Plastic Model Mojo
Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby
Plastic Model Mojo
Batch Builds and More with Jeff Groves: Episode 118
Prepare to meet your modeling mojo and join us for an exciting episode filled with captivating stories and practical tips. Highlighting modeler Jeff Groves from the Inch High Guy blog, we explore his fascinating Navy career aboard the USS Missouri and his passion for 1/72 scale models. You'll learn about the efficiencies of batch model building and get the inside scoop on unique bomber conversions—this episode is packed with both entertainment and expertise.
Kentucky Dave and Mike share their recent adventures, from Dave's preparations for hosting modeling house guests to Mike's breathtaking Montana trip, which included stunning scenery and a bout of food poisoning. Reflecting on the joy of reconnecting with the modeling community at the upcoming Nationals, they offer a camaraderie-filled narrative that resonates with hobbyists. Listener feedback takes the spotlight too, with memorable moments from past episodes and valuable modeling tips, like incorporating height variation in dioramas.
Get updates on upcoming modeling shows like the IPMS Gateway to the West Invitational and the Low Country Nationals. Dive into the intriguing tales of theft and memorable incidents at model shows, and enjoy a nostalgic journey through the early days of modeling friendships and club meetings. As always, we wrap up with reflections on recent purchases, including a high-quality hand crank disc sander, and a heartfelt reminder of the endless possibilities and joy that come with this hobby. So many kits, so little time—let’s get started!
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Mike and Kentucky Dave thank each and everyone of you for participating on this journey with us. We are grateful for having you as listeners, and the community that has grown around Plastic Model Mojo makes it all worth while.
Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike and Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining and help you keep your modeling mojo alive.
Mike:All right, kentucky Dave 118.
Kentucky Dave:I can see the Nationals in the future. Man, it's right there.
Mike:It's right there. I'm going to reach out and grab it Dang straight. Oh man, what is up?
Kentucky Dave:in your model sphere. Well, obviously it is focused on that future event I'm trying to get well, I've got some modeling adjacent stuff, which is I'm trying to get a lot of stuff done around the house which normally wouldn't be modeling related. But because the three Daves and a Mike tour leaves from our house in a couple of weeks, I've got Dave Gelbacher coming up from Birmingham, I've got Dave Goldfinch flying in from well, australia via Canada. So I'm trying to get the house straightened, organized et cetera, so that we can have modeling-related house guests, so we can then all caravan on to Madison. So I've done that. I've done a little pre-NATS shopping hobby-wise. Normally I don't buy much before the NATS, but I've dropped a thing or two and I'm just jazzed. I'm at that point that I describe every year where my palms start sweating and itching because I can feel the Nationals coming up, and so I'm just, I'm cranked to the nines, I am ready. How?
Mike:about you? Well, not much model sphere in the last week or so. Man, I am fresh off a trip to Montana.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, and I was a little disappointed you didn't bring back gems for the plastic model mojo.
Mike:Man, I'm absolutely, unequivocally, positively exhausted.
Kentucky Dave:Vacations will do that. Now you get back and then you need a vacation from your vacation.
Mike:Two time zones with just enough time to acclimate, that's never long enough, right? And then you got the latitude difference plus the elevation difference, which is about 4,000 feet above sea level from where I am here in Lexington.
Kentucky Dave:Right.
Mike:The net of that is about 15 hours of daylight.
Kentucky Dave:Yep.
Mike:Compared to about 12-ish here. So yeah, when the cabin you're staying in doesn't have blackout curtains, you're up at 5 and you can't really try to even go to sleep until after 10.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:Yeah, it makes for long days.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, just be thankful you weren't up in Alaska where you got 24 hours of sun.
Mike:Well, that's true. And then you know, I told you I guess it was Monday, sunday or Monday we all went out to dinner to get a bison steak and we all had the same entree, same special, and we all got food poisoning. Oh my. So we had one full day torpedoed for that. Just say lots of north and southbound traffic on the GNI Railroad.
Kentucky Dave:That's never fun.
Mike:Despite that, seriously, this still comes up at number two or number three for the best family vacays ever. My son, jack, desired this trip and he gave me all the destination points, and I just connected the dots and planned the whole thing. The net was we flew to the primary destination of Bozeman, montana, and still managed to put 1,200 miles on a rental car.
Kentucky Dave:Wow.
Mike:Of course out west.
Kentucky Dave:You've got to drive to get anywhere.
Mike:He told me where he wanted to go and I had to pick a place that was central. That was. You know, I'd rather have two hours to everywhere he wanted to go, as opposed to two, one hours and then a four and a half or five hour. Right, one way on one day. Yeah, that's no good. So about two to two and a half hours everywhere we wanted to go, one way.
Mike:And it was all right, we managed, because the scenery, if you don't live out there, is breathtaking and gobsmacking and it's all just amazing. So the drives were absolutely part of the vacation in itself. But, man, but I got seriously unplugged out there the last time I was so unplugged. There was really no social media, no smartphones and no internet, because it's like the 1980s.
Mike:Along the I-90 corridor it was 5G, you know, cell service, and in town it was 5G or the no symbol, right. There was no dropping down to 4G, no dropping down to 3G, no, three bar, two bar, one bar, none of that. Yeah, it was an all or none binary situation. It was the damnedest thing I've ever seen. I mean, you go for 5g, drive around a mountain and was nothing, absolutely nothing. Yeah, well, as a result, I had plenty of time to ponder what we got going on at plastic model mojo. There were no online distractions, no needless comparisons, none of that stuff. So we have to have a conversation offline sometime about stuff. Other than that, you know, no hobby shop out there where we were that I could find, not that I had time to go, or had there been one, I would have probably gone, I guess.
Kentucky Dave:Well, you're about to go to the world's largest traveling hobby shop. So you know.
Mike:Right. So that's a. That's about where I'm at. We just had a great trip and glad to be home in one piece and glad we only lost one day to being sick. I mean it's that's a testament to how cool a trip it was. I mean we were crapping and puking one full day and still managed to have a great vacation.
Kentucky Dave:Well, that's good, that's fantastic. That's good, that's fantastic. I'm assuming that you probably had some modeling fluid while you were out traveling. Did you bring anything interesting back?
Mike:I did not and I didn't have much while I was out there, oh okay, but I got one for Father's Day, which wasn't too long ago.
Kentucky Dave:All right. What do we have as our modeling fluid tonight?
Mike:Bondstone, kentucky, straight straight bourbon whiskey Cast strength.
Kentucky Dave:Ooh Cast, strength is going to be strong. What Bondstone, b-o-n-s-t-o-n-e, b-o-n-d-s-t-o-n-e, bondstone, okay.
Mike:Bond James.
Kentucky Dave:Bond Gotcha. Hmm, I don't think I've ever heard of that, so I'm looking forward to hearing about it at the end stone sly and the family okay, oh, but I've got a pairing tonight, okay, oh listen to this. We're expanding go ahead.
Mike:Dark chocolate, dark chocolate.
Kentucky Dave:Huckleberry truffle bar from yellowstone national park interesting, interesting good stuff so you'll have to expand on both of those at the end, what do you got? Going on well, I've got a. I'm going to call it a faux modeling fluid. This is another one supplied by the model wife, brought home from trader joe's it's Athletic Brewing Company's Free Wave Hazy IPA. And the reason I call it a faux modeling fluid is it's non-alcoholic, so never had it before.
Mike:She trying to tell you something.
Kentucky Dave:No, she didn't realize she had bought a non-alcoholic, because unless you look really closely, you, you don't notice the non-alcoholic on it looks looks like your classic micro brew beer, so it tastes like a hazy ipa. I'll be interested to see how we get we get through the episode with it well, dave, all the world's a stage and we are merely players all right shakespeare and it's truly all you folks, the audience of listeners, who make this so much fun.
Mike:My call to action last episode was answered. We got quite a bit, man. Good, let's get to it. We're going to get on it. First up is Bob Delaney from the St Louis area. I presume it's IPMS Gateway, IPMS Gateway to the West Invitational, 18th annual, and this show is September 14th, 2024. And he sent some links and information and we'll put that in the show notes. So if you're in the St Louis, greater St Louis area and looking for a show to go to pencil in September 14th, We'll get the rest of that information up there.
Kentucky Dave:We'll get the rest of that information up there and I'll tell you. Mmcl, our local club here in Louisville, usually sends a delegation to the St Louis show. I don't know who's going to be going this year, but it is a popular show, given that that's a four-hour 20-minute drive each way.
Mike:Well, charles Rice has written in again, again. And it's another show, dave, a little sooner July 27th 2024. This will be the Low Country Nationals. Yeah, this is hosted by the South Carolina Modeling Association, charleston, south Carolina. It's going to be held at the Trident Technical College in North Charleston, south Carolina. Information can be found at wwwcharlestonmodelerscom. And again, we'll post this image on the show notes with the links, and folks in the Charleston area can check that out Now. That'd be fun. Yes.
Kentucky Dave:Charleston is a beautiful town. For anybody who hasn't been, charleston is really lovely. Now that's going to be two weeks after the Nationals, so for any folks in that area where the Nationals was too far for them to make, your consolation is you've got a show right after the Nats in beautiful Charleston.
Mike:Well listener and friend Clement Budonson in Estonia has written in again, dave.
Kentucky Dave:All right, you got to love the Baltic States man.
Mike:Yeah, I do. I've got a history with the Baltic States and one of my other hobbies. So, I'm glad we got a listener at least one listener there, Hopefully spreading the word with his modeling compatriots there.
Kentucky Dave:I hope so.
Mike:Well, he offers a lot of positive feedback for the show and we really appreciate that. I really do.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, because it's sometimes hard for Mike and I to know whether we're doing what you all like and want, and so it's really nice to get that feedback.
Mike:And he sent us a link for his 72nd scale aircraft build. So he's in your camp, Dave. All right, yes, I'll send you that link. I don feedback. And he sends a link for his 72nd scale aircraft build.
Kentucky Dave:So he's in your camp, dave.
Mike:All right, yes, I'll I'll send you that link.
Kentucky Dave:I don't know if he wants it shared with everybody, but well, send it to me because and maybe I'll reach out to him because, uh again, estonian's 72nd scale doesn't get much better than that well, thanks, clement.
Mike:Up next j Watkinson, and he is from the UK, north Somerset. He'd like to advertise an upcoming show. All right, it's the North Somerset Model Society annual show. It's going to be the 14th of July, held at the Helicopter Museum in Weston-Super-Mare, north Somerset, united Kingdom. It's going to have 10 traders and 40 clubs in participation. Nice Just wants everybody in the UK to know about that show so he can help their attendance.
Kentucky Dave:Absolutely Listen. We always want to encourage attendance at modeling shows. Even if you don't enter, even if you're not interested in competition, go to modeling contests. If you're not going, you're missing out on the camaraderie, the information exchange, the getting to see tons of really nice models all gathered in one place.
Mike:It's the social side of the hobby and it really will add a dimension to your hobby jared had had some recent success at the salisbury model show and he'd taken a gold and 72nd scale aircraft, man, 72nd scale, again plus we got plus we got got that as the the topic tonight kind of adjacent anyway.
Mike:Well, the show's at the heartland of uk's mechanized forces, so it's armor heavy. But uh, he did pretty well with the with an aircraft there and he's kind of trying to change the, the scope of the category. They're hoping, hoping it will expand and hoping that it will will uh grow and there'll be, there'll be more of that sort of thing in this kind of armor heavy category or show. Something he wants to know. He's really not sure how to achieve height, you know, cause it's kind of a paradigm of diorama. One of the pillars of of a good diorama right, right Is is height variation, and he wants to. He's unsure how to achieve this in a scene that involves aircraft, presumably on the ground.
Kentucky Dave:I'm assuming yeah, on the ground.
Mike:And is this really an important element?
