MHaz
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Posts posted by MHaz
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Found a few HC-130N/P pics at Airfighters and other sites. Some camo birds with the overhead rails, too. You might try downloading them and lightening things up in photoshop or equivalent and finding details that way...
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The V-280 prototype was deliberately built with oversize tail surfaces so there would not be any issues with stability during testing. This is not uncommon for preproduction/flight test aircraft. Look at the YF-22 compared to the production F-22 - same thing: oversize tail surfaces to enhance stability.
The V-280 was flying test and demo flights while the Sikorsky team was still working out bugs and bending their aircraft every time they flew. Bell did a PUBLIC demo of the V-280 at the 2019 Fort Worth Air Show (I was there for that, in the Bell pavilion). You don't do a public, airshow demo of an experimental aircraft unless you're 10,000% sure it's going to go flawlessly.
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On 8/4/2022 at 11:05 AM, longmc said:
The authentic vfa-81 sunliners sheet. I just needed a set of lo vis fuel tank markings.
Which scale? I used to carry the Authentic decals line when Vagabond was selling direct to consumer, and I have a bunch of his 1/72 stuff left in the archives. I MIGHT even have a 1/48 copy left. It'll take me a few days to rummage through, though, since we just moved into our new home, and I'm unpacking, setting up, hanging pictures and all the other fun things you do when you buy a house. If I've got what you need, it's yours.
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On 2/14/2022 at 4:55 PM, sigtau said:
Interesting that he was able to copyright it. When I worked as a government contractor, the government owned everything I created. I had no right to any intellectual property I created while working there. My current private sector employer also owns everything I create and I have zero rights to take anything with me.
I depends on how the art is created. If he was a government employee at the time, then his copyright is automatically assumed by the government. If he was a private person creating the art on a government vehicle, then he can own the copyright to that art. In exactly the same way, Shane Medder (flygirlpainter) owns the copyright to all the art she paints on Navy and Marine birds, not NAVAIR, and it's proper to ask her permission to put decals of her work on a sheet.
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Blackbird Models makes an OP-2E conversion set, along with an AP-2H and P2V-5 (P-2E). All are listed as "out of stock" on their site, but if you scour eBay, you might get lucky:
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Most likely that is a dark grey primer that was sprayed on. Most jet intakes are made as smooth as possible in order to not disrupt the airflow headed towards the engine. Jet engines do funny things if the air being pulled in isn't flowing fairly smoothly, so I'd guess it's a sandable primer with dark coloring added.
As far as painting is concerned, I would suggest adding a couple drops of black to your favorite match to FS36081 to darken it up and call it good.
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2 hours ago, Thommo said:
And you are young too. Just goes to show, that sounds pretty drastic.
Do you have any underlying conditions? Are you fairly fit? I've heard of some very fit people who have been smashed by it & have problems still.
I wish our eldest daughter would just get the AZ (she was booked in for last week), but now she is holding out for Pfizer which her age group can get from next month, but God knows how long the waiting list will be.
I'm a little on the overweight side, but the docs here said they thought it might be due to multiple factors. My initial infection wiped me out pretty bad, and left me with no energy to do much of anything. Since COVID affects the clotting factors in your blood in weird ways, no activity for a couple days + enhanced clotting = hospital stay. But weirdly, they also said they're not sure that's what caused it, since they said the dangerous clots formed in my lungs directly, and didn't travel from my legs. The clots they pulled out of me are currently being examined at UAB Medical Center's annex here in Huntsville to figure out why they formed in the first place.
The important part is I'm home, recovering and a bit smarter than I was 3 weeks ago. (Also, the wife likes the beard I grew while convalescent, so there's that plus)
Like I said, I'm not going to be a PSA to get the shot, but I want anyone on the fence to step back, look at the research and make and informed decision, whatever it is. I've got enough antibodies in my system for about a year's protection, if not more, according to the docs (don't ask me how they figured that), so I probably won't get the vaccine until it's updated for newer variants. The other plus is since all my kids tested positive and are over it, we've been told that none of them will have to be quarantined if one of their classmates tests positive this year.
