Friday, December 26, 2014

Hey Studio27, where are my stuff?

Preordered the 1/43 AMG Mercedes W05 back in November, paid for my order a couple weeks ago, still haven't received the shipping confirmation nor tracking number yet. And they'll be shut down for the year starting tomorrow. I guess I won't see anything before 2015.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Attention Deficit Disorder


It happened again, I thought I am not going to start the Lotus 107 before I am done with the Williams FW29. I just cannot resist getting my hands on the playing with the Lotus. Attention Deficit Disorder?

I cleaned off flashings from the castings and with the low temperature solder on hand, filled up some voids on the body and under tray instead of using putty. Overall, the castings are decent and do not need a lot of cleaning and fixing, which is good. Tyres are the old style blank rubber ones without markings printed found in the recent Tameo releases. Since I have the Goodyear template, I'll just paint the markings on using the template instead of the decal.

By the way, I did not forget about the FW29. I did a little bit of work on the front and rear suspension and brake.


This is the last weekend of the year that I can spend on the workbench. Thank you everyone who follow this blog in 2014. I know you all have better things to do than reading my crap. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Let's build Lotus



I had a lot of fun participating in Ws43-san's "Let' building Racing 43". I was going to participate in the "Let's build Mazda", but unfortunately, a lot of shit happened early this year and I was not able to participate. Now that things got settled down a bit, I can participate in the latest "Let's build Lotus".

Instead of the well known Lotus machines with Gold Leaf, JPS or Camel livery, I opt to build the 107, which was raced by Mika Häkkinen back in 1992, 2 years before the original team founded by Colin Chapman went belly up.

With the FW29 still on going and my slower than glacial build speed, I am not really sure whether I will be able to finish before the deadline which is the end of November in 2015.


Sunday, December 7, 2014

Aerodynamists are enemies of modelers


To be honest, I do not like the F1 front wings of this era. It is a pain in the butt to get the upper wing element look right.

Counting down to the end of 2014, I practically will only have 1 more weekend at the workbench. Still have a whole bunch of things to test fit before spraying on the surfacer.

Last weekend, I went home for Thanksgiving. And one of the Thanksgiving tradition of mine is to go to the San Francisco Auto Show to look at cars. There is nothing really special about the road cars, as the San Francisco show is not really major ones like New York, Detroit or LA. But they always have a section where they show some race cars. Here's Jimmy Vasser's 2006 PKV Racing Champ Car.



Another interesting car is this "up-side-down" Camero that is built to look like the car is flipped up-side-down




Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Rediscover my "Childhood Dream"


No 1/43 work this past weekend. It was Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. and I went back home in California to spend the weekend with family.

Whenever I go back home, I usually spend some time digging through my boxes of stuff. This is what I re-discover this time: my treasured old copy of Dou-mu (loosely translate to a child's dream) from the author of Akira, Otomo Katsuhiro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domu:_A_Child%27s_Dream 

Just like building models and watching TV, my parents considered reading comic books a waste of time. So me and my brother had to figure out ways to smuggle comic books back home and read them in secret. Once in a while we got busted and the comic books would end up heading to the landfill or incinerator on a garbage truck. This is one of the few survivors.