Kentucky Dave:Again going back to our modeling forefathers, chep, payne and Verlinden, and those guys. Yes, variation in height draws visual interest. It makes the diorama more attractive. Even with aircraft, assuming an airfield setting, you can vary the height by either like have a control tower or trees that the aircraft is tucked up under, or things like that to add, you know, deep revetment for artillery protection.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, you can also take and have your airfield and then have the area behind it changing in elevation, such as, let's say, you were doing a Pacific airfield on New Guinea where the airfields were on the coast but right up after the coast you started to get the rolling hills and then the mountains, et cetera. So you can use terrain itself to vary the scene around the aircraft and part of the airfield. Those are the ones that strike me off the top of my head.
Mike:It's tough because, you know, typically airfields aren't selected for their vertical landscape, right, usually quite the opposite, right.
Kentucky Dave:Yep exactly.
Mike:Where an airplane could end up, where it's not a flat topography situation, is a crash site.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, I was just getting ready to mention that.
Mike:There's another option. Here's an idea that has kind of been noodling through my head for a long time, because I've got one of those special hobby 30 second scale Polycarpov I-16s back in the stash of i-16s back in the stash. If you get on german ebay there's a lot of pictures of those planes ending up in places where they weren't intended to end up. Right, some of them aren't so flat. So there's another option farm field barreling down, crashing through a retaining wall or whatever. I don't know, but there's, there's. There's certainly in a crash scene lots of opportunity to get something with some verticality in it.
Kentucky Dave:Well, there's one that's always been noodling around in my head, but I've also tried to interest Steve Hustad in, because he would do a fantastic job. There is a great photograph of a German I think it's like a DO-17 or a DO-215 from the Battle of Britain and the aircraft bellied in and ended up in a railroad cut. So you've got the relatively flat surface but the airplane landed, skidded along that surface and then fell into the railroad cut. That had stone walls and a double set of railroad tracks and it's just a really evocative photo. But I think the problem is there are Steve he likes to have a lot of photos of the subject from all angles and I don't think there's a ton of photos of this particular crash scene.
Mike:Well, I hope that's helpful. I don't know. That's a good question because, yeah, like I said, typically airfields are selected for their flatness.
Kentucky Dave:Well, listen. If anybody else out there listening has ideas of their own, send them in.
Mike:Next we've got one from Australia, dave, all right Down Under. A new one. A new one from Down Under Okay, not the regular haunts from Down Under, all right, malcolm Rademaker. And he has just attended the Melbourne Model Expo back on the King's birthday weekend. He entered four models at the ripe age of 58. So he's between you and I, uh-huh, and returned to the hobby during COVID, like so many people did, and he had some success which pleased him. He won several accommodations for a Star Wars AT-ST diorama, return of the Jedi and he says he won the Graham Harris Encouragement Award for his takeoff diorama, which was to 72nd scale. Again, yay, number five squadron boomerangs.
Kentucky Dave:Oh yes, he posted that on the dojo.
Mike:Which we appreciate.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, I have a real soft spot in my heart for the boomerang because it was such an unusual aircraft with an unusual history and looked unusual.
Mike:The plane looks like a caricature of a P-40. Exactly.
Kentucky Dave:It's really unusual looking and I'm kind of drawn to unusual looking planes, which I'll talk about more later. And, by the way, that just goes to make the point that you and I have made over the last couple of years People coming back into the hobby, the ability to get up to speed and get really good, I think, is a whole lot quicker now because of the better fitting kits, all the YouTube tutorials, the plethora of modeling tools and modeling finishing products. I think it's made it a whole lot easier for the guys and gals who come back into the hobby to get caught up up, as it were.
Mike:Well, these are 72nd scale boomerangs. What better fitting kits did he select for those?
Kentucky Dave:Right, oh, those are the special. I'm almost assuredly those are the special hobby kits, which are not bad kits and they're fairly modern.
Mike:Else it's Airfix or some of those short-run posse or Kiwi kits. Yep, no fun there. Well, mal says his intentions are to attend the US Nationals in 2025. And that he's a scotch drinker, not a bourbon drinker. Sorry, no need to apologize. We've got beer drinkers, bourbon drinkers, chocolate, milk and coffee drinkers.
Kentucky Dave:You'll find no bigger fan of single malt scotches than yours truly and Paul Budzik.
Mike:And your wife and my wife. Yeah, so there's company way above us. Yeah, that's right. Well, we hope you do make it and if you do, and we are there, please stop by our table. That's over a year away. We'll be there. We'll be there. Look forward to meeting you, man. Yep. Well, listener Lee Edmonds has written in again, dave, and he really enjoyed the Bruce McRae episode.
Kentucky Dave:As did we all.
Mike:Yeah, a lot of other people too.
Kentucky Dave:Yep. Yeah that was fun. I'm glad that came together. Yeah, and we just scratched the surface on that one. We've got to talk to Bruce again.
Mike:Yes, we do need to talk to Bruce again. So, bruce, hold your water, we're going to come back. He really liked Bruce's story about what was it? The burning clown?
Kentucky Dave:Yes about.
Mike:what was it? The burning clown? Yes, so the art director could find something quick to make his job legitimate and be on with his work. Well, at least says the writer, he used to put some poor grammar or expressions up front in a piece, so the bosses had something to fix and didn't feel compelled to mess around with the rest of it. That's interesting.
Kentucky Dave:That's a smart technique.
Mike:And he is going to take your recommendation on the Pensacola US Navy Air Museum.
Kentucky Dave:Dude, you will not regret it. You absolutely will not regret it. It is, in my mind, the finest aircraft museum I have ever been to in my life.
Mike:I'm going for memory here, but he's got a comment here about not being a US national. I think he may be an Aussie as well.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:Yeah, he knows as a foreigner he can't just walk in the front door, so he's got to plan this in advance. But he looked up the website and thinks that's doable.
Kentucky Dave:I believe it is.
Mike:It should be. Yeah, we need to get over some things and let people visit some museums. Yes, well, and finally, lee can assure us that none of the brands I ever talk about, or you ever talk about, on this podcast or in his local bottle shop, he did find Maker's Mark, which cost the King's Ransom.
Kentucky Dave:Oh my.
Mike:But is on the positive side of all right. Well, if it's only on the positive side of all right, I wouldn't pay a King Ransom for it.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:No way.
Kentucky Dave:It's fairly inexpensive here, but it's good it's very inexpensive here, but it's good, it's very inexpensive here, yeah, and a lot of people use it, believe it or not, as a mixing bourbon for cocktails.
Mike:Apart from that, jim Beam and Jack Daniels, all the way. I expect you don't need any of that and you would be correct.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, absolutely.
Mike:All right, thanks, lee Pat Cowan from Kiefer, oklahoma. Just another one Great interview, true character Talking about Bruce McRae.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, we got a lot of that reaction, both through emails, dms and in the dojo.
Mike:Thanks, pat. Hopefully there'll be more to come for Bruce.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Mike:Bruce Bingston from San Francisco, california. That might be a first. We've had plenty from Southern California, but I think he might be the first one from Northern California, first time writing, which means he answered my call. Good Thank you. Yes, lots of good stuff to say about the podcast which we really, really appreciate. Now I don't think he put these on the dojo, but he sent in a photo that his father had taken summer of 62 or 63, of him in front of his built models as a kid in Bakersfield, california. That'd be the adopted home of Buck Owens, by the way.
Kentucky Dave:Nice reference, by the way, we love those vintage photographs. So if you haven't posted that in the dojo, please do. And the rest of you, if you have pictures from when you started building models as a kid and you've got pictures of you and your models, post them in the dojo, because those are great nostalgia items. You post your picture and it will remind a hundred other modelers of exactly the same thing. A hundred other modelers of exactly the same thing.
Mike:Nostalgia aside, Dave, his reason for writing is his recent build of the 72nd scale Tamiya Zero Yay that you relentlessly recommend.
Kentucky Dave:I do. It is still, to this day, the finest model kit I have ever built, and I've built it three times so far.
Mike:And about 18 to go. Everything fit beautifully. He doesn't think he used any filler, yep. Canopy was crystal clear and fit perfectly. Yep, mercifully. We used a masking set.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, absolutely.
Mike:For the canopy.
Kentucky Dave:For the canopy. However, he was not crazy about the decals and this is a kind of a common thing with folks about Tamiya decals. In any of the Zeros I built, I always used aftermarket decals because there are so many fantastic aftermarket Zero decal sets that you could build from now until the end of time and never do the same one twice. So, yeah, I, I, I understand, and in the future don't make that mistake, get yourself a set of aftermarket decals.
Mike:Well, what's the secret sauce? I mean, there's gotta be a secret sauce for to me and decals.
Kentucky Dave:You know what I'm going to let somebody out there who maybe, maybe Paul Budzig knows. Maybe we ought to talk to him about that, or Steve, or Steve, or any number of folks.
Mike:Somebody we've never even met before.
Kentucky Dave:The Japanese decals just tend to be a little thicker, from Hasagawa et cetera. And you know me, I'm a decal holic, so it's very rare that I ever use any kit decals on a build.
Mike:Well, I imagine even some of the schemes in these kits are duplicated on some of the aftermarket sheets.
Kentucky Dave:They are, in fact, they absolutely are. So again, I just and it's not just with Tamiya kits, I rarely, rarely use kit decals. I almost always do an aftermarket because I want something different. I can tell you, the last time I used a set of kit decals was the Arma P51B because it was required as part of the Moosa route, and that is the last time I have used the kit decals. Those were good ones. They're great, they're fantastic, they're, I think, cartograph printed. So they're guaranteed fantastic, and they were. But that's the last time I've used a kit set of decals.
Mike:Bill Moore Now Bill's from Middle Tennessee, I believe, Mm-hmm. He hopes all's well in our worlds, and it is. He's got a question for us. Oh gosh, A mini Karnaca. How did you two meet?
Kentucky Dave:Oh, my God, I'll take this one. Do you know this? Because I'm not sure I do, I do, I do. I know this.
Mike:Okay. So, bill, let's see when was it? 1980. 1988. That's when it was. Yeah, I went to University of Tennessee for my engineering education and I entered the cooperative engineering program and through that program I scored a job with what at the time was IBM Lexington. Ibm had a facility here in town. Prior to computer printers et cetera, they made. Every Selectric typewriter made in North America were made right here in Lexington, kentucky. Yep.
Mike:I moved up here for a semester to work at IBM Lexington and brought all my modeling crap with me and I cracked open my fine scale modeler and started looking for model shows because I'd never been up this way before. And lo and behold, military Modelers Club of Louisville was having a show within a few weeks of my arrival and I attended the show. Where was the show, do you remember? At the executive West, which is a vacant lot now.
Kentucky Dave:Oh, yes, is that the guy? The show where the guy showed up with the junkyard?
Mike:car lot. No, we'll get to that in a different email. Okay, We'll get to. We'll get to talk about a different email. Okay, we'll get to. We'll get to talk about that. No, that was much later. We were well-established friends when that happened okay, because that was like that was like paracat spring show material there yeah, exactly no, this, this, this hotel. There's an executive east and executive west. The executive East is now the Crown Plaza, where Wonderfest is held. Yeah, Executive West not so much. It's a gravel plateau now.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Mike:Anyway, I was introduced to MMCL there.
Kentucky Dave:Yep.
Mike:Brian's Hobby Shop Scale Reproductions was in the basement of Dr Hill's chiropractic office, yep Housecome Zone for Business, Yep Down in St Matthew's area, louisville. And so, okay, it just starts to grow right. I'm the show, met some people, met Brian, bought some stuff. Probably still have what I bought from him.
Kentucky Dave:Probably with the original price tags on it.
