Trying out slide.com stuff. Seems interesting.

Slide show of my Minardi

A skinned TV with youtube content

Went to visit Winkinson Automobilia 2 weeks ago in Vancouver. The shop is amazing, a lot of diecasts, books, etc etc. People there are very friendly. They put a real Renault R24 nose cone, Ferrari F1 rotor and a Renault R202 exhaust pipe there.. and they let me hold and touch the parts too... The Ferrari rotor is made of carbon and it is extremely light, like less than 5 lbs or so.. The Renault exhaust pipe's welding work is simply amazing too..

They have some Minichamps 1/18 F1 diecast on sale. I picked up a Montoya's McLaren MP4/20 at CAD$45.. Not bad. I spent few hours to convert this one into a West livery version. Not 100% accurate because the West one is supposed to have a black front wing, but it is fun.. Although this is only a diecast, Minichamps did a good job to capture the accurate McLaren shape... not like Revell 1/24 one where nose cone and front suspension layout are all wrong.




Alright, better get back to finish up the Minardi!!

Happy New Year to all,

I haven't done much modeling for whole last month. I got myself a crazy gift on boxing day. I bought myself a new 2008 Acura TSX... My old 98 Accord will have new owner soon after serving me and my wife for almost 160K miles in the past 9.5 years... including close to 5 round trips to Tamiya/Con too.

As for modeling, hopefully I can resume by end of Jan after my day time work load eases up a bit.

Enjoys,

Guess what I bought again. I bought this 97 Schumy flat back helmet. This one has a flat back aero shape. In fact, Schumy only worn this in pre-season testing and switched back to regular round shape helmet in most of the 97 season. I put this 1:1 helmet along with the 1:8 Minichamps 96 version and they look very cool. This flatback aero helmet is my favorite helmet.

Enjoys,

I attended the Jim Russell advanced karting school today. I never expected I would try this again in such a short time after the technique class, but they called me with a special discount package and I just went for it. I would say this one is much better than last one. It had timed session, rolling start practice, passing practice (although I did it 100% wrong) and the young instructor was really paying attention of all 5 students in our group and pointed out the mistake in a very frank manner.

My first kart #43 was pretty bad and it kept breaking down and it's abit too small for me. Quite a bit of track practice time was lost due to the mechanical failure. Then they replaced me a #45 kart in last 2 sessions and it was much more comfortable to drive with better leg room. My lap time was horribly slow My best lap time was only 57.93s, while my 2 other classmates in same group were almost 2s faster than me. There were another group of seasoned karters and their best time were almost 4-5s faster.. Going fast with this kart is not easy at all.. Maybe it's time to lose some of my 30 lbs fat before I try next time.

Here are 2 video links from youtube.

Me lapping around the track.

Race start.. I was on 3rd and then spun off.. but the time I finished 1st lap, it was more than 10s behind the leader already.

Here are some pics, enjoys

1) Me lapping around the track

2) Rolling start practice (#43 3rd karter is me.)

3) Rolling start practice (#43 3rd karter is me.)