50th anniversary Moon Landing

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, I figured that I would put together this kit.

It’s the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander model by Airfix. It’s 1/72 scale so should be close in size for miniature figures. It seems to have all the parts, as well as the instructions and decals.
I had picked it up a few years ago at Value Village for $2.99. It seems to be worth a bit online, and I’m not sure I’ll do it proper justice, but I figured I would give it a go.

With plastic kits, it’s always good to give them a quick wash before starting. Using dish soap and an old toothbrush to gently scrub the mold release agent from the parts helps to prevent problems with painting later. It’s always good to wash the sprues in a tray or container instead of the sink itself. If a part becomes loose, it helps to contain it so you don’t lose a critical piece down the drain.

Make sure they are well rinsed and you can let them air dry or dry them gently with a paper towel.
Now it’s ready to start on the assembly.

Stuck in the middle?

On Canada Day, we took a short trip to the longitudinal center of Canada.

It used to be just a road sign but they have updated it for the 150th anniversary.

New-master reels?

My wife and I are of an age where we used to have Viewmaster reels. These were little white discs about the size of a coaster that you could put into a special viewer and, if you held it up to the light, you would see a 3D image. There were ones for cartoons as well as the more grown up travel ones.

We still have a number of the reels, and we have picked up some of the old ones on the secondary market. When we were still planning to go to Disney World, I had picked up a bunch of the old Disneyland reels for my wife.

She has picked up some of the new VR viewmaster reels that work with a new viewer that has a similar style as an old viewer but holds your cell for VR.

There is also a site that allows to submit images and they will print new reels for you. But the reels only hold 7 images each, so if you have a big event with more pictures, you either have to get multiple reels (like the old 3 packs with A, B, C reels) or choose your best 7 shots.

For her birthday this year, I was tempted to do a Disney set, but that would be hard to edit down to even a few reels. Instead, I was able to select 7 shots to use from her fiftieth birthday and put together a reel with those. I placed the order on May 5 and it came on May 10. It’s supposed to have a five day turnaround before shipping according to the website but I guess they were slow so they finished early and sent it out.

It was sent by UPS so that’s always a tossup. I got an email telling me that there would be duty charges and I could pay online. So I pulled out some money to leave my son in case they came while we were at work but in getting the paper this morning it seems that they just dropped it off in the mail. We were home but they didn’t even knock, they just left it in the mailbox. So I guess the $6.82 in duty wasn’t enough for them to worry about.
I got a letter from UPS about two weeks later collecting on the duty that they should have collected on delivery. So I called them and paid it over the phone.

Figure Painting Total - June 2019

Even though I have the resin version of Swampy, I prefer the metal version better. I was able to find one at a good price and picked it up.

BM/DCU – Swamp Thing - 1
June figures bought – 1, figures painted – 0

Running total 2019 – figures bought 118, figures painted 1