Mike:I think I do and I can probably break it out and that'd be a dojo post. But you know, okay, oh, they got a club, so I start coming to the club meetings and I meet you and a lot of people. But you know, that kind of went on cause I was coming and going until 1992 when I moved up here permanently with a with a, you know with my career job Lexmark spawned out of IBM Lexington, and I moved up here, took the job, worked there for 24 years and became a member of MMCL and over the course of me being a member, a regular member, you and I just got to be better and better friends and up until, I guess, the trip we always talk about, the MMSI show. Yes, probably, that was probably 96 or seven.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, 95, maybe probably that was probably 96 or 7. Yeah, 95, maybe it was 95 because my first date with my wife was in 95 and or no, I'm sorry, it was 96. Your first date with my wife was 96.
Mike:Yeah, we had to come back early because we both had we traveled together that show that was the first time we ever traveled and bunked together yeah, at a model show, absolutely 1996, and the rest is history. So 96, how long is that? Well, almost 30 years, two years shy.
Kentucky Dave:30 years, 28 years, dave if you go back to 88, where we first met, that's 35 years I know jesus, apparently we get along Dave. Yeah, I was going to say how'd you get so old and I stay so young? I don't know. That's amazing.
Mike:Well, Dave. Finally, from the email side of things, Mr Michael Karnalka from New York City. All right, oh, not the home of paste picante sauce. He sent a couple, but I'm going to pick the first one so I can get to what we alluded to.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:With the junkyard, oh Lord. His question is has theft ever been an issue or problem at some shows that we've attended? He recalls one editorial from a British magazine who stated the author stated his models were either stolen during the show or deliberately damaged. And he knows a fellow that told him that a vendor was caught red-handed stealing from another seller of the show. Yeah, all this crap goes on. I mean, that's just life in the big city, right?
Kentucky Dave:Right.
Mike:Right, Unfortunately, this guy is still active in the community, so it's all been swept under the rug. But have we ever experienced anything quite like this? I think yeah, I'll set it up.
Kentucky Dave:I'll tell a story too.
Mike:I've got one as well, we're going to tell the same story, maybe.
Kentucky Dave:No, no, mine's different, so you go.
Mike:I've not seen anything stolen. I've not seen anything that belonged to a different modeler, that was dealt damage from somebody else. But back in the 90s, when we were hosting our show, there was this diorama going around Region 4. That was this big 24, 25th scale car diorama going around region four.
Mike:That was this big 24 25th scale car diorama thing a junkyard a big junkyard and it probably had 25, 30 models on it in various states of disrepair and decrepitness. And it was big. It was, I don't know, three feet by four feet something like that, at least three feet by four feet. And this guy was traveling around all the shows entering this thing and I guess it just wasn't doing too well, because bigger is not better folks.
Kentucky Dave:Right and that you see a lot of modelers go through a phase where they think bigger equals better.
Mike:I don't know, eventually ventured out of region four and went down south. Where did this was?
Kentucky Dave:It was in Florida that this happened. No, South Carolina, I believe Now, again, this is stretching my memory because this happened all third Got to be about 30 years ago, 25 years ago.
Mike:So the thing didn't win again. Apparently, a lot of this guy's self-worth and personal existence was hanging on to this thing and he launched it. Yep, like a Frisbee In the show hall yeah, and God help he didn't hit anything else. Yep, like a Frisbee In the show hall yeah, and God help he didn't hit anything else. Yeah, or, or anybody? Yeah. So of of what you're asking, mike, that's the closest thing I've. I've not seen any known of anything stolen or somebody intentionally damaging somebody else's work out of spite or jealousy or whatever, but I have seen someone over attached to what they created get frustrated at a show and destroy it on the show floor. Yeah, well, the one.
Kentucky Dave:What's your story day? Well, two, uh, really one. There was an ipms national many, many years ago where one I think it was the it was an, a like a Ferrari, a build of a Ferrari that won best auto and it was stolen from the table. If you've ever been to the IPMS nationals, after the awards are announced, the doors are opened and then everybody can go in and grab their models and if you want an award, it's sitting next to the model.
Kentucky Dave:You grab the model, the award or somebody else well, yeah, that has happened from time to time, but and one year, one year, this beautiful Ferrari model that had won Best Auto was apparently picked off the table and made off with. And man, they are much more vigilant now because of that, at least as vigilant as they can be to try and prevent that, at least as vigilant as they can be to try and prevent that. I do also know of at least one vendor, and this wasn't at a national. This was a guy who would make the rounds at local shows and he was basically banned from a lot of model shows because at one show he had gotten caught stealing off of another vendor's table and he got caught and that resulted him in him getting banned at that show. And then the word got around and he got banned at at pretty much all the shows that he regularly attended.
Kentucky Dave:So it does happen Again. Modelers are just like any group of human beings. They are all flawed in one form or another, and some of them are badly flawed. But I will tell you, as a group, modelers as a group have just been some of the best people I know. So those are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Mike:Well, that's it from the email side of things. Dave, what's been going on Facebook Messenger?
Kentucky Dave:Well, the Facebook Messenger is a little bit lighter, but what it lacks in numerosity it makes up for in quality. The first one I want to mention is our friend Paul Gloster. The Quokka sends me a DM the other day and you know he's working on those Airfix Avro 504 kits.
Mike:Lovely kits.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, lovely kits from the 1960s or whatever, and he's just doing a number on these things and he's building. He sends me a picture. He has a book that he has obtained that's published in 1918, called assembling and rigging avcraft the Avro 504, published in 1918.
Mike:So it's a technical manual, right? It's not a book.
Kentucky Dave:It's not a reference book. Well yeah.
Mike:Well, it is ultimately, but it's not like after the fact published for folks who are interested in it. It is a training guide Right for folks who are interested in it. It is a training guide Right.
Kentucky Dave:And that's what you call top quality reference and it's over 100 years old. And he sends me a picture of this and I'm, like you know again my wife accuses me of being a librarian who occasionally builds a model and that just tickled my fancy that the guy comes up with a reference book over a hundred years old. That is spot on reference for the kit that he is building.
Mike:Well, I look forward to talking to him about that at Nats because, that's pretty cool.
Kentucky Dave:And, as I mentioned earlier, mr Goldfinch is on his way, or will be on his way, to my house via Australia, to Canada, to here. So I messaged him to let him know that I was not going to cut my yard for two or three weeks so that when he got here he could have the pleasure of cutting my yard and listen to our show.
Kentucky Dave:That's right. While he listened to a PM at Plastic Model Mojo episode, he says he's got hay fever and can't do it. On his last episode he was decrying the grit. Grits are a fine Southern tradition and he was down talking the grit so we're going to have to while he's here. I explained to him that it's ground white hominy corn and we're going to have to educate him in the grit while he's here, and also threatened to try and find a butcher with kangaroo meat so that we could have kangaroo steaks while he was here, which he told me kangaroo doesn't really taste very good. He recommends crock or what I told him up here gator. So we may have to find some gator.
Mike:That's like eating the inner tube rubber man.
Kentucky Dave:No, fried gator is excellent.
Mike:It's like fried inner tube rubber.
Kentucky Dave:No, you were wrong.
Mike:Agave on rye. If there's one in Louisville Is there? I don't know, I'll have to check. They've got kangaroo tacos. Oh, do they really?
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, okay, well, we'll have to do that.
Mike:And finally, Well, it's interesting. It's interesting because over there, where Digger Dave is, they're kind of a rodent nuisance right.
Kentucky Dave:Mm-hmm.
Mike:Over here. They're like cute little kangaroo from the Winnie the Pooh movies. Right and people go into Agave on Rye and jaw, drop eye open. What Kangaroo tacos Might as well have a dolphin taco.
Kentucky Dave:Well, you know what I just thought of, something we should do when Dave gets here, we need to take him to Kentucky Down Under near Mammoth Cave.
Mike:No, we should not do that.
Kentucky Dave:Finally, on Facebook DM side, a modeler who is identified as Thrift Shop Modeler. Now, he didn't provide his actual name. By the way, if you do have a handle, give us your actual name, just so we know, and if you don't want us to use it, we won't, but we kind of like to know. He let us know that at the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, massachusetts, on September 15th 2024, they're having a model contest. Asked him to post a flyer and a link in the dojo and he wanted to encourage anybody up in the Northeast in September to come and visit the show.
Mike:All right, is that all you got? That's it, man. Well, folks, thanks for answering the call to action. We got a lot and it's got some good questions, some good comments, and let's do it again, especially if you've never written in the show. And if you do write in the show, please include your name and your geography, city and state or country and city. We really appreciate that. You can do so by emailing us at plasticmodelmojo at gmailcom or, if you're on Facebook, you can use the Facebook Messenger system to message us. That way, dave typically handles those and I handle the email. This is a fun segment. We really like it.
Kentucky Dave:Absolutely.
Mike:Talk at random about a lot of stuff.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, Thanks, folks. This is the point in the show where, if you you haven't done so already, we ask you that when you're done listening to this episode, would you please rate Plastic Model Mojo on whatever podcasting app you're using. It helps us to drive the visibility of the show and find new listeners. Also, if you're a current listener and you know a fellow modeler who doesn't listen, we would appreciate it if you would introduce them to Plastic Model Mojo and help him or her become a listener. You might have to walk them through if they're not tech savvy and don't know what a podcast is, and we would appreciate it because it is the single best way for us to gain new listeners.
Mike:And once you've done that, please check out the other podcasts in the model sphere. You can do so by going to wwwmodelpodcastcom. That's model podcast plural. It's a consortium website set up with the help of Stuart Clark from the Scale Model Podcast up in Canada. Stu's done a good job of aggregating the banner links to all the podcasts out there who are participating with us in the spirit of cross-promotion. You can go to modelpodcastcom and click on those links and check out all the other podcast content out there in the model sphere.
Mike:In addition to that, plastic Model Mojo has a lot of blog and YouTube friends out there we like to promote. One is our guest, mr Jeff Groves, at the Inch High Guy blog. He's doing a lot of 72nd scale stuff and you can check out a lot of that in our special segment, this episode. But please check out his blog. Chris Wallace, model Airplane Maker, great YouTube channel, great blog Keeps getting better and better. We really appreciate what Chris has got going on there and I encourage you to check it out.
Mike:Sprupie with Fretz Stephen Lee's blog. He's got a lot of short-form and long-form content. He's got a good hand on the pulse of the hobby and all the goings-on. He's also a 72nd-scale modeler primarily, and a lot of good content, a lot of frequent updates on his own builds and he's got a lot of long form content on his opinions and things about going on in the model sphere. So check out that as well. Jim Bates Scale Canadian TV YouTube channel Check out what Jim's got going on. A lot of humorous content and opinion on the hobby and always worth checking out. And finally, evan McCallum, panzermeister36. Young. Evan's got a great YouTube channel, always posting new videos on weathering.
Kentucky Dave:Get build reviews just a lot of great stuff, so look forward to seeing what Evan's got coming up in the future. Finally, if you are not a member of your national IPMS organization IPMS USA, ipms Canada, ipms Mexico, ipms Norway, whatever wherever you happen to be I wonder if there's an IPMS Estonia but in any event, if you are not a member of your national IPMS organization, please consider joining. These national organizations exist to add value to your modeling experience. They're all run by volunteers who give of their time in order to try and make your modeling experience better, so please consider joining. Also, if you are an armor modeler or a post-1900s figure modeler, consider joining the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society, amps. It's a great organization of a bunch of great guys and gals who love armor and just absolutely, they put on great shows. Absolutely, they put on great shows. A lot of just fantastic camaraderie. Their show next year in Pennsylvania. If you are anywhere close, you should consider going to their national show. It is a wonderful experience.
Voice of Bob:Plastic Model Mojo is brought to you by Model Paint Solutions, your source for harder and steam back airbrushes, david Union power tools and laboratory grade mixing, measuring and storage tools for use with all your model paints, be they acrylic, enamels or lacquers. Check them out at wwwmodelpaintsolutionscom.
