Greetings fellow frozen modelers! What a great winter for staying inside an work on our hobbies. I think my snowblower now has more mileage on it than my car.

John R. Zaranek
President
IPMS Niagara Frontier
IPMS USA No. 47993

Model Table Round-up from the January meeting

Paul Hines brought in more samples of his automotive artwork: "The Many Faces of the Popular '32 Deuce". His drawings included Street Dragging, a Roadster and Customs including a Rag Top. Paul says starting in February his work will start to take on a world wide interest, especially vintage auto racing.

Larry Osolkowsi showed a model kit with a personal spin - the Hasegawa 1/24th scale Nissan Sunny Truck, which is the pickup truck version of his SCCA race car. Larry related that the truck was never sold in America, but was quite popular in Japan. The kit was just "too weird to pass up", and he may build it as a mild custom with an interesting paint scheme.

Michael Martinez offered up his 1957 Chevy "150" which he built as a basic kit. Mike said he scrapped the decals and kit exhaust and built his own wheel well headers. He finished the car with flat black paint out of a rattle can. He did a very nice job of simulating the blued sun visor on the windshield.

Jason Ignatjew brought in his Revell 1967 GTX finished with Tamiya paint.

He also brought an in-progress work in: the Revell 1957 Chevy Kustom Black Widow kit. Jason says that he's making many alterations to build a replica of his uncle's real car that he built in 1961.

John-Allen Price built an Airfix 1/72nd scale OS2U-1 Kingfisher model representing VO-1 Squadron off of the USS Arizona in October of 1941. John-Allen was inspired to build it after watching the movie, "Tora, Tora, Tora". He finished the model with Polly-S paints - dark grey upper surfaces and light grey underneath.

John-Allen is also busy working on a 1/72nd scale A-20C Havoc of the 67th Observation Squadron - US 8th Air Force in June, 1942. Again, planning on building it out-of-the-box, he will be trying to demonstrate a "reverse lend-lease" aircraft. Using Polly-S paints in Earth Brown, Dark Green and two shades of Neutral Grey he will be replicating the camouflage scheme. He's also going to show chipped paint and by using different tones of the base color, areas on the aircraft that were touched-up by the aircrews.

Another of John-Allen's WWII projects is this SBD-3 Douglas Dauntless by Airfix, again in 1/72nd scale. It depicts an aircraft of VS-2 Squadron which flew from the USS Lexington during the Battle of The Coral Sea on May 7-8, 1942. John-Allen hand drilled-out all of the dive brake perforations and hand painted it using Polly-S Sea Blue and Light Grey paints.

Jim Lewis showed us his Revell 1/24th scale 1932 Woody Funny Car. Jim took the body and mounted it to a funny car chassis and scratchbuilt the front nose over the engine compartment. He did the final finish in Tamiya Gloss Black Metallic paint. Jim also worked on "something funny and different": a 1/32nd scale Mustang "Wacky" Build. He combined plane and car parts to make the end result. The engine is a 396 bored-out Chevy to 513 with a supercharger. He finished the model with Tamiya Matt Black paint (sorry, no photo).

Wayne Dippold is now a famous modeling author! He brought in a project that will soon be published in the UK magazine, "Airfix Model World": the F4U-4 Corsair "Lancer 2". Wayne used an Aires aftermarket cockpit, filled the gun ports, added landing lights, dropped the flaps, moved control surfaces, sanded off the trim tab actuators and re-worked them with wire. He used Testor's "Teal" paint in the square bottle as the final finish.

Mark Gadek showed us his Trumpeter 1/32nd scale MiG-29M detailed in Polish Air Force livery. He used an Eduard interior and will be painted in Pactra Warsaw Pact colors. He also added Eduard wheel struts and bay doors. The downside of the kit, he explains are the "typical Trumpeter intakes - nasty and incorrect". Mark says that this aircraft variant is equivalent to the F/A18E Super Hornet.

Jacob Gadek continues with his favorite subject - superheroes and classic movie/TV show characters. This month he's working on the Moebius kit of Batman from the 1966 television show. Jacob relates that the fit is near perfect and all he had to do for a good fit was to sand the seams and there was no need for putty. He used Tamiya Flesh for the skin tones and used his mom's makeup to add different tones. All that's left to do is add a wash and he's done.

Eric Hillebrand brought us the Hobby Boss Schneider WWI tank kit in 1/35th scale. Very cool subject, but sorry, no photo.

Bob Collignon treated us to his rendition of Leonardo DaVinci's War Machine. Bob says this is a Ted Paris resin "re-pop" of an out-of-production kit. Bob added his own details in the form of a flag, pikes and some groundwork. Some of the issues he had was the usual resin clean-up and repair. He did say that it was an easy build because of the low parts count so he could get straight on to the painting. This was accomplished by using Vallejo, Lifecolour and Mig products.

Cindy Klukowski's offering this month was based on her fond memories of family trips to local outdoor theatres; hence, her Walther's kit of the "Skyview Drive-In". Cindy used a combination of Tamiya, Model Master and Citadel colors to paint it and Woodland Scenics products to produce the ground work.

Matt Klukowski is continuing with his long standing HO scale train layout structures. It's a house with a garage modified into a repair shop called "Speedy Andrew's". Matt is using Citadel and Vallejo paints for the finish. He's also building a house for the layout and is painting it brown and tan.

John Zaranek demonstrated a work-in-progress, the Tamiya 1/35th scale Land Rover Ambulance kit from about 1976. John added some scratchbuilt details to the patient compartment and scratches to the paint work using Vallejo Grey-Green with a paint brush over the airbrushed coat of Tamiya Sky (light green). He added chipping to the floor by using the salt masking technique. He plans on this being the centerpiece of a diorama of the British Army tending to injured people during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. He needs to plan out a street scene before going forward as well as sourcing figures with the proper uniforms of the time.

Tom Faith brought in some previously seen projects that have now gotten bases and groundwork to add context.

There were a few other items on the tables for which the information, unfortunately, was not available. If you fill out an info form, make sure John Zaranek gets it during the meeting.

Thanks to Bob Collignon for the photography.