Hello all,

I am writing this entry to inform of the store reopening that will take place today Friday 24th of January at 13:00 UTC, that would be; 14:00 Central European time, 22:00 local time in Japan, 8:00 AM at the East coast, 6:00 AM West coast of the USA.

I am trying to put the store back online at a time that can be accessed by most, the globe is quite big and it is difficult to find a time that can work for everybody.

Now on regards the store, I have very good news:

A few months ago, a big change had to be made in the shipping methods at the store because the post office no longer accepted shipping goods under the “certified letter” type. I am not sure if people have complained at the national courrier during this time, but they have put back the option of shipping goods within “certified letter” which, for shipping these small items, it is the best choice. Not only that, but they also made things more complete than before and allowed to write down in the online form, the customs form, this was only available under the “package” shipping method.

What does that mean? The biggest change are cheaper shipping costs, less time for me to prepare shipments but yet mantaining the fair delivery times which for the price (including tracking) are very reasonable, so if you are a pre “new” shipping method customer, it will all be like before. I may however in the future, add the “priority” shipping method.

What other things are new?

• I have added a new category, “Ground accessories” which at the moment contains a set of cones (set of 10) in 1/144 scale and a set of (6) aircraft chocks (1/144 scale). I intend to add further items in this category.
• During the next couple weeks I also plan to add another category “Ramp figures”. The first figures available will be the baggage cart/belt loader workers, with a set of a few figures loading luggage from the carts onto the loader conveyor.
  Since I plan to create more variety of figures, I may separate them into different categories “Passenger figures”, “Ramp workers”, or even “Crew figures”.
• There is also a new category under the GSE Series, that is “Handler  decals”. These consist on a set of handler decals of different sizes so that you can customize the GSE models at your liking.
• Another newlty is the possibility to purchase customized items from drop down menus, that means; if you want to purchase an LD3 container, you can chose the LD3 type from one drop down menu and chose the decal handler from another drop down menu. There is no more “writing at the text below” to customize these items thanks to a module I purchased and that seems to be working fine.

I am aware that some items have a bit low quantities, such as the new cones, chocks, A319/A320/A321 sharklets or the 1/144 baggage set. We have had a very terrible weather here during the last few days with intermittent blackouts which made it a bit difficult for me to have everything in the quantities I wanted, so that means that in the next days I will be adding more stock to these.

On a side note, the LD3 turntable trolley will undergo a modification, however, the new dollies set will be available.

During these next two weeks I also plan to have the stairs truck ready, during the last days it was impossible for me to work with it since I had to work on the stock and the store, so hopefully everything will have its process now and I will be able to dedicate time to the stock production and the creation of new items.

I plan to add other payment methods in the future as well.

That is all for now, I hope that the store will work well, if it does not, I will close it for maintenance again, except the new module for custom products and the new shipping method options, nothing has changed, so it should work fine as before.

Best wishes,
Guillem

 

Hello everyone,

This is going to be the last entry prior the re stock of the GSE (and A320 sharklets / Wifi radome) models on the 24th.

I am working full throttle to get to the 24th with everything done, although unfortunately I won’t be able to release the TLD ABS1740 stairs by that time, I will release it a couple weeks afterwards, however.

I am adjusting it, since it will slide, there are several parts that need to fit perfectly and sometimes even it is computerized, it is trial and error (being so small) but so far it is going very well. Main reason for the delay on the stairs truck is not only the model itself, but the preparation that it requires; the design of the decals/ instructions.

On the good side, I will release figures that can fit the belt loader and the baggage carts, and speaking of baggage carts, I have been able to make the finished versions as product promo for the store:

 

I also have been on time to complete the dollies sets which will also be available on the 24th:

 

I am handling many small parts (but paying a very special attention to packaging) baggage carts will consist in a set of 3 carts, my aim is have 10 units of each variant which translates to 4 wheels + 1 spare wheel x 3 carts= 15 wheels per set, so 10 stock units is a total of 150 tiny wheels… plus the other baggage cart type, +150 wheels, 300 wheels in total.