Mike:Well, Dave, back to the Inch High Guy blog. Our guest tonight is Mr Jeff Groves.
Kentucky Dave:We've talked to Jeff plenty of times at shows, but this is the first time we've actually been able to get him on for a full interview segment and, man, I'm really glad we've managed to do that.
Mike:Well, we're going to have him back in the third chair for a full episode here soon. Yes, a lot of fun. We appreciate Jeff. He finds us every show in Region 4 that we're all at and look forward to seeing the next time. I guess, guys, it's probably going to be our show, maybe Cincinnati. Our show.
Mike:Yeah, it'd be our show first. Just had a lot of fun talking to Jeff, so let's get into it, dave. You got it, dave. After two or three show floor appearances we finally made good and have a guest tonight. We've meant to get on for a long time, but we keep running into him at shows and recording there and we've never really pulled the trigger on getting him on here. But tonight we got the inch high guy, mr Jeff Groves. Jeff, how you doing, man?
Jeff Groves:Good, good, Good everybody, Hi Greater Mojovea.
Kentucky Dave:Well, Jeff, conversations with us at shows have always been great, but he really has been. It's been crying out for us to get him in for a long form conversation because, frankly, he's got so many interesting things going on and he's done a number of really interesting modeling related things that a long form conversation was way overdue.
Mike:Well, let's get into it, Jeff. Why don't you give us a little bit of your scale modeling background? We know you came out of the Navy and were you building before, then and after, and how did you get to where you are today?
Jeff Groves:Yeah, well, like most of us I think, I built everything I could get a hold of when I was a kid and through high school, and then I went off to college and got into the ROTC program and went into the Navy and served in the fleet for four years and I didn't build anything during the college or the Navy years and then got back out and resumed building. Like most of us do that kind of thing.
Kentucky Dave:Well, before we gloss over, went into the Navy and then got out. Tell us at least a little bit about your Navy career, because you really did have a very interesting Navy career.
Jeff Groves:Well, I did a job description they don't have anymore. I was a turret officer aboard the USS Missouri, one of the Iowa-class battleships. That's kind of where I grew up. When I got out of the college and went in the Navy I reported aboard in 85 when she was still a shipyard project, a renovator, and we went on a circumnavigation completely around the world as our first cruise and then we deployed to the Persian Gulf in 87 as part of Operation Ernest Will.
Kentucky Dave:So you basically ran one of the turrets on the ship.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, as the second half of my assignment there. The first half, I had the first division in the deck force. I had 81 men and they have you do just about everything. I was plotting room officer for the secondary battery, the five-inch guns, learned how to do the director work, drove the ship on the bridge conning officer and eventually became officer of the deck. And then the second half I transited over to the turret one officer and got to shoot the biggest guns in the world at the time.
Kentucky Dave:Okay, be honest with me. Driving an Iowa class battleship has got to be just lots of fun.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, it is lots of fun. There's some tense moments, obviously. I think the turning circle is something like 800 yards, so if you want to go the other way, it takes you almost a minute and you're 800 yards laterally at full rudder to get over there. So it takes up a lot of sea room. She was 887 feet long, so three football fields in length, 58,000 tons. You obviously don't stop that right away and it obviously doesn't turn around right away and it draws 36 feet of water. So you have to be aware, especially if you're close inshore, exactly what you've got under you. Yeah, but it's like I said, it's a job description that doesn't exist anymore.
Kentucky Dave:That's a shame, but I'm glad you got to experience it.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, there would still be some uses for them today. I mean, there's obviously some stuff in the news that a battleship would be just the right tool to employ, but there's none of them left. The Missouri's a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, and all the other Iowa class are museum ships as well, so they're still visible.
Mike:Getting back to modeling, yes, you do. As Dave mentioned. You do a lot of interesting things and I think, given your time in the Navy, I don't know how much ship modeling you do, but we actually know you for primarily aircraft and armor.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, that's my main focus. I delve into ships, some as well. I am a devotee of the one true scale. Well, I am a devotee of the one true scale. So many of my ships turn out to be 72nd scale projects, which of course limits them to a great degree. With the amount of photo etch that's out there on the kind of cutting edge ship models, those are very time involved projects. If you wanted to build a battleship in 350th or even 700th, you can easily put four, five, six months into just that one model.
Kentucky Dave:So you are, of course, an adherent to God's one true scale 72nd, which is one of the reasons I knew you were a good guy from the moment I first met you. When you got back into modeling post-Navy did you start with your interest in, because you've got multiple interests. Did you start with your interest in the German aces because you've got a collection of those, or did you start with another particular area of interest?
Jeff Groves:Well, one of my older interests, back from when I was in high school. I've always been fascinated with Japanese aircraft and I know you share that as well. So I had a substantial number of those kits that had survived and I added to that I did do some 700 scale ships for a while. And then I got kind of interested in the Luftwaffe aces and after a little bit of research I got to looking at their top scorers list and I was just kind of amazed they had I think it's 106 individuals that scored more than 100 victories and I thought well, that would be an interesting theme. So I started going after the research on that and the decals on that and the kits on that and I started building those and to this day I'm not done. Out of the 106, I think I've got 86 complete now- you and I have talked.
Kentucky Dave:You said that there's photographic evidence of the markings of one of their aircraft for all but how many?
Jeff Groves:Fourteen, oddly enough, and most of those are from JG-52, which was the highest scoring fighter group in history.
Kentucky Dave:Right.
Jeff Groves:That's where Hartman and all the top scorers basically got their start. It's amazing that you can get over 100 victories and there's not a picture of your plane anywhere. But there's, like I said, I think there's 14 of those guys that their aircraft are only partially documented, if at all. Klaus Sundin is working on a profile book now that I hope addresses some of that. The focus is going to be JG-52, but it's delayed a few times and I think it comes out in October now. But even after they get the profiles done, then you're scrambling to get the decals right and that sort of thing.
Kentucky Dave:Well, I'm sure when that book comes out you'll let me know, because one of the things Jeff Groves is to me is my book pimp, because anytime he runs across, hey look what's on sale and he finds some fantastic book deals. And a large, a not insignificant portion of my very large library is due to emails from Jeff Groves going hey, look at this.
Jeff Groves:Well, we share the same kryptonite, I think, is if we find a quality book, that's a good deal. It's just kind of hard not to have that thing in the mail in a couple of days, Yep absolutely.
Mike:Well, guys, I'm guilty too. Jeff's got me buying books for genres I wasn't even interested in prior to 2020. So there's a lot of good ship books out there. Yeah, there are A lot of good information there. For an engineer, they're real interesting, especially the Anatomy of a Ship series, where they just get into the nitty gritty of it all.
Jeff Groves:Well, the goal, Mike, is to get you to build a 72nd scale ship and put an aircraft on it.
Mike:I might build a turret.
Kentucky Dave:Well, that's the gateway drug, Mike. Once you get a turret, then there's going to be a deck and there's going to be a little bit of hull and it goes from there. How do you know where to stop Exactly? Hall, and it goes from there. How do you know where to stop Exactly? Well, speaking of that, that's a really great segue into one of the builds that Jeff Groves is known for. Jeff built Hasegawa, emily, and then decided he needed something to display it with or display it on, and, instead of, like any rational human being, building some beaching gear or maybe, if you're a little bit crazy, a little bit of a section of the deck of a ship, jeff went all out. Jeff, what did you do?
Jeff Groves:Well, it started out as a joke and I think you were in on the joke from the beginning. We got to discussing how do you display an Emily? And it turns out there's one ship that could carry an Emily and it was a seaplane tender named the Akitsushima. And the Akitsushima is not huge as far as ships go, it's about a destroyer-sized ship. But it had a giant crane on the fantail and it could hoist an Emily onto the deck for servicing. And Dave and I and several others on the 72nd Scale Aircraft Forum got to discussing well, you know, you could put that servicing cradle underneath it. And then, well, why not put the crane over it? And pretty soon I was cutting hole formers and scratch built the Akitsushima in 72nd scale.
Kentucky Dave:Which led to one of the greatest April Fool's jokes on the planet, because I kept joking with Jeff that he was going to get halfway through building the Akitsushima in 72nd scale which, by the way, guys, he says it's not that big. The model is what like four and a half five feet long.
Jeff Groves:It's just under six feet. I put a water base under it because the only time it could carry one of these giant seaplanes was at anchor, so I had to show it at anchor, which means I had to put water around it, and I actually measured the base. I have an S10 and I measured the base so it would fit in the bed of my truck and if I close the tailgate hard I can get the box that it ships in closed and it's just. I forget exactly how long it is now, but it's like six inches shy of being six feet long.
Kentucky Dave:Well, I was joking with Jeff while he was going through this process, which I think was about a year in total, 16 months, 16 months. Well, I kept joking with him that he was going to get 90% done with the job. And then Airfix, out of the blue, was going to announce a 72nd scale, kitsushima. And so Jeff, being the scallywag that he is, mocked up for an April Fool's joke, mocked up and then sent to me a box top announcing the Airfix 72nd scale Akitsushima. And man, it would fool anybody, it would fool the folks at Airfix. And he did it on April Fool's Day, I think. He posted it to 72nd scale forum. It was pretty darn funny.
Jeff Groves:That was it turned out nice.
Kentucky Dave:And then the guys at OTB actually thought that it was real. I had to explain to them. No, that was a joke that Jeff pulled on me.
Jeff Groves:I felt so bad about that. I sent that in and I figured they'd see right through this. You know, these guys are going to see this one coming a mile away and apparently they hadn't discussed it before they went to record and one of the guys was like oh no, this is all BS and there's well, here's a box top. It looks real. It did.
Kentucky Dave:It's a very real looking box top.
Jeff Groves:I felt so bad. It's a very real looking box stop.
Mike:I felt so bad I should have put some disclaimer on it and let them know, but I figured they'd catch it right away. Getting back to the Aces yes, yeah, was that the impetus for something you're also known for on your blog? Is your batch builds? Because I imagine most of those Aces are either 109 or 190 pilots, exactly so, and maybe there's a few in there that aren't, which I'd really like to know which ones aren't, if there's any ME-110 pilots who had over 100 kills.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, there's two actually.
Mike:I think it'd be very many.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, there were two of them. The interesting thing is you can model just about all of them in 109s, just about all in flu 109s at one point or another. Right, the collection kind of works out to be about two-thirds 109s and about a third 190s, and then some various leftovers. There's a lot of those guys that flew 262s at the end of the war from various leftovers. There's a lot of those guys that flew 262s at the end of the war, okay, and for many of these guys I've built multiple aircraft that they flew, like Adolph Gallen, for instance. I think I have four or five of his, and he's in everything from really early 109s all the way through 262s. So there's some of these guys that you know. Oh, that scheme's interesting too. I think I'll do that one, and so I have multiples of some of these guys and nothing at all on others.
Kentucky Dave:So when you again one of the other things you were known for is batch builds. Yes, so when you're doing, when you're, when you decide you need to do a few more of these expert, and do you batch build, like six, 109 G's at a time, or 12, or whatever, intending then to go ahead and paint them in the different schemes for the different individual expert.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, there's a couple synergies you can exploit if you're doing a batch build. One of them is to build the same kit or variants of the same kit and then the construction part is chug, chug, chug, chug, chug through it. And the other thing you can exploit is the camouflage schemes. So in some cases I've mixed 109s with 190s because they're both in the three-tone grays and I can set the airbrush up and I can literally paint eight of 10 planes in the same scheme or something similar using the same colors.
Kentucky Dave:Gotcha.
Jeff Groves:And that's one of the efficiencies of doing a batch build.
Jeff Groves:If it takes you a certain amount of time to build one aircraft, a single engine aircraft of any description, if you build two or three or even four of that same aircraft especially if the schemes are similar, it can usually take you like twice as long as it would to build one and you get four done.
