October, 2006
5:30-7:30PM
Hoffman Estates' Blackhawk Recreation Center
Techmage monthly meeting:

Hello, Everybody!

We had a really good turnout at the Techmages October meeting.

Attendees:
Jon Kunatz, Larry and Cindi Johnson, Joyce and John McDannell, Art Krull, Kevin Shin, John Lester, Joe Suttie, Ed Taylor, Larry Strickland, James Fulkerson, Neil Butler, Tony Augustin, Bob Ford and myself.

   That's one of our better-attended recent meetings.

October 21:
    Is the Bong Chapter show in Milwaukee.
    That weekend is also the MMSI show.
    If that weren't enough, it's also the iHobby Expo in Rosemont.  This is the RCHTA show, new and improved.  I'm trying to recruit volunteers for demonstrations, which will run from 11 to 4 both Saturday and Sunday.  I still have a few slots to fill, so please contact me if you would like to participate.  The sponsors are donating equipment and supplies, and would like to make this a successful event.

November 11th
    Is the Butch O'Hare show.  You have a month to finish your projects.  As usual, this is the year-ending model event and is always a good show.  I attended the October Butch O'Hare chapter meeting and will have a little information about that later.  They are collecting goodies for the raffle, so if you have anything you'd like to donate I can hook you up.

 J-57 Refit for Butch-O'Hare et-al
    Two weekends ago a few of us gathered at Joe's for a build day to refurbish the Jeffries Station.  We plan to display this at the Butch O'Hare show.  We made a lot of progress, assembling the arms and beginning to clean the major components and make sure everything was present and in order.  A few pieces were missing, but fortunately I did have some replacements - already painted as a bonus.  I think one or two more days will suffice, if we actually buckle down and get work done.  Joe will let us know which weekends work for him.
Sparky here,
    Tony came by for a mini build-day the weekend after the above mentioned buildfest.  I'd hoped no one would notice I hadn't sent an email, he had the refited mega tug from Neil, and we worked on some more repairs.  My homework is to refit one dock with an alternate power supply/feed.
    One more build day should do, we can shot for the end of October just in case we need one more after that.

 Demos
    No demos planned at this time

Other regional clubs:
    Earlier I mentioned I attended the Butch O'Hare club meeting this month.  I'm also a new member of the Lakes Region club.  I'll take some space in this newsletter to communicate my thoughts about the clubs.  First, the Techmages seems to be the youngest group not only in years chartered, but also average age of the members.  Our average age is probably about 40, and the Lakes Region is a little older, and BOH older still.  There are younger members in each group, of course.

    You will recognize members of both clubs if you've attended local shows.  Both groups share some members with our group, and I think there is some great potential for cross-pollination.  We've started that with the Lakes club, who has invited John L. and me to do demonstrations.  There's a lot of talent in these groups, and there's no reason not to benefit from each others' experiences.

    Each group seems to have adopted a similar meeting profile, with informal talk-time for a while, then business, then demonstration, followed by show-and-tell.  Our meeting is the shortest of the three, at two hours.  Both Lakes and BOH are on Friday nights - which I feel is impossible for us, considering the Sci-Fi Channel's Friday night schedule.  We must have our priorities, after all.  At the single BOH meeting I attended I did not get any anti-SF feelings, but no SF subjects were shown at the meeting.  I've been to a number of Lakes meetings, and there's a pretty strong SF appreciation there.

Larry Strickland:
Larry has no new projects to show, but has news.  You may not have heard but he was hospitalized in August with severe abdominal pains.  This turned out to be non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in his intestinal tract.  After several surgeries, he's healing now and then he'll need to start cancer treatment.  Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Jon "Vir":
Jon Kunatz has been building tanks and armored cars in numerous scales.  His Trumpeter KV-1 is done or nearly done.  He showed a 1/35 BTR-80 he's using to work out some painting techniques, a 1/72 M2 Bradley, a Tamiya M-118 APC, and an HO Scale M1A3.  He had a couple new kits to show off, the Revell An-124 super-big cargo plane and the 1/35 Dragon M1A2.  He's also converting a 1/16 Tamiya modern soldier into an Stargate figure - give him an M-4 or streetsweeper and SG-3 patches!

