I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support for the move to the new meeting place. You're going to find that it will serve our needs a lot more efficiently than where we were. This is especially true in that we will have more working space for hands-on demonstrations, private conversations and general modeling discussions.

Notes from the June 2012 Meeting

This was our last meeting at the Amherst Youth Center. As President John Zaranek reminded us, next month we'll be meeting at our new location at the Knights of Columbus Hall, in the room where we hold the contest part of BuffCon.

Not much business this month. John reminded everyone to work on their Tim Horten's Challenge model that's due at the August meeting. We also had a short discussion about adding more tips and demo material to our website. We have essentially unlimited space, so we can handle videos as well as text and photos. As John mentioned, we have writers who can add words and photos to your ideas and techniques, so let's see what we come up with collectively. The new space should allow us to work on this kind of thing at club meetings as well.

Justen Hanna was our tour guide for the models and stuff on the tables.

Frank Blonski also brought in a working rocket, a return to a previous hobby. His America rocket is custom finished and painted much like Frank's show cars. First flight is yet to come.

Tony Gliszczynski has been working on his Tim Horten's Challenge entry, an orange Dodge Dart. He used this model to try out his Grex airbrush with lacquer and thought it worked great. Just decals and clear coat to go. You'll make it in time, Tony.

Larry Osolkowski is also well into his Challenge entry, a Glencoe 1/48 SPAD 13. He says it's a putty bomb so far with lots of ejector pin marks to fill and that he's looking forward to trying some painted wood graining. Larry also showed a new 1/20 Fujimi kit for a Sauber C30 that ran at last year's Japan GP. It's a curbside but with lots of tiny separate parts and even includes paint masks.

The German armored rail car that Mike Martinez picked for his Challenge entry is taking shape too. It's from a Dragon kit and just fits into a cigar box for transport. Mike says it's been tough to keep the body panels square during construction and that any error really shows, but he's got it beat now.

Joe Szczygiel finished his scratch built 1/35 US Army Husky, a heavy armored mine hunting vehicle, in time for the AMPS annual show where he earned a silver medal. This is an extremely well done and complex model.

Jeff Belling built a 1/144 scale F-16 in Thunderbird markings and mounted it in a flying pose for a nice display piece. It's from the old DML kit and is a gift for a friend.

Paul Hines showed a complete rebuild of the old Lindberg fishing boat kit. It's a pretty good sized model. Paul planked the deck and refined or added lots of details from scratch, with no photoetch. Paul says that wood planking over plastic kit parts makes for an enjoyable building experience.

Joe Saccomanno shared an unusual garage sale find. It's a US Forces - Germany license plate from 1952. It's a little rough and partially overpainted but very interesting nonetheless.

Jacob Gadek scratch built a really cool, large scale Sopwith Camel, all from Legos. He did this without a kit or even instructions. The shape is instantly recognizable and the colors, including the markings, are great. Jacob put in lots of details like wing ribs and even made workable controls. Great job, Jacob.

Mark Gadek showed us his 1/32 Tamiya F-15A, which is a pretty good sized model. It's an older kit so Mark added an Aires resin cockpit to bring the model up to par. He had a little trouble with the Cartograph decals and ended up using the Future puddle method (per Justen Hanna's suggestion) to make sure they stuck down and settled correctly. This is a great method to deal with difficult decals and several people requested a demo.

Brian McFee also signed up for the Tim Horton's Challenge and brought in his entry, a 1/48 Tamiya P-51B. He's well along on the project and plans to finish it as Don Gentile's famous "Shangri La".

John Zaranek also showed his nearly done British postwar Scimitar AFV. Just needs a little photoetch, some tracks and paint. John's added some neat details including a gunsight with cross hairs made from real hair. It will be in a small diorama with figures to come. He also showed his nearly completed Normandy coast gun emplacement diorama with lots of nice groundwork from simple stuff.

Our final Tim Horton's Challenge entry in the works came from Rich Bernecki. He's working on a 1/48 Tamiya A6M5 Zero with an Eduard interior to jazz it up.

Bob Collignon closed the table review with a glimpse of a new project he's starting for display at a Holocaust memorial. The project is to build a large model of one of the famous 40&8 French railway freight cars, on the order of 5 feet long. The model is intended to be used as a way to display photographs of the 3000 French Jewish children who were turned in to the German occupation authorities by the Vichy French just before Paris fell to the Allies. The children were packed into the cars without any food or water and transported to Auschwitz. Less than 300 survived the camp. Bob got a lot of advice on building the car and for the display as well. A very sobering and worthwhile project.

Finally, some around the room shots of the meeting.

There was a lot of interesting stuff and great work on the tables this month. We'd love to see yours here too!

Our next meeting is Monday, July 16 at 7 PM, at our new spot in the Knights of Columbus Hall, 2736 Union Rd., Cheektowaga. See you then, and don't forget to bring in a finished, in-progress or new kit to show off.

Thanks to Bob Collignon for the photography.

The 2012 Tim Horton "I Am Not a Modeling Loser" Team Challenge V

2012 Tim Horton's Challenge Teams