Jeff Groves:So there's a lot of efficiency. I mean, think about how long it takes if you're going to spray a color through your airbrush. You get your airbrush set up, you get your paint mixed, airbrush. You get your airbrush set up, you get your paint mixed, you spray on your test mule or your test panel, you get your airbrush tuned in just right and then the actual spraying may only take you a minute or two minutes and if you can extend that over several aircraft, you get your spraying done, you dispose of your paint, you clean your airbrush out, get your bench cleaned up, you move on to the next thing. Most of the time it took to spray that one minute of paint is in the front end prepping and the back end cleaning. So it may take you 10 or 15 minutes to spray that color and the actual rubber meets the road. Part of that's that one minute.
Kentucky Dave:Right. So if you're doing six 109s, all with RLM 66 interiors, you've got the airbrush set up, you've got it loaded, tested, ready to go and instead of taking 30 seconds or a minute to do one interior, you take four minutes to do six interiors, exactly, exactly, and that carries on through any part of construction.
Jeff Groves:One interior, you take four minutes to do six interiors, exactly, exactly, and that carries on through any part of construction. I mean, how many times have you built a kit and you say, boy, the next time I build this kit, I'm going to do this differently, I'm going to file this down a little more, or I'm going to test fit this, or I'm going to replace this part, or whatever. Well, if you're building a dozen of them, your next kit is right there. Yeah, so you've learned from that first kit and you can now exploit that knowledge and either build a better version of the next one or build them more efficiently all the way through.
Kentucky Dave:As opposed to building one, we're saying to yourself oh, next time I would do this differently. And then, a year later, when you go to build the next one, you've forgotten all of the lessons that you learned.
Jeff Groves:Exactly, or you're pausing your building to write that down, guilty.
Mike:Yeah, well, that was something I was going to ask. You mentioned the paint side of it and there's certainly an efficiency and time there. Just because, like you said, it's all on the front end and back end of airbrushing it's mixing and prepping and then then the cleanup on the build side, I would think possibly there's even a greater efficiency of time. Like you said, you do this differently, but even if you take that a little bit more granular, you've got a kit that I don't know. Maybe you're working with one that's a little older or something and you're having to deal with a fit issue that may be common to all the kits. If you're building eight of the same manufacturer's 109s, maybe they all have this problem or have the problem to some degree. You're making that mental investment and that solution discovery on the first one, and then that's probably a lot more time in some instances than mixing paint and loading an airbrush. So now you've really saved a lot of time because you know exactly what to do on two, three, four and five.
Jeff Groves:Exactly. And the other thing is if you're, let's say, you're putting a radio in because they didn't have a radio in the interior, and you're cutting that radio out of sheet stock or evergreen, you can cut 12 of them a lot easier than you can cut one. If you can cut one, you can just chug them out. Another synergy there is if you're building a kit for a comparison build which I do on my blog quite a bit you you can compare the kits and you can see details that one kit may have, a newer kit may have that an older kit doesn't, and you can pattern off the newer kit and fabricate your details for the older kit and upgrade them that way. Or you can cast say one of them has great wheels and the others are, or look like buttons. You or you can cast say one of them has great wheels and the others look like buttons. You can cast the great wheels and replace the buttons with those. So there's synergies there as well.
Kentucky Dave:Well, that raises a question that I was going to ask you in regard to these batch builds. You do both batch builds where you build the six of the same kit or 12, and you build batch builds where you build the same prototype item and you build it from kits from multiple manufacturers. Which do you enjoy more?
Jeff Groves:I enjoy them both and it's part of the aversion to burnout is doing something different. I do enjoy taking a kit from 1972 and trying to make it look like the kit that just came out last year. That can be a challenge.
Kentucky Dave:You're a sick man.
Jeff Groves:There's no unbuildable kit. There's just something you really wouldn't want to do.
Mike:Yes. Well, how many of the same kit have you managed at one effort?
Jeff Groves:I think the most I've ever done is I did 14 fine molds, 109s at once, that's what I was going to say, because I remember that one, 14 at once. I've done a dozen a couple more times because if you're doing these expert and you need a lot of 109s before you're done.
Mike:Is there a practical limit, do you think, before it just gets to be tedium.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I think the 14 was kind of pushing my limit there. I know there's some guys that have actually done more than that here and there, but that for me is just about as many as I would like to do at once.
Mike:Interesting. Yeah, dave, you're going to get on this right. No, no, no, no.
Kentucky Dave:To me as zeros. Well, you know, that is the one thing I could see myself doing a batch build of is to me as zeros.
Jeff Groves:Which?
Kentucky Dave:wait a minute, as I remember you've done one.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I did a batch of I think seven or eight, and I had some Hasegawa zeros and I think I had the fine mold zero in there as well, which is also an excellent kit if you can find it.
Kentucky Dave:I own several.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, that's an excellent kit. If anybody's interested in the batch build paradigm, I would suggest starting out with maybe two of the same kit and doing different markings on them, or something like that, and see if it's to your taste. It's not for everybody.
Mike:Yeah, I would think if you were someone who goes to the 11th degree on detail managing more than one or two might be kind of a hassle.
Jeff Groves:At the end of the day you want to get them off the bench and move on to the next project. At some point I mean as much fun as you're having with them the next shiny object catches your eye and you don't want to drift off and have a dozen shelf of doom kits in one box sitting there. So you got to finish them up.
Kentucky Dave:Back to the Akitsushima for a minute. How did that project metastasize? I mean, at what point did you just say to yourself the heck with it, I'm going to build the entire ship.
Jeff Groves:Well, once I found some good engineering drawings of it and that's one of the there's two things that the Akitsushima had. There was a beautiful profile picture of her running sea trials from 1943. And it's. I figured out where it was perpendicular to and it's just about where that aircraft cradle is. So if you dimension that photograph outright you only have to correct the parallax on about half the ship. And that was kind of instrumental because there's Profile.
Jeff Groves:Morski out of Poland has some plans you can get. I ordered those plans. There's Profile Morski out of Poland has some plans you can get. I ordered those plans and right from the start I started seeing inaccuracies in the drawings and it's you just can't if you're going to go to that degree to build something that involved. You don't want to start with bad plans. But there was a Japanese magazine called Naval Yard and they had a workup of a Hasegawa 350th scale the Kitsushima in there and as part of that they had segments of the builder's plans in that magazine and I was able to blow those up to scale and those of course are perfectly proportioned. And once you get the documentation and the drawings and Mike can identify with this the drawings themselves inspire you. It's like, wow, you know I I wonder what this would look like in 3d.
Kentucky Dave:let me go ahead and try to build this, yeah well, but but at what point in this project did you go from? I'm just going to build the cradle. Oh, the heck with it. I'm just going to build the cradle and the crane to. I'm going to build the whole thing.
Jeff Groves:Rather quickly. It's like where do you draw the line? Where do you stop with this thing? Do you have a red segment and cut it off and then do you have to model the interior, or do you just model it flat? Or what do you do with the thing? I wrestle with that on a ship. If you like the gun turrets you can get from Takon now and a lot of guys are building those as standalone things. I don't know that I could stop if I got one. Well, you have several, don't you? I have a few. I have some from the Iowa class.
Kentucky Dave:Color me shocked.
Jeff Groves:But again I'm wrestling with that. Do I just go ahead and start building the whole ship, Because I'm not sure where to stop with these things? It just carries on.
Kentucky Dave:Okay, I know you've done the math. How big would a 72nd scale aisle be? 12?
Jeff Groves:foot 4 inches. Yeah. Yeah, 12 feet 4 inches. And of course I would need a batch of two, because I like the original world war ii configuration, and then of course, I would have to build it as refitted when I served a border sure, sure, because if you're going to build one, why not just go ahead and build two? Yeah, it's more efficient. Why not build a bad?
Kentucky Dave:right, that's a batch build, you wouldn't forget. Oh man, one of the other things you are known for, besides batch builds and besides the Akitsushima, is you've got a blog, which, by the way, I'm going to take a little bit of credit for. I'm going to claim that I talked you into starting a blog.
Jeff Groves:You at least talked me down off the roof more than once there you go. Trying to get it started.
Kentucky Dave:There you go, so on that you post an. Now it's the inch high guy, so it's 72nd scale focused, Although a lot of your most interesting posts are what I'd call for one of a better term historical research. Now, a lot of times there is a modeling component to this. The one most recently that occurs to me is the is it xp38?
Jeff Groves:yeah, yeah, that was the the b17 hybrid kind of build.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah right where it's. You took and, in addition to ultimately building this thing, or a version of this thing in 72nd scale, you did a massive amount of research in regard to basically, it's a B-17 with inline engines, but then you combine that with a standard B-17 and redesigned the armament, the configuration. Tell us a little bit about that.
Jeff Groves:Okay, the B-38 was a project to fit Allisons onto a B-17. So you take the right cyclones off, you put Allisons on, so you have streamlined engine and cells. There was another project called Reed's Dreamboat and there was an officer named Major Reed and he was tasked with taking feedback from the 8th Air Force B-17 crews and building a prototype improved B-17. And many of his innovations focused around armament. And they put Elko turrets in the nose and the tail, which of course dramatically increased the covered area for firepower in the nose and tail positions, and they put a second dorsal turret in the radio operator's position. They eliminated the waist gunner position, so they went from a crew of 10 down to eight and they improved the defensive firepower that could come to any bearing around the aircraft. So what I did is a hypothetical, a whiffer, and I took a B-17 and put Allison engines on it and the revised armament and then I painted it up as if it was an operational aircraft in late 1944, early 1945.
Kentucky Dave:operational aircraft in late 1944, early 1945. Now let's touch on the research first. One of the areas that you have a fascination with and that I benefit from simply from reading your blog, is you really have an interest in all of the variations that the military looked at in World War II for the B-17 and the B-24, among others. I mean, you don't stop there, but just all of those experiments et cetera. Where did you find all of the research for that stuff?
Jeff Groves:Well, as we discussed earlier, I have an extensive library, so a lot of that stuff's in there. There's so much of that stuff that's online anymore that if you really dive down the rabbit hole and you use the right search terms, you can dig up some other articles on it. When you use the right search terms, you can dig up some other articles on it. You can find photographs, which, of course, is what you want on a blog. The picture tells the story and you just tell the reader what they're looking at a lot of times and the details of what they were trying to do when they were doing these modifications. But it's a rabbit hole and I'm guilty of sitting in front of the computer, sometimes two or three hours, looking at these things and looking for pictures of it and that sort of thing. And if you can get enough information and kind of nail down what they were up to, it makes for an interesting story if you can put it all together.
Jeff Groves:And a lot of the times when I am browsing for something I'll find pictures of something else. Oh, here's a great color picture of a Mustang, or here's a great color picture of a Dauntless, and I throw them in a file on my computer that's just labeled color photographs and after a while it's like, oh my gosh, I have 18 Dauntless pictures, or I have 53 Thunderbolt pictures and pretty soon I start sorting them out. And well, what do you know, these are all from the same squadron. Or here's four pictures of the same aircraft from different angles and sometimes the story will just emerge from that that the photographer literally walked around the aircraft shooting pictures and what I'd always thought was a picture of the nose art, Well, guess what? The guy shot the other side of the aircraft, in the tail, and here's the pilot. And you get the whole story that way.
Jeff Groves:And you find some of these more famous aircraft were photographed multiple times over time and you can see how the markings evolved over time. And that's an interesting story in itself. And there's a lot more color photographs out there than people realize. And if you can find a dozen color photographs of the same aircraft type or even sometimes the same aircraft, and put them all together and these were all taken at this RAF station on a certain day and of a certain fighter group, those I find really interesting. And it's the. These things have scattered to the winds, the photographs have just gone in all directions and I didn't realize how many of them were actually related until I started throwing them in these files and then sorting them back out again.
