Nile_Griffith

Not so much a tip on how to weather but more of a mantra to keep in mind while weathering and one that was given to me by Jim Smith formerly of this parish. "It's not what you leave on, it's what you take off". Personally I'm a big believer that its easier to "forgive" an under withered model than it is to accept an overly weathered one. Don't loose sight also that we observe our models from a rather god like distance above the scene and that colours and edges become more muted at distances. It's all a bit like cooking this weathering lark. Everyone has their own idea of the best ingredients to use and everyone has their own secret sauce, ultimately you develop your own style and instincts as to what works well and when............. Have fun!!

Have used ball bearings in Valejo's Model Air primer but not felt the need to use them in their paint colours. Have used a stainless steel nut in the past when I got lost and couldn't find my bearings (sorry couldn't resist). Have you tried Valejo"s air brush cleaner? I find it's very good at both cleaning the brush but also there seems to be property within the cleaner that provides a certain amount of very mild lubrication for moving parts. I certainly notice the difference when I go back to my airbrush and I've only used Isopropyl alcohol to clean it previously.

I'd kind of disagree that proper HiFi headphones are the way to do things...... Oh and by the way there are a lot of very high quality in ear monitoring products out there that when set up correctly provide very good and credible results. The main advantage of headphones (sealed ear cup types especially) is that they contain extraneous sound emanating from the speaker drivers and depending on the product, eliminate to varying degrees the ingress of sound outside of the headphones to the listener. What they won't compensate for is a change in viewing direction. So if you are not looking at the layout from your God like position above it and say then start looking behind you, then the soundscape doesn't change in your ears. If you are looking at a reasonably sized layout that has some kind of multi-speaker arrangement accurately spaced around the layout and those speakers are fed with either a stereo mixed audio source or even a multichannel audio recording as in something like Dolby surround, RSS, etc. Then as your focus moves around the layout and the physical changes in the position of your head and body occur. With a well constructed soundscape a viewer/listener should perceive audible differences in the mix. In the past I've worked with companies providing large dioramas for museums where a soundscape has been created for viewers and replayed through an array of speakers. Wether they just be a stereo pair or a multi-channel, multi-speaker rig. Things that are nigh on impossible to do when it comes to the idea of a layout, is to re-create Doppler shift (think ambulance with sirens sounding coming towards you and then moving away from you). But as I alluded to in a previous post, much of the trick with audio post production is adding the sounds and dynamic that re-enforce the scene and not necessarily adding the sound for each source within that scene. The question of sound levels is always a bit of a thorny one. It's something professionally I have found myself banging my head up against a brick wall with over the years. I've seen (and heard) everything from hyper directional speakers to the use of large and small parabolic reflectors over an audience or individual. From a layout point of view I have two streams of thought. If it's your own layout in your own space...... Then knock yourself out!! if it's an exhibition layout, then I don't see why not, but just so long as as much thought goes into how you achieve creating that soundscape as the modeller or modellers did in researching how many rivets are down the side of a tank engine!! Keep the over enthusiasm out of the mix and there is no reason why any reasonably sized layout couldn't benefit from a well equipped and well produces soundscape. There is certainly no reason why a well composed audio track can't be played at a level low enough to keep the layout viewer intrigued and distant attendee's blissfully unaware by considerate use of the right kit and a bit of careful thought.