The same applies to the baggage, baggage included per set is of 15 baggage pieces (5 per cart) so that makes it a total of 300 baggage prepared, and these will also be available separately.

Store will be closed for settings and preparations from tonight 22:00 CMT time (or earlier) till January 24th (will be probably at around 12:00 CMT).

Reason for closing the store for preparation is basically that, new products will be uploaded, galleries will need to be double checked, shopping cart, shipping and other things are going to be checked. There will be a new option when chosing a product with multiple options such as decals, in the past I made the customer write in a text box the desired decal, this time, there will be a drop down menu (or image update) upon the decal choice, this is something very simple yet the default store did not include such function therefore other modules had to be purchased.

I will keep on preparing these models, and also working on the stairs truck. From that point, I will be starting to prepare and test the 1/200 GSE models while I work on the next 1/144 model; the Commander 15i cargo loader.
On top of that… I don’t forget the 747-400F/-8F nor the 1/12 B737 cabin, I really want to talk deeper on these subjects since now the way of make things for me has changed considerably, this may help me (a lot) to speed up things, specially for the 1/12 B737 cabin, will talk more about it soon.

Thank you everyone for your patience!

Best wishes,
Guillem

Hi guys,

I know that this entry is not related to the GSE models, stock units or projects, but I just had to publish it, had to share it…

A very good friend of mine has gifted me with her Sabena book, which is something very special that I will treasure for the rest of my days.
I can’t say enough how special this book is for me, it is a book that helps me understand a (big) part of the aviation history, it helps me to understand the beginnings and the different aircrafts  such as the Savoia Marchetti SM75, the Junkers, the DC2, the pionners in civil transportation that I was unaware of since I was just focused in nowadays widebodies, the book reminds me how the beginnings were in aviation.

Not only it teaches the history of Sabena, but it also explains how the airline had to survive through the world war which is something that I never read before, what the strategies were, etc.
Nedless to say that this book also inspires me to improve my work, with lots of fantastic photos and information, felt grown fan of Sabena I suppose, an airline that I never had the chance to see, it is now possible for me to go back on time and learn a little bit more about it.

I am sure that my friends from Belgium in particular will understand how special this book is, seeing the beautiful liveries that we call now “retro”, after seeing todays “Euro whites”,  I appreciate more these “old” schemes, but I suppose time changes and so do the airlines… but it is thanks to this book were one can learn from the past and grow to appreciate what we missed.

I want to give a huge thanks to my friend Olga for this magnificent book. I am fortunate that I have been able to open my eyes and see more than nowadays jets, for both culture and appreciation of the pionners in the civil aviation.

In the meanwhile, work continues preparing stuff.
Best wishes,
Guillem

 

 

Hello all,

Hopefully everyone has entered 2020 alright.

Finally I can give an official, this time for real, release date for the GSE models (1/144 scale at the moment), that will be, on January 24th (this year, lol).

I can say that dealing with so many small parts for so many models can be quite stressful, however, everything is almost done, PE is almost completed, product photos are almost taken, so everything is so far going on the right way.

Why on January 24th? For several reasons; 1st, I want to do my best and finish the tests of the stairs truck for which I still need to create the instructions/decals, I really hope it can be released from the beginning, number 2; I still need to finish the product photos, prepare each product page at the store and set the correspondant settings for everything to work properly, such as the shipping. This is important, the products will be new (new entries) and all the GSE types in 1/144 scale are actually going to fit in the small type blister, which wasn’t the case in the past with the AST-1 for example, it had to use the big blister, therefore product dimensions changed in some cases.

Speaking of the AST-1 F 600, here is a photo of the finished model:

I had a lot of issues on the way, my old photo camera broke and at the moment I am having some weird (I think hardware) issues with my computer, fingers crossed it is still working well.