Kentucky Dave:Well, and another place where that is true is color film. You did a project based on I think it was John Ford, wasn't it? Yeah?
Jeff Groves:Yeah, john.
Kentucky Dave:Ford's color film from Midway.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, the Vindicators taking off.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, yeah, yeah and you were able, from that film, to separate out single frames and determine that what some things we thought about those aircraft were actually much different than conventional wisdom.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, that was a real interesting story and a real eye-opener. I actually think that film they portray it in the John Ford's film as them taking off to go hit the Japanese fleet on the morning of June 4th. I think it was actually taken on a practice mission a few days earlier, but it's all the same aircraft and the Marine Vindicators there. They were in really rough shape, except for two of them. There were two of them that had been refitted and refurbished but the rest of them. There was an interview by one of the pilots and he said that the aft fuselage fabric was held on by medical tape, that they had taped the fuselage together and then sealed it with dope. And if you look at the John Ford film and you can get the screen captures, you can see where several of these aircraft, you can actually see the tape, you can see where it had been painted over.
Jeff Groves:There was an order that came out a couple I think it was on the 9th of May, so about a month before midway that all the red markings on US Navy and Marine Corps aircraft in the Pacific were to be overpainted. So they had carried tail stripes before that and red centers to the insignia. And I think whoever whatever corporal was given the order to paint out the tail stripes, got a little exuberant and he painted the whole tail in a very dark blue. And then, of course, when his gunny saw that they had to correct the vertical fixed portion of the stabilizer and so they overpainted it lightly with white. So there's white squiggles on these vertical tails, the rudders are a dark blue and none of those details with the medical tape or the touched up paint or any of that had been appreciated by guys making profiles or model manufacturers or guys making box art. And if you look at the John Ford film, it's right there in front of you of the John Ford film.
Kentucky Dave:It's right there in front of you, yeah, and, by the way, listeners, if you have, first of all midways, one of the areas that fascinates me, who wouldn't be Vindicators again? Who wouldn't be If you haven't been to Jeff's blog? Go to the Inch High Guy blog. It's all you got to do is put into Google Inch High Guy and it'll show up and find his post in regard to this set of aircraft and his film analysis of it. Because it's fantastic, it's really. It's research, the way research should be done, and one of the great advantages of the internet is that it's allowed basically anybody with an internet connection and a computer and time and an eye for detail and an interest to sit down and do this type of stuff.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, it just draws you in. When you start noticing these things, it's like man, I've never noticed that before. And then you look at the books you have and the profiles don't show any of that.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Jeff Groves:And it's just amazing some of the things that pop out at you when you're really studying the original photographs.
Mike:So how did that manifest? Into Vindicator builds.
Jeff Groves:Well, I did two of them, dave, on the 72nd Scale Aircraft Forum. I think you called it the Skippy Smackdown.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, yeah.
Jeff Groves:That was a-.
Mike:Skippy building one too.
Kentucky Dave:Skippy's building one, and so was I, and either Skippy nor I finished ours.
Jeff Groves:And I finished two. And there's some other poor slob that did a really masterful vacuum form of one in the yellow wings markings. Yeah, you remember that build that was beautiful oh, absolutely yeah, he did a really great job, is that that?
Kentucky Dave:no, that wasn't. That wasn't the minecraft kit that got disassembled at the nationals a couple of years ago this was a the one that was on that tall pedestal at san marco right that was the my craft kit, where the guy took the my craft kit and, for whatever reason, built and and exploded and vacuformed and did all sorts of stuff to make that beautiful Vindicator in Yellow Wings. This guy that Jeff and I are talking about just built a vacuform kit of the Vindicator.
Jeff Groves:Ah, okay, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful build.
Kentucky Dave:Oh yeah, absolutely, Of course, then again, so were yours.
Jeff Groves:Well, thanks, they were Thanks.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:And that's because your kits need a little work too. Well, jeff, to ease out of the aircraft lane a little bit, you've dabbled in a little 72nd scale armor as well. How's that been for you? You know we've talked to a couple other 72nd scale officiant autos on the show here quite recently both Steve Hustad and Paul Gloucester and you know Steve's done quite a bit of armor and Paul had just done one kit during his experiment he was going through. But you know I've seen quite a few from you.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I've built a lot. I'm no Steve Hustad. I'll be the first to tell you that None of us are. They're more palate cleansers for me. I build them because they're fascinating to me. I'm not that good at it. I look at a lot of Uncle Night Shift and Evans videos and try to draw inspiration from there, but I'm nowhere near up to that standard. But I do enjoy doing them. The running gear is a little tricky. I don't know how these guys build them and then pop them off. I saw, dave, you were trying to do that with yours and it looked like you managed it.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, I did.
Jeff Groves:I tend to glue mine all together. I'm going for the good, solid fit and I'll paint it up later, but I put everything on there. I'm hoping at some point that one of these 3D print outfits comes up with one piece running gear and tracks as an aftermarket for 72nd scale armor. I would buy those suckers up in a minute because, well, getting everything aligned is a challenge and you want it solid when you're done because if not, you're just going to start snapping off track links and stuff. So that that's.
Jeff Groves:That's an interest of mine, and I do have a lot of buildup armor. I was looking at that the other day. I'm not sure quite how many I have, but there's. There's a couple shelves in the cases of just armor. They're fun, they're interesting weathering challenges. It's like your last guest was talking about I think it was two shows ago talking about doing different genres and building your skills that way, and that's kind of how I look at that. I don't consider myself an expert armor builder by any stretch, but I do enjoy doing it and I'm learning stuff when I do.
Kentucky Dave:Well, and one of the things that I think and we've talked about this with Steve is the fact that for years, there wasn't much 72nd scale stuff out there and what there was was a challenge let's just put it that way, let's just call it a challenge Whereas in the last five years we now have lots of 72nd scale kits from quality manufacturers doing current technology, molding and design, and the 72nd scale armor kits. Now, instead of being kind of a frustrating build, that leads to you know, okay, you can crank out, even out of the box just really, really nice, just really really nice 70-second scale armor models.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, absolutely. There are some that are just little gems. You have the counterforce there of a 250 parts count for some of these things.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Jeff Groves:And then they inevitably want to make some little photo etch things that you can't even hardly separate off the photo etch fret, let alone pick up with tweezers. So they're getting down to where it's almost counterproductive to try to get that next level of detail in.
Mike:Yeah.
Jeff Groves:But you can get some just fantastic results from some of the newer kits. There's no doubt about it.
Kentucky Dave:I completely agree. And what manufacturers have you built lately that you've particularly enjoyed?
Jeff Groves:I built one of the Vespid Panthers. Yeah, that's just a beautiful kit. Like I said, some of the details there. I shaved off some little clips and replaced them with a photo etch and in retrospect I kind of wish I'd left the molded on plastic in place, because in that scale some of the clips and stuff are just so hard to work with and hard to get aligned and hard not to have some telltale glue marker that sort of thing on them. Right, those are just marvelous kits. I'd say anything by that manufacturer is good. The TACOM kits are just excellent, of course. The last time I was at Indy I bought a stack of the old ESCI kits that Italeri had reboxed.
Mike:And those are not the best state-of-the-art kits, but they have their own appeal to some degree as well. There's a company or two out there making they're not 3d printed, they're. They're. I kind of think they're standard polyurethane cast track sets for some of those to get to help you get around those rubber band tracks on those old esky kits. But uh, yeah, you know some detail wise, those aren't terrible, but they're just not engineered as well as some of these others.
Jeff Groves:Yeah there are ones, yeah, some, some of the times, the, the old kits have a certain charm with the simplicity and you know the novelty and the oh. What do you call it, mike? The, the oh, nostalgia, nostalgia, that's what I'm after. Thanks, dave, the nostalgia build kit, and as long as you take the attitude, going in.
Kentucky Dave:I'm going to make this the best I can with what I've got, but not drive yourself insane trying to make it look like it was a kit just molded by Vespid last week that you can really still get some major enjoyment out of building like that.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I don't know if they're showstoppers. They're not going to get a Best of Show award for sure, but they're fun to build, they're fun to take to the shows. I put BBs in my hull because I like the way it feels that way. It feels like a tank to me if it's got some weight to it. Completely nonsense, there's no point in doing it, but I just like that.
Kentucky Dave:Sure, I can understand that you want it to feel a little heavy when you pick it up, because it's armor, exactly, it's supposed to be heavy.
Mike:Well, I the the comeuppance right now of 72nd scale is is in armor specifically is. It's kind of cool because 48th scale has been around and it's still growing for armor. But for me and I'm biased, it's completely my opinion. But. But 48th scale is not small enough, smaller than 35th scale. I would agree with that To warrant the shift down, because you can't fit two 48 scale tanks in this footprint of a single 35th for the same vehicle. It's not smaller enough to really make that a reality. It's close but not quite, whereas a 72nd scale kit of the same vehicle, you could put four of them in that footprint.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, and that's kind of the point. If you're doing like a diorama or you're trying to replicate a photograph or some scene, you can put multiple 72nd scale armor subjects on a 12 by 12 diorama base and not have it look like you just tried to fit as many things onto the base as you possibly could. You can actually scale out some distances and get some perspective on that and get the scene. You can show how the vehicles actually would move either along a road or across a field or something like that.
Mike:And for 48 scale, a lot of people enjoy it. I don't want to discount it completely. I mean Sam Spooner down in Texas won AMS Best of Show this year with an obscure 48 scale Soviet self-propelled gun. It was a beautiful model, oh unbelievable.
Mike:Yeah, it was really unbelievable, but for me personally, like a detailed out 48 scale kit versus 35th scale kit, it's personally I don't think it's smaller enough to give me a lot of pizzazz factor, a wow factor, because it's not that much smaller in my opinion. But to see one of Steve's, or even beyond that one, alex Clark's 72nd scale models, that's detailed to that degree.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, if a guy can pull off a real, super detailed 72nd scale armor kit, that's just a gem. Those are a wonder to behold the 48th kits like you, I don't mean to disparage them in any way and the 48th scale aircraft guys I would think would be enthusiastic about having a compatible scale armor piece to go along with them. And the Tamiya kits are just, they're beautiful. I wish they had gone to 72nd scale with them.
Kentucky Dave:It would be nice. I want to go back to your blog a little bit. Besides claiming some credit there Deserved, despite some starts and stops and some initial hesitancy about do I really want to do this, is it worth it? Your blog has really blossomed and it's been a great place to go and see stuff. You haven't had trouble filling it between batch builds and historical research and show report or whatever. Are you still finding enthusiasm for the blog?
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I've posted something every day, I think, for going on six years now. Yeah, there's over 2,000 posts there and I was a little worried when I ran out of old builds in the display case to drag out and photograph. It's like, oh my gosh. You know my pool is dissipated but I've found some other things to to post as well. But it's been, it's been fulfilling, it's it's. I don't think I'm done yet, let me put it that way. I could see. You know, there's some nights where it's oh my gosh, I need to put something up and I haven't written anything yet. But I don't suffer from that very often. I I'm usually. I've usually got some posts banked and ready to go.
Kentucky Dave:I was going to ask that.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I've got several that are archived on WordPress right now, just waiting on the next time in the sequence to release a build report or something like that.
Mike:Your cadence is completely self-determined. So I mean, if you did back off or did part one, two, three, four, five of the same project, I mean that's still valuable and valid content for a blog. So I think you could go for as long as you wanted. I don't think you could. As long as you're building, you're not going to run out of material.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, exactly, and it does push getting some stuff done. Sometimes you guys talked about starting your project with Plastic Model Mojo as motivation to get to the bench and get some stuff done. Sometimes you guys talked about starting your project with Plastic Model Mojo as motivation to get to the bench and get some stuff done. And there've been a number of times it's like, hmm, I'm going to have to have a build, I've got a build review scheduled on Fridays usually and I need to get something built so I can post how I build it. So there've been a few times it's like well, I probably ought to get down to the bench tonight and get some progress made so I can have something to post about at the end of the week.