The world is, as they say, your salt water crustacean when it comes to playing audio from a laptop or desktop computer. You could go old school and just connect (if your device has it) the headphone output jack of your laptop to a conventional self amplified speaker, or pair of speakers. Prices range from a few quid to over a hundred pounds for a pair of Bose PC Speakers. If you want to do away with the wires and if your laptop has bluetooth connectivity, again there are a whole plethora of compatible products available on line, that are capable of transmitting audio via a Bluetooth connection made with a similarly capable pair of self amplified speakers. Price wise you can spend anywhere from a tenner through to a couple of hundred quid. There are also wifi enabled products too, but these tend to rely on being part of your home wifi's network, but the the theory is pretty much the same as with a Bluetooth connection in that your laptop sends the audio information via your home wifi network to the wifi enable self amplified speakers. I've purposefully mentioned "Self Amplified Speakers" in my suggestions. Any speaker will pretty much need some form of amplifier to run it and create the volume of sound required. The voltage of the signal emanating from the headphone output of your laptop, or from the line level output of a Bluetooth capable receiver or a WiFi enabled device such as an Apple TV box. Would not be enough to "Drive" all but the very smallest piezo type speakers. Hey! If you want to go full beans. Drag that old Hi-Fi components set out o the loft and connect a mini-jack to phono lead from your laptop into a line level input on your amplifier, connect those dusty speakers up and off you go. (OK electronically speaking the impedance level of a headphone output is not ideal etc etc etc etc, but it will get you started). As for other devices to play those sounds from. Well the second hand shops are awash with old iPhones and iPods that will be very capable of playing your sound recordings. A mooch around in the App Store will also reveal a number of applications that are designed for Users to playback sound effects or longer recordings by tapping a button from an on screen selection. The apps themselves vary in complexity but some will allow the playing of simultaneous sound cues. So for instance your Atmos track (the general sound of your layout) as we would call it in sound post production can be playing, but then you could then have more random spot FX cues (individual sounds) played at certain points in time as things happen on your layout by pressing (or tapping) an associated button. Guard whistling from platform, doors slamming etc.

Happily recall many hours spent trawling through the BBC's SFX library looking for a suitable spot effect or atmosphere track for whatever production we were working on in the studio. We had a number of different libraries BBC, DeWolfe, Phillips, Decca and some interesting Libraries from France and "Hollywood Edge" libraries from the states. I'm old enough to remember recording individual tracks from the various collections that were all on vinyl onto quarter inch tape or Sonifex carts, so that they could be "Spun in" on cue rather than "dropping the needle" onto what were very valuable and greatly cared for 12" Vinyl discs. From an engineers point of view it was a real step forward when those SFX libraries became available on the new fangled CD format. No more recording the effect to tape to be "spun in" as we could just cue up the CD player and hit the play button right on cue (anyone remember Technic's SLP-1200??). Our enthusiasm wasn't quite matched by the studio managers as replacing complete vinyl libraries for the same thing on CD represented quite a financial investment. However. Just a note to anyone considering constructing a soundscape for their layout. It is very easy to over egg the pudding. The brain is very good at filtering out sounds that aren't important to it when it's focussing on something in particular. So in the real world when we are visiting some preserved railway or other our brains tend to filter out all this extraneous sounds around us while we are being captivated by whatever loco or rolling stock we are looking at. Our brains achieve this little miracle through the wonders of stereoscopic hearing. The grey matter's ability to sub-consciously determine distance and position of the sounds around us by and large allows it to hone on to the sounds we are particularly interested in. So when creating a sound scape that will be played through some arrangement of speakers that will minimise the amount of directional information that each sound has, it's always a good idea to think on what you want the viewer to be drawn to rather than creating a check list of all the things within the scene that might be creating a sound and feeling that they should be included within the soundscape. Another thing to consider is that sound changes over distance. Low frequencies travel much greater distances than high frequencies (think about a thunder clap). So any mechanical clanking FX portrayed over a modelled scale distance over a couple of hundred feet will loose a lot of its high frequency when it reaches the listener at their God like position looking over the layout. Some more modern and up to date FX libraries try to provide recordings that are take from close to, medium distance and far away, so that sound mixers can get a more authentic recording. Also don't forget that the built environment changes sound also. With walls and hard surfaces creating echoes and reflections, that our listener in their over viewing position would hear. There is a lot to making a convincing soundscape and is very rewarding when you achieve it.

To be honest the car GPS data was my only real piece of potential leverage for an appeal and you are correct in your assumption in that it would have required a court order and the involvement of independent authorities to effectively provide a guarantee that I hadn't tipped the Audi tech who carried out the download a couple of quid to falsify the data. The biggest problem was that with the mileage I drive and by the time I was made aware of the impending court hearing. It would have been likely that the data stored by the GPS from the date of the offence might have been overwritten. So it was kind of a choice between lodging an appeal, spending a shed load of cash on legal representation and all that would have gone with accessing the GPS data to only find that it was no longer there. As for the mobile phone angle, that wouldn't have stood up because I would be asking the court to agree to the assumption that my phone was with me, or I was with the phone all of the time (argument against is that I could have left my phone at home while I went tare arsing around the highways and byways of deepest darkest Bedfordshire). Sometimes you just got to take the hit. Doesn't mean I like it or that it doesn't make me angry, but you just have to take it. Hopefully it might make a few forum members more aware and take measures to make sure that their own cars have some element of "personalisation" no matter how small, but enough to be identifiable if the same thing should happen to them.