The third reason why on January 24th is to have time to resin cast the A320 sharklets (new model) and the WiFi radome antenna. I am not sure I will be able to release decal sets for the A320 sharklets, there are many A320 around the world, so I will probably have the sharklet details within the A320 decal sets which are due to be printed in the future with silk screen for the details and laser for the livery colors.

As you can see, there is still a lot to do, but I will release everything I have on January 24th, which will be all the GSE presented here so far, with hopes to release the stairs truck as well.

I also need to finish the instructions of these “squared-type” LD3 trolleys:

I think that is all for now, I will be completing the remaining GSE and keep on working with what I mentioned before. I will be keeping the blog updated the next weekend with the progress of these things. For 1/200 and 1/72 scale modelers, I have to say that once these 1/144 are released, I will be starting to test first the 1/200 scale models and later the 1/72. Things will have to be done a little different obviously, but my aim is to have the same GSE in all those scales.

See you all on the next weekend!

Best wishes,
Guillem

 

Hello everyone,

Yes, I am still here, spending the days working on the stock units, new items and hopefully, being able to complete a few other models for product page examples soon.

Today I wanted to say a couple things; first of all, I wish everyone wonderful holidays, it is time of being home with the warmth of the family, or on a nice trip, very soon time to say goodbye to this year, and pass page again for the next one.

Now, on regards the units, how are these? when they will be released? Things are progressing, I really can’t go any faster than this, something I thought would be ready at the end of November is taking me so long that I have to move my hopefully new release date to January next year.

Products are still being packed, PE is being made, had lots of troubles to make it again since I changed a few things such as the UV source and that altered the whole process.

In any case, work is continuing on, I have started to take the final product photos which you can see some examples below, and a bonus model I wanted to comment about:

It is a (at the moment 1/144) passenger stairs. It is adjustable and it is based on the TLD ABS 1740 model. It will fit from an A320 to a B777 door heights, which is basically a quite wide range of aircrafts. I also plan on creating figures, and a set I have in mind is going to be specifically created to fit and be used on these stairs.

Now on regards product photos,  there is nothing new as everything has yet been covered, but since work is continuing on and I don’t have much else to show, here are a few images:

 

More progress is continuing, once I have a bit more to share, I will, in the meanwhile, wish all of you can have all the love and time of your beloved ones in these special days!

Best wishes,
Guillem

Hello all,

I am writing this entry to let you know of the process on the stock making of these new GSE items. The day I said I was going to release these by the end of November, I probably wasn’t thinking this carefully enough.

I am literally cutting hundreds of parts to prepare these units and packaging them very carefully to make sure nothing is left, so once I bag parts of a particular item, I do it in its entirely to make sure each bag has the same number of parts.

The AST-1 F600 has around 40 parts, I currently prepared 10 sets, so that is a total of 400 parts bagged. It really is not that time consuming, but considering that stock has to be made of all items, that is what takes me most of the time, if it was re stocking an out of stock item, it would be quicker, but it is the entire catalogue (and some other new items) I am re stocking.

As I said in my previous entry, I am starting with the models that have more parts, so smaller items such as the baggage carts or trolleys will not take that long.

The reason for providing the kits this way is for a very fundamental reason, cutting the parts out of the base to be assembled on the model is something very delicate, I break one while doing so; I have spares, I can also make them again, so what I want to do with this is to leave the items ready to be assembled, this also saves on weight which translates on saving shipping prices and the time to do this is not that much consuming if we think of restocking a couple items, again making the entire catalogue is what is taking me that long time.

This weekend I am starting to bag the belt loader parts, hopefully I can keep up working at full speed every day and have them ready soon.

Thank you all for reading and for the patience, in between stock making and bagging these parts, I am also working on new items, I have done a first test with a retractable passenger stairs for which I plan to make a collection of figures later on.

Wish you all a nice weekend,
Guillem