Mike:Well, what is on the bench tonight?
Kentucky Dave:Dang it, Mike. That's exactly what I was going to ask.
Jeff Groves:This is another project that Dave had a hand in way back in the day. I'm sorry, oh God. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm building what's called a Kong Yang one. It's a. This this is a very convoluted story, but it's basically a beat B 29 that was made into an AWACS aircraft by the communist Chinese in the 1970s, and the base kits and Academy B 29. And Dave had the old cutting edge resin conversion to make it into the AWACS and he graciously mailed that to me. I don't know, dave, it's been a while. This has been my next build for several years.
Kentucky Dave:Jeff, you and I have known each other. It seems like forever now. That is the first thing I ever mailed you was. You and I were talking about it and you had all of the reference on it and I had the kit. Cutting Edge had gone out of business and if you could find one of these conversions it was your left kidney expensive, and it was like I am not going to build this. He definitely is going to build this. It is the first thing I ever mailed to you Much appreciated.
Jeff Groves:It's been in the stash for a while and, like I said, it's always been on my radar, so to speak. It's been something I'm getting ready to build next, or the project after that or that kind of thing, for quite a while and I finally bit the bullet and drug the thing out and dusted it off, and it's a very interesting aircraft. It's unique. I think they only made one of them. Only made one. Yeah.
Kentucky Dave:And the funny story that I remember about mailing that to you was I sent a priority mail and on the label I wrote Jeff Inch High Groves. Label I wrote Jeff Inch High Groves and because of the way your mail was, you had to go down to the post office and pick it up and explain to them why it was addressed to Jeff Inch High Groves.
Jeff Groves:Oh, the ladies were cackling. I don't know what they thought and I really don't care to know. But I knew all the mail ladies down there because I had been very active on eBay back in the day selling books, buying and selling books. So they would call me up and Jeff, there's another 50 pound box, come down and pick it up at the post office. And I knew all those people. Yeah, I'd bring them candy, you know kind of a little little appreciation for them, that kind of thing, and they were. They all wanted to hear what inch high meant, so they were all lined up there.
Kentucky Dave:But yes, going back to the model, which, when you finish, it will be impressive, because the actual aircraft is really unique, because it's a B-29 and you can tell it's a B-29, but it's got the Russian inline engines.
Jeff Groves:And it's they put turbo fans on it. That stick way out. They're just hanging out there.
Kentucky Dave:Right, and then it's got, of course, the radar dome mounted on the fuselage, above the fuselage, and the one and only of them is in an air museum that's outside of Beijing, and both times that I went to China to adopt my daughters, I wanted to find a way to break away for a day and go to that museum, and there was just no way. My wife would have tolerated me doing that, but it's such a unique subject.
Jeff Groves:Well, and the way they had that museum. They would let you literally walk up and even inside some of those aircraft at one point. I don't know if they've shut that down or not, but there's pictures of guys that have climbed into the thing and taken pictures of the interior.
Mike:So was it a hull that emergency landed in China? What the After? The communists had the upper hand, well-.
Jeff Groves:How'd they get the hull? What the story was is when they first started using B-29s against Japan, they based them out of China and there were three aircraft that ran into trouble during the missions, that aborted and went to the Soviet Union. Now the Soviet Union and Japan were at peace at the time and they had a non-aggression treaty and any allied aircraft were supposed to be interred, along with their crews. So the Russians interred the aircraft. They let the air crew escape through Iran quote unquote escape but they kept the aircraft. And then, after the war, the number one priority for Stalin was the development of the atomic bomb. The number two priority was copying the B-29 because they needed a way to deliver the atomic bomb. When they got it and Tupolev got the contract. And Tupolev told Stalin I can give you the aircraft or I can give you the engines in three years, but I can't do both. He said give me the aircraft, we'll use Soviet engines.
Jeff Groves:So they had some radials that were bigger and less efficient than theirs. They replaced the .50 calibers with 23-millimeter cannon. Now, ironically, they copied just about everything else, down to the last detail. They had some problems converting from standard English measurements, like in the sheet metal that we used into metric. I think they added like 300 pounds because they went with the next metric grade up of the sheet metal for the skin metric grade up of the sheet metal for the skin. But they copied the fire control computers
Jeff Groves:exactly. But those were calculated for .50 caliber guns which had different ballistics than the 23 millimeters, and I've always wondered at what range would the 23 millimeter actually start to be accurate enough to be a good defensive weapon? But long story short, they built about 800 of those as Tupolev Tu-4 bulls and then in the 1970s the Soviets transferred, I think, 25 of them over to the Communist Chinese to start their bomber force working up and the Chinese flew until they flew the engines out of them and then they replaced them with turbofans and they took one of those turbofan bull survivors and they made an AWACS out of it and they never did get the radar to quite differentiate between an aircraft and the ground clutter. So they scrapped the project. But the one they built is in that museum outside of Beijing that Dave mentioned.
Mike:So is it a Tupolev airframe or a B-29? It's a.
Jeff Groves:Tupolev, tupolev yeah.
Mike:Okay.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, they got three of them and they got one wreck and they had one of them they kept operational just as a B-29 so they could test fly it and work out their flight manuals, and they took the other two apart, if I remember right and every little component. It was so far ahead technologically to anything that the Soviets had because, remember, they were basically a tactical air force. They didn't have much strategic interest at all. It was always supporting the troops on the ground and so the B-29 was just light years ahead of anything they had at the time and they caught up really quick.
Kentucky Dave:Well, and the story is that when they cut the B-29 that they used as the pattern aircraft, had some battle damage repair and they even and I don't know if this is apocryphal or not they even copied the battle damage repair on the TU-4.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, and they went as far as making mounting brackets and that sort of thing for equipment that wasn't fitted on that airframe, right, but of course they had to change the radios because you don't want to use US radios in your bomber that might be bombing US targets. So obvious reasons there. But there were some exceptions. But the story is that Stalin didn't want Tupolev to go off and redesign the B-29 and take 10 years to do it Right, to go off and redesign the B-29 and take 10 years to do it Right. So he limited him with the orders that only a dictator like Stalin can give. You will not deviate from this, or else.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, and when Stalin said or else, he meant or else.
Jeff Groves:Yes, there was an or else there.
Mike:Well, that sounds like one of your more involved projects. I know there's something hanging under the foliage there that you're working on as well. What are you alluding to? I don't know. What else are you working on besides that, be it another batch build or some other thing that's not quite so involved? What else you got going?
Jeff Groves:Oh well, I don't have anything on the bench right now. This is one of the rare times when I have one subject on the bench. What are you thinking about? Oh, brother, I have a stack of Sturmovix IL-2s that I'm going to do a comparison build on. I think I've got up to 10 kits right now on that. Some of the old Eastern European manufacturers, all the way up to the Tamiya one Academy has a good kit in that range. I have a batch of USN World War II aircraft that I've been trying to get onto the bench, but I'm missing some stencils that I want to use to paint and the guy that I use to make stencils out of Slovakia named Mektar. He's been out of production for a while. I'm not sure what kind of issues he's having, but he can make custom-sized stencils. We know a guy. Yeah, we know a guy. Well, I may have to patronize him.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, in fact, we know two guys.
Mike:You don't count yeah.
Kentucky Dave:No, not me.
Jeff Groves:No, I wasn't thinking of me. There's a new kit by ANA Model of a Bassler BT-67.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Jeff Groves:Think of a turboprop engine, c-47. It's been lengthened a little bit and given a square tail, and they actually took C-47 airframe, so it's an 80-year-old airframe with newer engines on them. And a friend of mine went to Antarctica as part of Operation Deep Freeze last Antarctic summer and she took some beautiful pictures of that airframe. So I saw that and I got kind of inspired.
Kentucky Dave:Well, if you want to batch build that, several Central American countries' military actually used those aircraft.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, I think it was Guatemala. Somebody made a gunship.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, made a gunship version, so if you're feeling frisky, you got options.
Jeff Groves:Well, I've always loved the DC-3, c-47 family. You can do so much with that. So many different schemes, so many different manufacturers. The Japanese made it, the Russians made it. Everybody's built those darn things and they're still flying.
Kentucky Dave:Yep and just so bulletproof successful. It's unbelievable.
Jeff Groves:Well, it fits its niche. It's one of those rare aircraft designs that if you tried to build a better C-47, you'd wind up with a C-47 again.
Kentucky Dave:Yep.
Jeff Groves:Exactly. The C-130 is the same way, the B-52 is the same way. If you want another B-52, if you want to redesign the B-52, you wind up with a B-52 again.
Mike:Jeff, it's been fun man, and I just got to ask where are we going to see you next?
Jeff Groves:I will probably be down at your show next, Cincinnati, almost for sure Now you're not going to Madison. No, I'm not going to make the Nationals this year. I've had some stuff come up.
Kentucky Dave:I'm not going to be able to make it. Okay, then you have to start planning now to go to Hampton. Hampton, okay, yes, hampton, virginia, norfolk.
Jeff Groves:Oh, Norfolk.
Kentucky Dave:Virginia Beach, it's Hampton, yeah, norfolk, yeah. We'll see you down here in Louisville in, I think, september, and you've got to come hang at my house again. Maybe we'll fire up the grill and spend a little time just eating, drinking and shooting the breeze.
Jeff Groves:Yeah, that would be great. Your show in Louisville is always one of the highlights. It's a well-run show. Your new venue has allowed you to expand and I think the show's reaching its full potential now. It's a wonderful show reaching its full potential now.
Mike:It's a wonderful show. Well, speaking of venue.
Kentucky Dave:Yes.
Mike:Yeah, we've moved.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, we're going back to Pariquet Springs in Shepherdsville, just south of Louisville now. Okay, well, I'll look forward to seeing that when we've had the show previously, but yeah, it's a huge, huge facility.
Jeff Groves:Well, you guys always put on a great show. You got a great club, everybody's friendly. Your raffle's the best raffle in Region 4, without a doubt.
Mike:Absolutely All right, man. Thanks for buying a microphone and coming on the show.
Jeff Groves:Well, thanks for having me, guys. It's been a treat.
Kentucky Dave:And thank you for giving us an hour of your time, as opposed to stealing 15 minutes from you at a show, when I know you would much rather be trolling the vendors area to find that gem. And you always do seem to find that gem.
Jeff Groves:Well, it's always fun to hang out at the shows and I traditionally have teased Dave for not renting a vendor's table but establishing a campsite. That's right. Everything but a fire in the back.
Kentucky Dave:That's right, hey. You come out and camp every time. It can't be too bad, no, it's a good time.
Jeff Groves:It's a good time it is it's wonderful. All right, jeff, thanks a lot. Well, thanks to you both. It's been a blast. I've had a lot of fun.
Kentucky Dave:Well, always good to talk to Jeff. That was fantastic. Listen, anytime I can sit and talk 72nd scale models with a modeler like Jeff, I'll do that. I'll have that conversation all day long.
Mike:I know what we need to do, Dave what? Because Jeff bought a microphone for that interview segment. Yes, he did so. He's properly equipped. Now we need to accept his invitation to come up there and do an on-site with him.
Kentucky Dave:I agree.
Mike:Or a whole episode even.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, no, I agree we ought to go up there, take a day. We can visit the library, the Holy Book Library, Ship Book Library. We can see all of his batch builds and we can do an extended recording there Sounds like a plan man. Yep, We'll have to talk to him and get that arranged.
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Mike:squadron adding to the stash since 1968 well, there's some spots in montana you can't shop with the mobile. Got to get it. Get on down into town. Yeah, ben's top halftime report. I hope you got something because I got zero, uh, yes I've got a little, uh.