Larry "Precious":
Larry Johnson continues to work on Dr. Frankenjohson's Monster - and the base.  He's using some scrapbook punches to make leaves of various colors.  The monster itself has a few issues remaining, but I think it should be ready to be misunderstood by the crowd of pitchfork-wielding modelers at the Butch O'Hare show.  Larry's also working on a concept for the "plasma ball" project.  His is an explorer vessel, and will be long and spindly with plenty of fuel tanks.

Joyce McDannell:
Joyse showed her progress on the atrocious Airfix Grommet and his flying sidecar.  A lot of epoxy putty was required.  You may remember seeing this before she started correcting it, there's no comparison.  There's still some work left, but it's shaping up well.

John McDannell:
Jonh's new addiction is 1/48 scale armor.  The Tamiya Volkswagen and Sherman kits are little gems, and John's getting a good finish on them.  The Volkswagen looks like a good weekend build if anyone's interested - there aren't many colors involved, and you can do a lot of dusting to weather it.  The Sherman boasts a cast-metal lower hull which screws to the tanks's glacis.

Art Krull:
Art has finished a kit!  Huzzah!  Tomy's Brittania II from the Lensman series took him only three months to complete.  Compared to the rest of us these days, that's blisteringly quick.  It's painted in custom-mixed blue and light blue/grey colors and looks really cool.

Kevin "Cast that kit first":
Kevin Shin has been playing with Warhammer 40K minis.  He's using magnets to make swappable arms and modular weapons.  He's also kitbashing figures into horrific atrocities perfectly at home in the Chaos army.  The Chaos Dreadnaught will have plenty of infantry support. . . Kevin also brought a Stikfas knight.  If you don't know about Stikfas, visit the site: www.stikfas.com.  I've bought them at www.warehouse23.com and they're available through www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/plush/70d9/.  I do warn you, though, these websites are big money pits - you may not walk away solvent. . .

Joe Sparky:
Joe Suttie brought along a bunch of the Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars Hasbro toys.  If you can find them, they're worth picking up.  You can also order them directly from the website.  He's been casting greeblies and eggs.  He showed Jimi's Egg-pod kit - continuing the line of egg deformed kits.  He showed something else, what the inside of the eggs look like when resin is poured in and used as a mold.  Some are pretty interesting. He reports that the J-57 Refit is looking on track for a Butch-Ohare showing, minus one dock's power unless he can come up with a tack on power solution.  Tony has returned the mega tug repaired.  One dock remains to be re-clawed and ship re-mounted suing the spare parts Terry brought in.

John 10:
John Lester brought a bunch of figures and kits from an alternate-WWII game, Dust.  You can see these rocket troopers and walking vehicles online at www.dustgame.com.  These are sculpted by the same people who sculpt Dragon's figures.  John is painting a dapple-type camouflage as seen in the artwork.  He brought some new kits soon to be available through the Starship Modeler store, the 1/1000 Oberth/Grissom which looks great, and the 1/1000 Enterprise-A which looks pretty good.

Ed Tayed-Gachi:
Ed Taylor was able to make a meeting.  Fatherhood is keeping him busy.  He's easing himself back into the hobby with a simple armor kit.  He's working on a self-propelled howitzer in 1/72 scale.  Borrowing from some techniques shown in the recent issue of Fine Scale Modeler, he's distressing road wheels with a moto-tool then softening those chips with liquid cement.  It's a very clever trick, with a lot of potential.  He's replacing a lot of molded detail with added parts, and has been experimenting with home-made lenses using sequins (and fine a punch) and glue.  We'll have to see a little demo on that.

Tony Agustin:
Tony brought the Jessie Meyers 1/24 scale BSG Raptor kit.  It's got a lot of cool features including clear-cast instrument panels and what appear to be screen-caps for the displays.  He also is starting a new figure, a very large Chi - a robot-girl from some anime series I'm unfamiliar with.  There are a lot of stages to this sort of project, assembly, painting, assembly, painting and so forth- they're very complex subjects.  He will mount the figure on a clock tower.