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I spent last weekend in the Huntsville (AL) Hospital ICU and general population due to COVID. We were waiting on information on how the vaccine affects nursing mothers, since my wife is still nursing our son, and I caught it. Had to have emergency surgery to remove blood clots that were blocking almost 30% of the blood flow to my lungs after a few days. I'm not going to tell anyone what to do, other than do your research and make an informed decision based on what's best for you. But use me as a cautionary tale for what can happen, too. I was the only conscious patient in the ICU for 30 hours, and I heard plenty of "the" alarms going off in the night and the following day.
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Shawn,
Great build!
There's a version of the Federation-class blueprints that shows the standard Class I saucer section:
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It's available on Amazon, and my local Walmart was restocking it on the shelves Sunday during my grocery run.
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Here's the cybermodeler page for the C-130 SEA camo scheme. The image comes from USAF T.O. 1-1-4.
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I *may* have 1-2 copies of those sheets in storage. I sent all but a few Fights On sheets to Sprue Brothers when Mike Pister and I decided to split up Fights On from Vagabond. (Rough year, that one.) I already have had one request for a couple if I can find where the movers put then. If you can give me a couple weeks to get out to my storage room with actual time to look, I'll be happy to see if there's any left. I can't promise they're still there, however. Stuff was packed up over a year ago, and I was already at my new job when the movers came. We've had 1-2 boxes turn up missing as we've gone through stuff.
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On 1/17/2021 at 7:52 AM, Mr Matt Foley said:
Thank you for taking the time to put this out. Is this also the reason Jef V left the company? I thought it was odd that he left the way he did. One could assume he saw the writing on the wall.
I'm honestly not sure about Jeff V, but I believe that's the essence of it. I find it poetic that he's now sponsored by Sprue Brothers.
It's honestly sad the way it went downhill - every time I went to an open house, it seemed like their warehouse got emptier and emptier. They they started charging admission for their open houses, and only for Eagle Quest attendees, leaving NCT IPMS high and dry. The last show I went to in 2019, MMD cancelled their tables the week before the show, leaving the club with a very sparse dealer area.
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11 hours ago, Mr Matt Foley said:
That would be great, unlike when Meteor Productions (Cutting Edge) went under.
Hopefully nobody steals their joy...
1 hour ago, habu2 said:
If so, why keep the huge warehouse? It wasn’t that long ago they doubled in size at the current location. If reducing overhead was an MBA goal then they would have walled off and leased out the giant warehouse.
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MMD failed because of mismanagement, high overhead and once a new management team was installed, lack of understanding of the hobby.
In the mid 2010's, while we were living in DFW, I'd go to every NCT IPMS open house they'd host, and since my daily commute would take me very close to their warehouse, I'd usually have an order to pick up every so often. MMD had about 30-40 people working there at that point, including 3 full time graphic designers for the flyers, several other office personnel, and the warehouse staff. By contrast, Sprue Brothers has 12 people, total, processing orders, ordering new product and maintaining their website. The level of overhead that MMD had to deal with hampered their cash flow, and that's about when we started seeing some of the "out of stock/available to order" funny business start to happen.
Once the "new" CEO, Gwen, and her management team took over, they were still saddled with the oversize staff, and added unfamiliarity with the hobby to the mix. Gwen joined MMD from Franklin Mint miniatures, and had zero background in the hobby, and some of the decisions she made reflected that - the collectibles and such that they tried to sell. MMD also had buyers that didn't understand either their hobby or their customer base. I had one tell me at an open house, point blank, that "Hasegawa isn't a popular brand, so we don't carry it..."
I know for a fact that they've had trouble paying their suppliers for several years. One paint company is owed in the 10's of thousands of dollars, and several of the book publishers are owed almost as much. I had my own experience with them back when we did the first VF-84 Phantom sheet - MMD wanted to buy a whopping total of 10 copies, wanted a 60% discount from retail AND wanted to pay me with a purchase order that would be redeemed up to 90 days after my decal sheets showed up at their door. (The owner of the local HobbyTown USA's there in DFW bought 50 copies, only asked for a 40% discount and paid in both cash and store credit [which I promptly spent on some new kits and supplies.])
The death blow was when Hobby Boss/Trumpeter dropped them as an importer; that was the only positive net cash flow for them by that point.
Sources: I'm friends with a couple of guys that were in the warehouse and one of their former orderers.