Kentucky Dave:Well, a little of it involves negative modeling. I was moving my lcm kit, getting it ready to pack it up so that I'll be able to take it to nationals and manage to bump it and do some very minor damage. So it's back on my bench to be repaired but that's not going to take too much. And then I've spent the majority of my modeling time the last two weeks. What modeling time there's been on the A7M2, I'm really, really concentrating on the seams and the finish and the panel line re-engraving, because that is one of my weaker, and so I'm taking my time and I am giving it extra attention and so far I'm loving it. I really like this kit. Like I said, it's a really quality kit for the late 1990s. It's not quite the quality that you see today, but it's a good kit. It's an interesting aircraft and I'm having fun with it. So far, what little bench time I've got has been productive and good.
Mike:I got nothing, man. I literally have nothing. I've been on vacation.
Kentucky Dave:I was going to say you've got stuff.
Mike:It just hasn't moved, no, it hasn't moved. I haven't to say you've got stuff, it just hasn't moved. No, it hasn't moved. I haven't touched anything in two weeks, man. So it's kind of sad, but sometimes that's the way life is.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, well, that and that is. You know that that happens to all of us. Life intervenes and you, we, we model to relax and get away from the stresses of life, but life is life. So, mike, I know that we're going to the world's largest traveling hobby shop in a couple of weeks, but have you done any spending for modeling or modeling related items? No, no, your. So your wallet remains unbroken. It's fat, well, no, you went on vacation. It's no, I went on vacation.
Mike:So it's not fat, it's it's. It's emaciated, is it? Do you open it up and moths fly out of it. No, because I've had money recently. It all evaporated really quick. So it evaporated out of my wallet so fast that my wallet frosted on the outside. There you go.
Kentucky Dave:How about that? There you go. There's an engineer's image, if ever there was one. There you go. So, you haven't bought anything.
Mike:No, I keep seeing stuff. I'm like ooh, no, but we can get that here, we can get that there. It might be at Nats, I don't know. Finding those crazy master detail sets at the Knoxville show in the 40 minutes I was in there kind of changed my paradigm for what I might find at a show at any given time. So I'm going to kind of hold off until the national convention and maybe go nuts there. I don't know, folks will have to wait and see. But I know you've been buying a little bit.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah well, I've been buying a little bit. I bought one big ticket item.
Mike:Yeah, I think Jake McKee put us onto something and you actually pulled the trigger already.
Kentucky Dave:I did. Jake McKee, in our interview with him, mentioned a manufacturer up in Canada called Ultimation and they make a couple of items, one of which is a hand crank disc sander that you can use to. You can sand a lot of things, but one of the nice uses for it will be truing up the edges of sheet or stock styrene. It's got an angle device on it so that you can sand at the end or the edge at any angle you want. It's hand crank rather than powered, so you don't have the worry of melting the plastic rather than sanding it, so that you get a nice true sanded edge. And this thing it's not cheap but this thing is quality Microphone microphone I'm sorry, I looked over at it.
Kentucky Dave:This thing is not cheap but it is very high quality, very well built. It came very quickly from Canada and I could see it being extremely useful if you were doing a lot of architectural modeling or if you wanted to build a lot of geometric structures, like one thing you could do is use it to build crates that have reinforcing boards on them. You could just. The uses are almost infinite on it and it's really, really well-built, high quality, quality, and I really I played with it a little bit, but and it's not a tool that I'm going to use every day, but when I need it for a project, it's going to be invaluable uh, well, it's got some heft to it.
Mike:Oh, it's extremely heavy because you have to use two hands to operate it. Right. You've got one to turn the sanding disc and the other to hold the stock in place Right?
Kentucky Dave:Yes, there may be a mechanism by which you can pin the stock in place, although I'd have to look at it in more detail, but it is extremely heavy. It is extremely heavy. I hesitate to estimate the weight, but I'll bet you it's 15 pounds, if it's an ounce, so that you can sit it down and crank it and it's not going to move.
Mike:Well, next time I'm at your house, I'm going to have to check it.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, Well, you're going to be at my house in a little more than two. Well, unless you come for the July 4th party, assuming it doesn't rain. The other item I did purchase modeling related was. Author Richard Franks has a new book out on the HE-177.
Kentucky Dave:And the HE-177, kind of like the boomerang is one of those weird aircraft and it just is one that I have always had a super interest in. It was used in mid to late World War II by the Germans on both the eastern and western fronts. It was known probably most famously for being used in Operation Steinbach, which was what's known as the Battle of Britain in 1940, where they went in and kind of in retaliation for all of the German cities being bombed by the Allied bombers, they tried their own bombing campaign and it's called Operation Steinbach and the HE-177 featured heavily in it and the HE-177 featured heavily in it. I've got to say I just got the book the other day and I've only leafed through it a little bit, and I have a lot of books on the HE-177. I mean a lot, and I'll tell you from my cursory examination this may well be the definitive book for the modeler on the HE-177. I can't wait to get in it. I've got in the shelf or the stack of doom.
Kentucky Dave:I have a partially started $177 that may, as a result of this book, rise from the dead. Just a good book. It was not very expensive, well worth the money, and I'm happy that I went ahead and pulled the trigger. I had it in my Amazon list because they announced it and so it was available for pre-order initially, and then I noticed that it had been published, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on it. So I've done a little model spending, not a ton, but I've done a little model spending. But I've done a little model spending. I am anxious to go to the Nats and see what's there, and I'll tell you this time, probably more than any other time I've gone to the Nats, I'm going with a completely open mind about what I may or may not see in the vendor room. I mean, I used to go with a list.
Kentucky Dave:I mean, yeah, it's never a good plan yeah, it's never never a good play and I've kind of got over the years, I've kind of gotten away from that and, you know, maybe gone with two or three things in mind that I wanted to look for. This time time I am going in completely cold there's no list, there's no oh, I want to look for this or look for that. I am just going to go and let the vendor experience wash over me and what I end up buying is what I end up buying it could be interesting folks.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, it could. We're at the end of the episode here, mike, and that means we should be at the end of our modeling fluids. So how's Bondstone, bourbon Bondstone?
Mike:bourbon is 123.6 proof.
Kentucky Dave:Wow, pretty proof.
Mike:Wow, pretty hot yes.
Kentucky Dave:Well cast.
Mike:It's cast strength, so it's not been reduced down any. It's got had nothing added to it, nothing meaning water.
Kentucky Dave:Right For listeners who don't know. When a bourbon initially comes out as done, being aged, and initially comes out of the barrel, it usually is at a significantly higher alcohol volume than the final product will be. And most bourbons that are brought out of the barrel are then mixed with water and multiple barrels blended, et cetera, to reduce it to the target alcohol level that the distiller wants. Cask strength means they are taking it straight from the barrel and not diluting it, so cask strength usually indicates a very high ABV.
Mike:So, with all you said there, dave, it's also a high rye content bourbon. Okay. So not only is it hot, it's spicy. Yeah, it's good. This stuff has about the most solid caramel note I've ever tasted in a bourbon. Yeah, so it's interesting, has about the most solid caramel note I've ever tasted in a bourbon.
Kentucky Dave:Really.
Mike:Yeah, so it's interesting. You know the notes they pick out in their own description. That's not one of them, so a lot of this stuff is subjective. I think Another interesting thing is you know, I've had this since Father's Day, so I've had it quite a bit. An interesting thing that I've discovered and I don't know if this is an amateurish bourbon guy thing or if it's, if it's legit but a glass where you've finished and let the last of it flash off, yeah, and then you smell the glass.
Mike:this stuff smells like fresh cut oak wow, yeah, well I mean is that that is what it smells like fresh cut oak, wow, yeah, well, I mean that is what it smells like. You know, bourbon is in a new white oak barrel, right, and yeah, it's really neat. I don't know if it's a real bourbon tasting thing. I don't think it is because it's so far after the fact. But typically after I've had a session and come back down to the shop after that night and the glass is still down here and it's dried out, I'll take a whiff just to see what it smells like, because sometimes it's like a walnut-y smell. The oak is not uncommon just because of the aging, but this one is really over the top like fresh cut oak smell to it Well, and I guess that's probably part of being cask strength.
Kentucky Dave:It probably is. It carries more of the oak with it. Now, I don't know about you, but I tend to really like bourbons with a strong caramel note.
Mike:You might like this. It's a little hot. I mean it's almost 62% ABV. It's mostly alcohol. Right Tread lightly. Tread lightly, Sip softly, yeah. The other thing I got going on is this chocolate, I don't know. You see all these pairing articles and crap in all these magazines and stuff and this is not a pairing that gets mentioned much. But personally, Plastic Model Mojo, my recommendation, I don't know 65% above cocoa, dark chocolate and bourbon is just sublime.
Kentucky Dave:Oh yeah, no, absolutely Bourbon, and chocolate were made for each other.
Mike:This is made with huckleberry, which is indigenous to the highlands of Montana and Wyoming and places. So you know I brought a little bit back. Yeah, just not bourbon.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah.
Mike:Really really going good, Really enjoying it, Good stuff. Well gosh, you's your NA IPA.
Kentucky Dave:Well, amazingly enough, it's really Now. I guess I've gone the exact opposite from you. You've got cask-strength bourbon and I've got alcohol-free beer. It doesn't taste like fake beer, it tastes like a hazy IPA. Now, it's not quite the quality of some of the hazy IPAs I've had in the past, but it doesn't taste like O'Doul's or one of those mass market non-alcoholic beers which I have never had a taste for because they don't to me. They don't really taste like beer, or at least beer that I would want to drink, whereas this thing I can see. If you if, for whatever reason you weren't, you didn't want to have an alcoholic drink, but you still craved a beer with your burger or brought at a July 4th cookout, I would highly recommend this. It's really good. Athletic Brewing Company Free Wave Hazy IPA and it's alcohol-free.
Mike:Well, ipa's got a lot of masking flavor potential.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, yeah, and that comes through. You're right. That exactly does that. Okay, Mike, we are truly now at the end of the episode and before we go, we need to do some shout outs.
Mike:You got a shout out Pretty much our standard fair, general shout out. I want to thank all the folks who've chosen to support the show through the generosity. The donations are greatly appreciated and we've talked already about our move to a new platform and we're still trying to make that happen. So anything folks are willing to help us out with, we'll expedite that and we greatly appreciate that. If you'd like to help the show, there's several avenues you could do that and we've included those links in the show notes for the last several episodes since we started promoting it this way, we've got Patreon, paypal, buy Me a Coffee and, of course, the Plastic Model Mojo merchandise store. Any of those venues help support Plastic Model Mojo and again, we're trying to move to a new platform to bring you more content in different formats. All greatly appreciated. Check those avenues out. If there's something you'd like to do, we would greatly appreciate it. So thank you for that.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, I'd like to second that shout out Again. We are super appreciative of everyone who decides to support us with their donations. Thank you very much. My shout out is for Mr Paul Budzig, previous guest, future guest we hope. He's launched his Patreon video channel where, for the low, low price of a dollar a month which frankly he's using just to try and keep out the trolls and bots and stuff like that when he is now posting his content.
Kentucky Dave:If you've seen his previous YouTube channel, you know the quality of the work he does. In fact, I was talking with Jim Bates about this today driving home from work. Not only is Paul a fantastic builder and not only can you learn a lot by watching the videos, but he has always an interesting take on why he's doing what he's doing. He's put a lot of thought into the process and that's really thought into the process and that's really inspiring, informative. I really like it and it makes his videos particularly enjoyable, at least for me. So if you're of a mind to, I would encourage you to go and we'll put a link in the show notes to his Patreon video channel so that you can go ahead and sign up and get access to the really nice stuff that he's doing.
Mike:Well, dave, we're at the end. Yes, we are, and, as we always say, so many kits, so little time, dave, and I'm looking forward to the Nats and the congregation of Daves and little yes, that's right.
Kentucky Dave:See you next time, man. See you, man.