My problem was that I had a day off at home, the only occasion I left the house was to walk into the village to buy a bottle of milk. Annoyingly I was having a rare day enjoying the fact that I didn't have to drive anywhere (I rack up about thirty thousand miles a year just commuting to and from work). So my car never left our forecourt on the day in question. My own CCTV wouldn't have been accepted because the date stamp couldn't be independently verified (I could have reset the CCTV system time/date and sent a later recording of my car just sitting there).

I've learned to my cost that the Magistrate Court system in England is a conveyor belt. Hopefully optimised too process as predictable a number of cases per week as possible. With outcomes that meet and fit in with government set guidelines and performance criteria. Particularly when it comes to motoring law. I can see the courts position. If they offered any weight to my argument how would a police investigation proceed? The real offender has long gone by some months and the only identifiable evidence is the point in question. The problem is with the UK's legally approved system of vehicle identification. It is far too open to abuse and with todays electronic market place, there is next to no safeguarding against continued fraud.

When the initial summons arrived I asked for the photographic evidence to be supplied. It wasn't until I got to court and expressed my concern that as such I had not received or been given sight of such evidence, that the prosecutor made the photograph available for me to view on their court laptop. As I wrote in my post. The vehicle in question was pretty much an identical Audi A4 to my own. The only question that I raised was that the colour of the car seemed to be a darker shade of blue to my own car. As for the driver all that could really be discerned was that it was a male driver, but no distinctive features could be picked out. As the court concluded. The vehicle type and registration matched the vehicle registered to me. As I was unable to provide the name of a driver who may have had the use of my car at the time and I was unable to provide independent and verifiable witnesses to the fact that I was at home at the time of the incident or at a place and time that would have precluded me from being at the location where the offence took place. Then the court had no doubt but to conclude that I was indeed the driver of the vehicle in question Job Done. My assumption is that some numpty had both the time and patience to keep an eagle eye out for a car whose details matched their own. Did a bit of online checking and for the cost of twenty quid or so for a couple of new number plates, saved themselves a few hundred quid in road tax, insurance and MOT, by driving around on set of cloned plates. I have since made sure that both my car's have non-standard manufacturers wheels fitted (My A4 now has wheels that would only be found on the A6 and my SL has Brabus ones) and that on the rear windscreen is a sticker. I have then taken time verifiable photographs of the modifications. So that if some scumbag drops me in the "Clarts" once more. I've at least got something to work with. Oh the £380 fine. The fine was based on my earning plus court costs as I had initially pleaded guilty, so a court hearing was held. The only bright spot was that the measured speed was 48mph in a 30mph zone. Strictly speaking that should have attracted a four point penalty apparently, but the senior magistrate decided to impose only three points.............. Bless.

Three points and a £380 fine. As I was at home enjoying a well earned day off at the time and didn't even consider that just possibly some less than honest John was zipping around the country in a Blue Audi A4 wearing a pair of number plates with exactly the same alpha numeric characters in exactly the same order as on my own Blue Audi A4. I didn't think to myself that maybe I should set up some kind of corroborative evidence to say that it was not my car that had been snapped by a GATSO camera speeding around Moggerhanger in Bedfordshire. Of course the magistrates in Luton where completely onside with my suggestion that any Tom, Dick and Harry could identify my car as being similar to their own (or one they want to nefariously acquire), do a quick online search to make sure that my own cars road rent and MOT were paid and up to date by looking at the DVLA's website. Then do the eBay thing and have a couple of new number plates delivered to their door next morning. Instead they seemed pre-occupied by the fact that I was unable to provide two independent witnesses that could verify that I was at home within a two hour window each side of the time the speeding offence was committed. Indeed they took great care to advise me that it would be economically beneficial to me to plead guilty to the offence, as being found guilty and maintaining an innocent plea would mean receiving a larger fine. Obviously I reported the matter to the Police and the DVLA. Plod seem fairly disinterested in the matter and the DVLA suggested that maybe I should invest a bit more cash in acquiring a new registration for my car to avoid any further inconvenience. As you may guess I was more than a little miffed.