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On 1/14/2021 at 2:57 PM, Charlie D. said:
Likely it'll go away, along with all the other brands under their banner....Aeromaster/Eagle Strike, Superscale, Black Box, Avionix, Encore, In Action books...
I've been told that one of the other aftermarket brands is trying to acquire the True Details masters as payment for money owed by MMD to them. No clue how far along this process is, though.
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14 hours ago, sierrascale said:
If they are are not going to reprint them, they should sell the artwork to Caracal or Bullseye.
Yeah... NO. Vagabond Decals will not be selling our art to anyone.
Vagabond is still very much alive, and Vince Maddux and I are working on new sheets as we speak. We're about to send it off to Cartograf before the end of the year.
Since these sheets were released, I've dealt with:
- Losing a baby girl at 5 days old
- Welcoming another daughter into the world
- Getting laid off
- Finding 2 new jobs
- Moving back to Alabama
- Welcoming a SON into the world (right before the pandemic, no less)
- House hunting in Alabama
Simple fact of the matter is, I haven't had time to deal with decals since Charlotte passed. Part of the reason for looking for 2 jobs and moving is because my "new" job after the layoffs wasn't a good fit at all. I'm at the point of my career that pulling 65 hour weeks for a couple years without a break isn't anything I have interest in, and it was all but mandatory for most of the time I was at that job. Things have finally stabilized, I'm at a job I love, and the pressure is off my shoulders.
Also, for you sci-fi minded types, in what little spare time I've had, I've been working on decal art for a couple of garage kit manufacturers in that realm.
The art for the A-4 Skyhawk sheets are property of Fights On! Decals, a.k.a. Mike Pister. I have copies, for obvious reasons (as in I paid to have them printed for Mike, to help him get FOD started). The agreement we have on that art is I can scale the sheet down to 1/72 only. Any 1/48 repops would be done by Pister/Fights On.
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So far, Anniston, AL, is still on for October, depending on how the rest of the summer and autumn go.
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Micro Sol and Micro Set work just fine with PNT decals. I've used them several times with no issues.
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When Mike Pister and I were working on those Fights On sheets, this was one of the schemes I pushed to include and ended up drawing for the placement guides. You've knocked this one out of the park! Awesome build!
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JT Graphics decals are great, but he takes forever to ship. Jeff W. works in the medical field, so he's been insanely busy IRL lately, which hasn't helped his shipping times. His decals are ALPS printed, and he puts the time in to make sure they're right. Be advised, though, he's having to raise prices because of how much ALPS cartridges have gone up in recent months.
If you need them RIGHT NOW, I'd suggest the options from Federation Models, Starship Modeler or CultTVman.
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Squadron is in deep trouble. Their "Chief Modeler" is gone, and I'm being told that their CEO has departed abruptly, too. From what I've been able to glean, they've been on life support from their bank for a while, and the bank's starting to say "enough."
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The Pink Panther and Roadrunner art will require licenses from United Artists (Pink Panther) and Warner Brothers (Roadrunner). We looked into doing the Project Magnet and Project Seascan birds a couple years ago, and the licensing costs from Warner Bros were prohibitive, to say the least. What they quoted me for a license was almost triple the estimated print cost for the sheet.
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"The Weight" - The Band
"Walk On" - U2
"Wonderful World" - Louis Armstrong
"Breaking of the Fellowship" - Howard Shore
"Mr. Tambourine Man" - The Byrds
"Gone Too Soon" - Daughtry
*This one really gets me, after our little Charlotte.
And since it's Star Wars week...
"Binary Sunset" (a.k.a. the "Force Theme")
"Duel of the Fates"
For fairness:
"Star Trek: First Contact Main Theme" - Jerry Goldsmith
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You might try Joe's Models and see if he still has any of the Aeroclub white metal props in stock. You need P079. I've got a set of these, and they're quite good. I'd show a pic or 2, but they're in storage right now.
Shipping hobby paints from USA to overseas..
in General Discussion
Posted
Because the aircraft departs from a US airport and flies through US airspace before it reaches international waters. It's the same reason the bars and casinos don't open on cruise ships until they reach international waters - US federal and state laws of the port of departure are in force until then.