new kid on the block!

of course clot cars are cool! as is rust and abandonment! (i've always had a thing about wrecks and ruins...don't know why )anyway the biggest model i can find is a flying fortress at 1:48 (20 inches x 26 inches)66cm x 50 cm in real money!, quite large enough i reckon even though in reality it should be bigger. so i'll go with the 1:48 planes i think, and i've been looking at possibilities, old air fields, and the patina on some of the wrecks there are in the world (the web is a wonderful thing...all the pics are from google)
even if planes are not your thing, theres lots to learn for a modeller about how materials age i think..anyway these are spectacular images in my opinion
check out the graffiti, oil leaks, the stainless steel or aluminium stays shiny, the missing panels etc

speak soon sig

I found this Bomber on epay, should be a shop somewhere close to you that sells'em! You probably had not considereded an R/C plane as opposed to a model plane!! This one has a 4.5 foot wing span which might put it pretty close to 1/32 scale!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/RC-B29-B-52-WWII-Bombe...=item53dd9b7aec

Probably still way too much plane, but where there's a will there's a way!!

Love the layout, but like Graham, having trouble formulating words, your space seems dark and the colors of the layout dark as well, so although I think it's brilliant it's hard for me to wrap my mind around as well!! I generally prefer Race cars to road cars, but that thing screams for a 57' Chevy, Nomad or maybe Carrera's Goth Bird!!? Sort of a Christine Vibe!?? or maybe those futuristic looking cars that Carrera did last year (Carforce??) the Police one with flashing lights. Maybe a Blue Brothers cruiser? I just picture a hulking beat up monster of a car skidding luridly around with the headlights casting shadows here and there!! Good fun just thinking about it!!!

I was entertaining the idea a while back of building a Surrealist layout with a Daliesque Landscape and Goudyish architecture!! Crazy huh? , but your almost there already!

thanks folks for the praise and help.....nice to feel i'm not going crazy in a vacuum here!
ok so i've been putting some time into the web here trying to get measurements of kits, availability and fuselage dimensions.
the 1:48 superfortress is actually quite small in the fuselage (from plans i calculated 6cm diametre) not enough for a tunnel.
the hercules has a fatter belly but i really can't imagine cutting the fuselage in half, its a really classic plane and it would look better just slumped into the ground rather than chopped up. (in my opinion)
i've been using hobbylinc for the model information ron, the others were good but no dimensionmodel kits
and masmojo, thanks a lot for the link, which gave me hope for a while but i managed to get to an actual pic of the kit and it really was a cheap plastic chinese thing, nothing like the advert.....i would prefer to scratch build something then i can concentrate on the detailing more.
so heres the plan at the mo.
in my shopping cart so far i've got a catalina (beautiful, elegant seaplane will look great half buried), an a10 warthog(i want the planes not to be all ww2 stuff and one of my favourites from when i was little)
a flying fortress (has to be done!)and a black widow (interesting shape for disembowelment)
i would really like a couple of migs too, but not many available at the mo, plus they can be fit in later when the big stuff is set and the track layout defined.
so now knowing the sizes of the wrecks i need to do sketches of their placement (with or without wings etc) and figure out a cool route for the car.
the fusesage tunnel is by no means out of the window, and i've persuaded myself it shouldnt be that difficult (the superfortress is quite straight forward) but that needsto be the next stage after the actual models are placed....by the way all the models are 1:48 i dont see any problem with then looking small, when modeling the church of the plaza here it had to be reduced considerably, and still looks believable.

i also need to invent a reason why these p[lanes are all sat around rotting and not in a museum (maybe a museum that went bust!) and futhermore why they allow rally drivers to do donuts around them!
ah! also i need a bit of old runway with weeds growing through the concrete and some form of steel shed would be great too yes. ramps?? the jury is out on that, cars do jumps too fast in my opinion, if slot cars automatically jumped in slow motion then we'd all be putting jumps on our tracks (think dukes of hazzard), we'll see

all opinions more than welcome.

cheers and i'm off to the monster trucks......yeah baby!

there are a few options for 1/32 'larger planes' - guillows does a balsa kit of the b25 mitchell, b17 flying fortress and b24 liberator and douglas something something (can't recall but i nice classic shape) - they come with vac form engine cowlings, cockpits etc etc - are quite cool at that scale but you do need some modelling skills to turn them out well - some people skin them with thin sheets of styrene rather than tissue / dope as is typical.