Is the "New" Hornby DVT a new re-tooling of the old model (Not the MK4 DVT) or just a re-release of the model that came out some years ago? I have a pre-order on Hornbys buffer beamed HST stock, but that's the only new DVT'ish product from Hornby that I am aware of.

My remark about not being able to scale sound is not a critique of those modellers who enjoy hearing locomotive related sound effects emanating from their models. I guess what my remark alluded to was the contradiction (to my mind at least), that seems to exist within the hobby when it comes to DCC sound. Personally I've seen some beautifully modelled layouts where their owner operators have pursued to the 'nth methods and techniques to get scenery and structures to the point that they could have been placed there after using Gru's Shrink Ray (watch "Despicable Me"). I've then watched the same diligent artisans go as giggly as a couple of love struck school girls because one of their model loco's made a clanking noise as it shunted up to a wagon or such like. And when I have suggested to them (lightheartedly). That in scale terms the sound that they would actually hear in the real world and from their God like position above the scene would be noticeably different, due to all manner of acoustic principles. They look at me like I've just kicked the model club's dog! As said If you enjoy DCC sound, great!!! and may you carry on doing so. But again and as said you can't scale sound.

First up, I have to admit I am not a fan of DCC Sound. However. If you are going to complain about the cost of sound fitted DCC chips then you may as well have a poke at the cost of standard ones too. Yes by and large prices have dropped over the last ten years or so, but considering the tech behind DCC, it's component breakdown and architecture is in way off excess of ten plus years old now, why are we paying upwards of twenty quid for a moderate quality DCC control chip? As an example I've just purchased a box of "Tracking" dongles at £42 a throw Each dongle has a 3G SIM card, GPS receiver and the necessary magic pixies for me to know where that dongle is geographically (providing it's within 3G coverage) via the tinter-whizzle and for a month before I have to re-charge it. Compare that against the twenty year old serial control tech that's in a DCC chip and you have to wonder who is getting their leg lifted? Yes I know all about economies of scale and size of market etc etc etc. But it does make you wonder. One last thing. You can't scale sound............ I'll just leave you with that one.

Just so long as it contains all four main food groups. Grease, starch, Fat and burnt crunchy bits.

Like everyone else has said, I would really recommend taking the leap. The difference that even modest airbrushing skills have over using a paintbrush really do make a difference and I find actually encourage you to improve your skills and investigate further what can be achieved. For myself I spray with acrylics only. I'm a committed fan of Vallejo's products, both their model air and model colour ranges. I would also recommend their airbrush cleaners as they do an excellent job. That all said you don't have to go splashing out hundreds of pounds of your hard earned dosh. I learnt with and still use regularly a £30 airbrush from Machine Mart (I now have a couple of Iwata Revolutions as well), although my original £80 compressor has been swapped out for a much better but more expensive Iwata unit. I'm lucky in that I can set up my spray booth in the utility room right next to the sink. So access to a slow running tap of cold water is never more than a few seconds away, just in case it all goes horribly wrong. But my top tip, like others on here. Is get yourself set up to clean before you start airbrushing and if you have any of your cleaning materials missing, don't make a start with the paint. Why? It's easy to take your eye of the ball when cleaning and to sort of do things on auto-pilot. So if you have something missing that you really need it can be quite disruptive and potentially damaging to your kit. Also having all your cleaning kit to hand and ready to go means you can be quite efficient with your cleaning regime and what then becomes a second nature process, then doesn't fell quite so burdensome or time consuming. Besides!!! Once you start enjoying the grin factor at seeing your models and scenics looking that extra level better, through the use of your newly acquired airbrush skills. You will wonder what all the fuss and worry was about in the first place Personally I'd rather spend a day cleaning airbrushes than ballasting!!!!!!!!!