Neil Butler:
Neil brought a card model he picked up at the Science and Surplus store.  It's a wolf-bot-borg critter.  These are useful distractions, like the Stikfas kits.  Neil showed us two kits from www.fantastic-plastic.com.   The Horton Rocket Wing is a new kit, and an odd little beastie it is.  Also odd, but compelling, is the flying disc, www.fantastic-plastic.com/USAF_40_Foot_Flying_Disc_Page.htm.   I'm sure you can think of a few things to do with this kit.  Weighting the plane is a challenge, as the disc itself is quite thin.  Flat lead weights should do the job.
You can see some other fun planes at Dryden's website:
www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/home/index.html.  Oh, the possibilities shown there!

Ter_or:
I brought a few things along.  The new Italeri Sahariana scout car, with desert wheels from Cri-El via Pacific Coast Models.  If you're like me, you could drop a grand there, easily.  They also have different armament for the Sahariana.  I couldn't resist buying a two-seat conversion for the Fiat G.50.  I brought the Macross kits I picked up a while ago.  While sitting in front of the TV, I did some assembly and filling - you can see how little filling is required.  Neil Prentice gave me a kitbashed TOS-era Akira-type ship he was working on.  I have some ideas, but don't expect this anytime soon.

Terry "ter_or", President

Image: Hello everyone!

Image: Good turnout this month

Image: What's Jon got today

Image: Ed made it in for a meeting

Image: Jon!

Image: Kevin & Bob Kickin' it

Image:Macross Ghosts

Image: Multimedia kit

Image: TOS Trek Destroyer

Image:A knight and his horse

Image: A War Hammer platon

Image: Marine on motor bike

Image: Arm and torso is mounted with magnets

Image: My head!

Image: Chainsaw Sword

Image: Kevins' Quake style cyborg

Image: Heavy Mech BFG Arm

Image: Mech's Back Side

Image: Another look at the pwr plant

Image: Business end of the BFG

Image: I will kick you in you're, err croch

Image: Business end of the regular guns

Image: Another look at them

Image:Gromit and plane

Image:Close up

Image:The Plane's gun

Image:Gromit, 3 different putties were used

Image: Lots of putty and several paintings to get this

Image:German VW Bug in-da-house

Image: An Allied tank

Image: Head on shot

Image: The nose

Image:Nice surface detail.

Image: Egnines & whiskers

Image:Engines

Image:Lots of whiskers

Image:The belly of the beast

Image: Walking tank

Image: Big arm guns n legs

Image: Tnak and turret graft

Image: A figure from the German Rocketier set

Image: Seems well hidden

Image:

Image: Styrene ribbing has been added to ping pong balls

Image: Lots of ping-pong ball tanks

Image: Convy!

Image: A figure he hopes to convert to an SG-Team member

Image: She looks thoughful

Image: Hair Galore

Image:What No shoes? No wonder shes upset

Image:Lots of white Aves

Image:Fragile Long Hair

Image: Side panels

Image: 2 Main hull pieces

Image: Some parts are cast in the color match type material a yellow/brown semi clear material

Image: More detailed interior

Image: Intrument panel decals

Image: The seats look like detailed

Image: 1/32 scale bang seats

Image:A 40 foot Flying Disc

Image:The resin disc is upto Annigram's quality

Image:Horton Rocket Wing Kit

Image: The wing piece

Image:

Image:

Image: Minis Galore

Image: Lots o-minis

Image: The BSG Mini

Image: New Raider

Image: Colonial 1 Passender Liner

Image:BSG Raptor mini

Image: Some coils on the heat exchanger like things

Image: Wire wraped hatch hinges

Image: Linkable treads

Image: Side view of the tank

Image: Distressed tank cogs

Image: Homemade MV Lenses

Image: The box art could be a great print!

Image:Lots of parts

Image: Saucer top

Image:Bottom

Image: Pylons have cast-in brass rod

Image: Secondary Hull/Deflector

Image:Neck bit

Image:One of the Nacelles

Image: Various bits

Image: Fine detail

Image: Edgey

Image:

Image: Larry J brought some styrene GGRU sprus