First of all, best wishes to Hugh Letterly.  Our thoughts are with you Hugh at this difficult time.   The guys from the R/C club came by to see how you were doing.  Also I checked in on Jerry at the hospital and he was in excellent spirits after a successful surgery.  No sympathy at all to Roger who is cruising around China somewhere.  Sam advised that he'll be back in town Thursday so we hope to see him at future meetings.

We also want to welcome Daniele Darenzo who visited our group for the first time and brought some of the projects he's working on and some new kits he's acquired.  Welcome Daniele!

We had an excellent meeting today.  Thanks to everyone who attended.

Before we get started let's cover the club shirt order.  Here's the scoop.  I just sent everyone a message with a link for ordering your shirt.  Everyone will pay separately through the Customink web site.  You can order quantity and sizes as well.  Once we have the complete order in they will prepare a sample to confirm the design which so far is okay.  With confirmation of the sample they will complete the order.  Place your order now and we'll get it going!

John Widmar brought his Fujimi port dioramas in 1/3000 scale.  They represent the Japanese ports of Yokosuka and Sasebo.

John also brought his completed models of a Chinese River Gun Boat from BigBlueBoy and also his Hunt II class destroyers from a new company called IBG which were unstated at the last meeting.  Nice work John!  Free Time Hobbies normally handles these but are currently out of stock.  I can't wait to see what John builds next!

Victor and David then proceeded to deliver a demonstration on rigging.  Victor demonstrated how he uses fly fishing tippet material to rig his ships using a demonstration base we made for the occasion.   He then showed us how to correctly paint the line once in place.

Next we tried out some new materials.  First we had Victory try some Lycra rigging material.  We used a product form Uschi that they call "Rig That Thing".  It was the "fine" size which is .003 OD (outside diameter).  You can buy this from lastcavalry.com who is an excellent retailer.  They also have a "Superfine" size which is .001 OD.  Victor reported a learning curve because of the stretchy nature of the product but liked it.

Next David tried Tungsten wire.  Modelers in some of the forums like this material because it is sturdy and retains a natural sag to the rigging lines.  We practiced with .0015 wire.  However we found this very difficult to see.  This model built by George Hargreaves and posted on Steel Navy is an example of a 1/700 ship using .075 tungsten wire.  Bigger but looks very good.

The .0015 wire was much too small to be effective with larger models as primary rigging.  However we tried it on a smaller sample and it gave us the desired effect we were looking for.  I can see the value in using this material.  Something to keep in mind though is that larger .075 wire is very tough and requires expensive cutters (about $100 a pair) so keep that in mind if you decide you want to go down this road.  

Finally we played with some stretched sprue.  This is something a lot of people struggle with.  The trick is doing it correctly.  I think at the next meeting we'll play with this some more.  We'll bring some material and let everyone have a go at it.  Once you get a feel for how to do it correctly it's an inexpensive and useful rigging material and method.

I posted a video from our meeting on the "How to Videos" page.  Give it a look.

Thanks again everyone.  I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting which will be Saturday, March 26th.  If anyone has any suggestions for the meeting please contact David Waples.