Greetings and Salutations to one and all! With all things considered and going on, I hope that everyone had a good summer, but most of all, you were able to get a little more bench time in. By the time you all have read this, the board will have held its first board meeting in like forever. Yes, that means that we will be having our first club meeting coming up this Monday, Sept 21st. We've learned more from the board meeting about the hall's standard operating procedures during these times. More info will be posted via email and in this newsletter.

IPMS Niagara Frontier Meeting Agenda - September 21, 2020

7:00 PM to 7:10 PM - Place models on tables with description forms.

We would like to encourage all club members to join the national IPMS. Help support your hobby on a national level. IPMS provides the insurance that allows us to have our events, and membership includes a nice monthly magazine. The website can be found at: IPMS, and an application form can be found HERE.

Finally, some good news! The September general club meeting is ON, at the usual time (7:00pm) and place (the Knights Hall), this Monday, September 21st. As you all might expect, there are some rules we have to follow to keep us safe and keep the Knights Hall out of trouble:

1. We will all be required to wear masks while inside the hall and throughout the meeting.
2. Tables will be set up in a fashion to promote social distancing.
3. The bar will be closed, so bring your own drink(s).
4. When we arrive at the meeting, we will have to fill out a health questionnaire, our temperatures will be taken at the door, and hand sanitizer will be available.

There is some sad news for the automotive builders in our club. Scale Auto magazine has decided to cease publication, effective after the October 2020 issue. The magazine has been owned for some time now by Kalmbach, who also owns Fine Scale Modeler, and they say that some Scale Auto content will subsequently be included in Fine Scale magazine. If you have a subscription to Scale Auto, the remainder of it will be honored with issues of Fine Scale.

Club member Brian Yurko has started a group on a new social media app called Telegram. This app will allow club members to join and chat about modeling and club activities. The app can be found at Telegram, and is available for PCs, Macs and Android and Apple phones. If you install the app, visit this page to join the IPMS Niagara Frontier group.

A NOTE TO NON-MEMBERS

There are no minutes from the August 2020 general meeting, since the meeting was cancelled due to the Coronavirus Pandemic group restrictions.

To promote greater transparency regarding the operation of the club and the EBoard, action items from the previous month's EBoard meeting will be published in the newsletter. These will not be detailed minutes of the meetings, but highlights that the general membership should be aware of.

There are no minutes from the August 2020 E-board meeting, since the meeting was cancelled due to the Coronavirus Pandemic group restrictions.

Unfortunately, we've run out of material for member profiles, and haven't been able to get photos due to meeting cancellations. We'll get back on track when meetings start up again.

Since the August general meeting was canceled, members have sent in photos of their current projects and posted photos on the club FaceBook page. We didn't get much this month, but here's what we have.

Bill Borkowski's 1/24 scale Mini Cooper is complete!

Bill has also started working on a new project, a Hughes 500D helicopter.

Larry Osolkowski made some additional progress on his 1/25 AMT 1966 Mustang Hardtop. He scratch-built a new air cleaner from styrene tubing and sheet, along with some aluminum tubing, and added a wingnut to the top made from lead wire. The original resin part was the wrong shape. The new part is painted Model Master Ford Engine Blue. For reference, there's a photo of the real air cleaner.

The resin oil pan had some flaws, so it was puttied, sanded, and a couple of mounting bolts were added to each side.

The front engine cover and valve cover were primed and painted Model Master Ford Engine blue.

A resin Ford C4 automatic transmission was obtained to replace the manual that came with the engine kit. The bell housing was cut off of the rear of the engine, and a new mounting plate was scratch-built to fit the new transmission. The starter motor had to be removed from the engine, since it didn't line up with the new rear plate, so the resulting hole in the block was filled and a new starte motor was scratch-built.

Finally, the driveshaft that came with the Revell chassis parts was ugly, so Larry found a better-looking one from a Mustang race car kit in his stash, and drilled out the universal joints so they looked better. He'll make a mold and some resin copies.

As a side project, Larry built up, painted and decalled a set of wheels for a 1/24 Fujimi kit of a McLaren F1-GTR.

Larry also recently picked up a new Tamiya kit that was just released, a 1/24 Ford Mustang GT4 race car. He plans to build it as a replica of a car raced in the US IMSA Continental Tire series from a couple of years ago. The car was sponsored by a company called Volt, and a decal set was available from Indycals, along with the correct paint from Splash Paints and Studio 27 carbon fiber decals.

Tom Brown, Jr. has been working on a new figure model, an Eversor Assassin from the Warhammer 40K universe. Tom said he had loads of fun with this model and learned a lot while painting it.

Unfortunately, no around-the-room photos this month.

Thanks to everyone who contributed photos. I'm sure we're all looking forward to getting together again at the meeting on Monday.