticket! Finally, the value of our raffle inventory continues to go up. In late June, I was contacted by a fellow in Medford who had taken up the hobby, and then decided it wasn t for him after all. He found us via our website and wanted to donate his kits to a good home. As a result, we ve added a dozen armor kits to the raffle table: a mix of 1/35 and 1/72 scales, mostly post-ww2 subjects probably $100 worth of kits. You ll see them trickling into the monthly raffle selection over the next few months. Bill Michaels, 2nd Vice President Special Report Our recent outing to the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, CT was a great success and a lot of fun. Although we all wished that more club members had chosen to take part, those of us who did go really enjoyed socializing and exploring the surprisingly extensive collection. Our ragtag band included Dave Schmidt, Bill Michaels, Rick and Karen Lippincott, Alan Beeber, Mike Hirsch, John Touloupis and his grandsons Ezra, Jibriel and Emmanuel, Ora Lassila and his daughters Lauren and Grace, and myself. After meeting for group pictures in front of the entrance, we went inside and found our guide, Dennis, waiting for us. He proceeded to take us through the three main inside areas the military hangar, the civilian hangar and the B-29 hangar as well as the outdoor displays and the restoration facility. I m afraid guiding us was like herding cats for Dennis we were constantly straying off on our own to look at and photograph the many intriguing items but he was a good sport and a real gentlemen with a great deal of knowledge and enthusiasm to share. Highlights are really too numerous to list, but some of my favorites in the military hangar were a Vought XF4U-4 Corsair, an F-100A Super Sabre, a Ryan PT-22, and a beautiful P-47D Thunderbolt. The civilian hangar is dominated by a DC-3 and a really gigantic Sikorsky JS-44, the sole remaining American-built, commercial, trans-oceanic, four-engine flying boat. There are also immaculate replicas of a Granville Brothers R-1 Super Sportster and a Curtiss 1911 Pusher, the type that made the first takeoff and Patriot Club Field Trip 2011 Page 2 landing on a US Navy ship. The B-29A, Jack s Hack, is another beautiful restoration and the centerpiece of the museum s 58th Bomb Wing exhibit. Visitors are allowed to climb inside to view the cockpit and bomb bay. Eyecatching items in the outside area include an F4D-1 Skyray and a Martin RB-57A Canberra. Inside the busy, cluttered restoration building, we saw several projects including a Douglas A-26 Invader, an F-104 Starfighter, and a Chance Vought Regulus missile, the latter of which was being worked on as we watched. After exploring the museum for a couple of hours, several of us felt the need for lunch, so we followed Ora and his girls to a nearby Chilli s for some (surprisingly) good food and animated conversation. Then it was back to the museum for a few more looks and some time in the gift shop. On the way back to Massachusetts, a number of us took a short side trip to Time Machine, an amazing hobby shop occupying several floors in an old mill building in Manchester, CT, just off I-84 some miles north of Hartford. Besides an interesting selection of models and supplies, there s also a huge room full of really amazing model train layouts. At length it was time to head home after a thoroughly enjoyable day with lots to see and loads of camaraderie. I do hope you ll think about joining us for the next trip, whenever or wherever it may be you won t regret it. Pictures on following pages. Pip Moss

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5 Special Report (concluded) Page 5

6 Show and Tell Gallery John Walker s 1/35 scale Sherman Mk.IC Firefly, built by kitbashing a DML M4DV and a Mk.IC hybrid turret. John used Tamiya XF-62 OD lightened with XF-60 Dark Yellow. He weathered the model with oils, pastels and weathering powders as well as highlighting with lightened OD. Decals, from a Bronco Comet kit, are for the British 11th Armoured Division, 2nd Regiment, France, Pip Moss s 1/48 scale F11C-2 Hawk. The Classic Airframes kit was a tough build, especially the struts, most of which were way too long. Finish is Alclad Duraluminum for fabric areas; Metalizer Aluminum for metal areas. Codes and NAVY designator were computer drawn; roundels and prop markings are from the kit and the recent Yellow Wings sheet. The model depicts a plane from VF-1B aboard USS Saratoga in Another view of Dave Hamel s P-47D Page 6

