Robert
Saturday afternoon, we congregated again. This time for our 40th get together in 15 years. Besides our regulars, we also had some special guests: Kevin Stewart from Canada, who is really becoming a regular. John Olsen from Boston, the Executive Director of the SMSC. And for the first time Eric Goggans from Roseville, CA. Eric has large 3D Resin printers where he can print monster models that make our 1250 models look like dwarfs.
Most of Eric's production so far has been in ocean liners. After he read the report of our last NorCal meeting on the New 1250 Waterline Ship Model Facebook page, Eric contacted me to find out if their might be any interest in him joining our next meeting. Next question: which ship model might our group be interested in. Well, we have been waiting for the USS MIDWAY CV 41 as she is now as a museum ship for a long time. Most of us have given up hope for the long announced version from Germany. With the help of one of his designers, Eric was able to pull of this project in relatively no time, and he delivered the first 10 models during our meeting, plus 2 more that were still attached to the support pieces.
Needless to say, 3D printing as it relates to our hobby was the main subject of our afternoon.
The 10 MIDWAYS that Eric delivered at our meeting were printed with the islands attached to the decks. The masts on these islands were printed to our scale, which made the main mast only .5 mm thick. It looks great, but the masts are so fragile that they cannot be straightened out. To overcome this issue, Eric also printed 10 islands separately, with the main mast slightly thicker at 1 mm. You will be able to see for your self on my photos.
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0mGp1EICGtswZy
Bruce Gordon brought a nice variety of painted models. Paul had some of his surplus models for sale, as did I. John Olsen brought 3 superbly camouflaged models as well as a few models for sale.
You might have seen my article on the reunion of the USS Paul F Foster in March in Port Hueneme. Yesterday, I brought the most recent copy of the Hamburger Rundbrief with this article and also some nice photos.
In the sit down portion of our meeting, 3D printing was again the main subject. Phil Woodruff gave us an update of the Spirit of '45 event scheduled in San Jose on Saturday, August 12, 2023. Our San Jose chapter will again put together a display for this. These 4 fellows put a lot of effort into this and other events every year. And there is always so much going on around Spirit of '45---you should really make an effort to visit it this year.
John Olsen informed us that the SMSC is standing at a crossroads. Our website cannot be updated any longer. We urgently need a webmaster, a position that is not in our bylaws, since it was not needed at the beginning phase of the SMSC. Also, our long, long time secretary, Ulrich Rudofsky, had to give up this position for mainly health reasons. Ulrich has done a great job keeping our membership roster up to date and keeping all of us informed, what is going on with our organization. And our long time treasurer, Bob Wirringa, has indicated that he would like to pass the "bucks" to someone else.
Considering that we are very uncertain about the possibility of another national meeting, John Olsen would like to organize a steering committee to explore the future of the SMSC. He envisions that this can be done through a series of Zoom meetings. If you are willing and interested to help, please contact John at neslo1250@gmail.com
We would like to hold our next meeting in Roseville, CA at Eric's place. This will allow us a first hand view of the intricacies of 3D printing. The date for this will be announced soon
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