I also have plans for a 1/32 sr 71 blackbird - very large at that scale

then of course there are alot of single seater civilian, ww1 and ww2 options to keep you busy - i built some up possibly add to a slot car diorama some day
i posted some to my blog and i think some in the forums as well -

rusting them out as wrecks is a great idea !
cheers, Ron

Well obviously good old Olly Jolly North and freinds had to retire somewhere.
And there is not as much money in transporting "Daddys illegal blend" these days, as any high school kid with a chemestry set can start doinge haterade in the bathtub.

But back in the days when they were sponsored by the higest bidding nation, money was flowing like a spring river, an only the best aircrafts where used to transport and protect there investment.

So I would say that it would have to be somewhere near the Mexican border....or the golden triangel in Burma, Thailand and Laos.

Lick a toad and see what happens I say......I'm sure SIG(or was it MIG) comes up with yet another Flying Fantastic track.
3 tracks of high standard in a couple of months must be the unofficial slotforum record.

chips 'n' dibs

hi folks!...monster trucks rock....grave digger is mental, all the fun of the fair with crazy free style motorcross, burning crane jumpers and lots of broken trucks....and my 4 year old still managed to fall asleep, to the relaxing sound of 2000 hp unsilenced engines!!
ron, that guillows stuff is great ....makes me wants to know more...what are you supposed to do with the tissue and dope (what is dope?)very cool and big but i still think i'll start with plastic as i know how to work it...(aging paper skin sounds tricky)loving the balsa ribs though, i might well use the idea in some of my furniture.(looking for new ways of tying what i'm doing here into my professional life!, and need some new designs for the paris show in january)
Lars, regarding the story board, the drug runner idea is a good'en or maybe the arms trade (hence the cheap migs that were thrown in to sweeten a deal?
maybe the guys used an old airfield where there were already some rotten ww2 stuff for their shady deals and they used the jets etc. (giving the excuse to SERIOUSLY rot some of the planes and just 'weather' some of the newer ones??
so why the car racing?naughty break and entry by the local boy racers using the airfield as a fun track since don vito got sent to the slammer?

keep it coming, the more intricate the story the easier the decisions are to make!

speak soon sig

anyway, back to catalunya....theres been a lot going on in the village.....the week before the big charity race jordi hernandez the son of the big land owner and local farmer (jordi snr) finally got the toyota supra (his pride and joy) back from the local spray shop with its new colours. hes blown all the wages on the summers harvest work on the paint and the new lcd screens in the back seat (much to the dismay of his father who is near retirement age and worries too much about leaving all his lifes work with such an irresponsible son), he took some fotos of the new paint...here they are:


beautiful job, and a stunning car , quite making jordi junior the' rey del mambo' of the vecinity .Toni 'el grande' the spray shop owner also says its one of his best jobs.

however in all the excitement and in order to impress sonia (the local 'guapa') jordi decided to show his prospective date the track that the following day the pro's were going to race on, he knew the roads really well ofcourse as his dads shed was in that direction and he started tinkering with his first cars in the lockup.
anyway. jordi forgot that the day before it had rained and the roads were still a bit wet and moreover muddy from the recent harvest activity, and on the first corner out of the village disaster struck
!
he lost control in the grit and mud with those super wide low profiles and slid broadside into the local sandstone.thus trashing the passenger door, wing and his imported 22inch chrome rims!
the crash was heard in the bar over the other side of the bridge and everyonne came rushing out to see what had happened, including jaume the mechanic who'd had a few already and it was only midday!. without hesitation he lumbered into the beaten up old wrecking truck with a grin on his face, he didn't get a chance to use the truck much since they built the by-pass and he knew the recovery of this car from the boy of the local landowner would be worth a pretty penny even though it was only 100 metres away


much to jordis dismay, jaume wrenched the toyota from the rock face , dragging it along the ground before heaving it back to the garage.
luckily sonia was ok (if a little shaken) and after swearing a lot at jordi, stormed off back to the village to correct her makeup!.
all this was nothing ...just wait till jordi senior finds out what his son has been up to, "damned youth..."