7 Question of the Month Summer check-in: What models are you working on, and how are they going? I ve got a couple going right now: an LS 1/144 P-3 Orion and an old Monogram 1/48 P-51B. The Orion is for our Navy group build and is up the first white coat; masking and painting the gray undersurfaces and wings are next. I like this kit (you might recall the same one that I did in RAAF markings for last year s Cross Dresser theme), and I ve tried a couple of new techniques on it. The canopy frames were masked bit by bit (vertical then horizontal) and sprayed in one session; and I used Mr. Surfacer 1200 as a primer coat, then polished it using 8000 grit polishing cloth. I really like the smooth effect and will use it on my next kit. I will use some old MicroScale decals for as the kit decals are a bit lame. The other kit has a bit of a story. My brother had come for his annual visit from Australia with my niece and nephew. Daniel, my nephew, expressed interest in trying his hand at a kit and chose the Monogram P-51B from my stash. It turns out that I had two kits (what a surprise) and figured that we could build them side-by-side. He is in his first year at Sydney University and has an interest in science and medicine; his attention to detail is very good and very quickly the cockpit was well painted and in a few days we both had complete airframes. The decals for mine were in very poor condition, but I happened to have a MicroScale set that had marking for several D and one B model! I will be making mine with a metal finish and am looking forward to prepping with Mr. Surfacer and a polish cloth. For its age, this is a good kit and I will be making it OOB. Mike Hirsch Nothing on the bench. Bought a house in Plantation, Fl and are busy getting ready to move, downsizing and trying to sell our house here. My Bf 110G-4 is back in a box easier to ship without all the antenna and drop tanks hanging out. Ol Movin On Bill Koster Tamiya T-55A, slowly. Kurt Kunze Many models on the bench; none of them are progressing much. Very close to finishing I have notably four models: Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.19 in Flygvapnet (Swedish Air Force) markings; Frog 1/72 Fokker F.VII in Ilmavoimat (Finnish Air Force) markings; AML 1/72 Göppingen Gö 9, a German prototype aircraft that served as a test-bed for the Do 335; Heller 1/72 Bücker Jungmeister in Finnish post-war barnstorming markings, with home-made decals. My daughter Grace and I are building a pink photo-recce Spitfire Mk.I (Encore/Heller, 1/72), although now she is again starting to show more interest in building a car model Ora Lassila on these varied with manufacturer, and the Klemm- and Junkersbuilt airframes are distinctly different. Despite being nearly forty years old (first released in 1973!), they don t look half-bad built. I d picked up some appropriate decals on sale, so the big expense may be the English paint. George Morrison I m currently scrambling to finish an Accurate Miniatures 1/48 Il-2m3 Sturmovik in time for the August meeting. I had it assembled, but neglected it for several years, paralyzed by my indecision about colors and camouflage schemes. Those issues have been largely resolved through information found at Massimo Tessitori s sovietwarplanes.com, so I m forging ahead. The model is painted, decaled, and ready for final details. Kits on the back burner include a Trumpter F9F-2 Panther, a Hasegawa/Aeroclub Spitfire Mk.IX, and a Revell F-86D (all 1/48). Next in line to go on the stove: possibly a Life Like Gloster Bulldog, or perhaps a Tamiya F2A Buffalo. Pip Moss I m working on the Roden 1/72 H-16 Floatplane for the exhibition, and a Grumman Duck. I have put my other projects on the back burner to give these priority. The H-16 is a very extensive kit, with each Liberty engine having approximately 25 parts ugh!! After these are completed and weathered, the rest of the build should go fairly quick until I hit the rigging. I am just starting to get into the Duck, but I m not anticipating any major hangups there. Dave Schmidt I have just bought three new latex molds for casting different rock and stone surfaces. Bragdon Enterprises makes some of the nicest molds out there. The rocks have deep cuts and more structure than other molds, giving them much more 3D depth and character. I bought one stacked stone wall and two rock face molds, #73, #85, and #87 from All of them have been cast in plaster, and if I have time this week/weekend I will try to paint one of them to highlight the character. Two of them broke in the mold because the kids were misbehaving and I had to pick them up to go home before they were really hard enough. The good thing about rock molds is that an extra crack in the rock wall is natural, and has no ill effect as long as it s before painting. I built a 20-by-8-inch diorama box from ½-inch foamcore board. If the rocks or stone wall come out particularly well, I may glue them to the back of the diorama box as a non-sky 3D backdrop. Harry Vig I decided to attack two ancient 1/32 Me 163Bs by Hasegawa a manageable-sized piece of plastic in a scale that looks pretty big to me. Reading Ransom & Cammann s recent unit history of the JG 400 from Osprey Pub. inspired me to take these down from the shelf. Glued and puttied, sanded and sprayed-on-the-bottom but there they rest, curing. So, some day the upper surfaces. Camouflage Page 7

8 Upcoming Events August IPMS National Convention, La Vista Conference Center, Westport Parkway, Omaha, NE. For info, go to September AMPS East, Northeast Military Modelers Association, Danbury Plaza Hotel, 14 Old Ridgebury Road, Danbury, CT. Contact John Gazzola: john.gazzola@ipmsnmma.org or October 9...Model Festival 2011, IPMS Igor Sikorsky, Milford Knights of Columbus, 625 Bridgeport Avenue, Milford, CT. Contact Raymond Prokoski: modeleray@snet.net or Octorer 16...GraniteCon XIX, Granite State Modelers, Nashua Elks Club, 120 Daniel Webster Highway, Nashua, NH. Contact Rodney Currier: nickmatt2@roadrunner.com or October 22...HVHMG 25, IPMS Mid Hudson, Elks Lodge, 29 Overrocker Road, Poughkeepsie, NY. Contact John Gallagher: showchair@hvhmg.com or November 6...Baycon 2011, IPMS Bay Colony, Knights of Columbus Hall, 304 Highland Avenue, South Attleboro, MA. Contact Robert Magina: treadhead@comcast.net or Page 8