It's alive! Alive, I tell you!!

Hey guys. Well, I'm back after more than a month's absence. A lot has happened since my last post back in September. The secret project that I was alluding to suddenly had to get kicked into high gear. Everything else kind of fell to the wayside. The good news is that the project is finished and I think you will find that the wait will have been worth it.

The big news, if you haven't already guessed from the large image at the top of this post is... Barracuda Studios is expecting. A bouncing baby product line will be born on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 in Telford, England , at the Scale Modelworld, the IPMS/UK National Convention. Its name is BarracudaGraphs.

OK, enough baby metaphors... This new company is a division of Barracuda Studios, and will be publishing books and monographs on modelling related subjects... and possibly some other subjects, too! The first title has been completed and will be in hand and ready for sale at the Telford show in less than 3 weeks.

Here are the stats:

Flightline 1. de Havilland Sea Vixen FAW 1 and 2. Written by Roy Sutherland.

Containing 118 full color pages printed on high quality gloss stock, it features over 250 photos and illustrations, and measures 11.25" by 8.5" in a landscape format, so it will stay open on your model desk. The format is a close up photographic study of the Sea Vixen FAW 1 and 2, showing the entire airframe in great detail. There is a short history section written by noted Osprey author Chris Bucholtz, and supported by period photos of Sea Vixens in service. The in-depth captions reveal many little known details of the structure and systems.

I learned a lot about the beast writing the captions for this book. I had to do many hours of reading and study to be able to write reasonably intelligent captions. They reveal some interesting facts about the Sea Vixen. The rest of the interesting stuff I just made up.

OK, to clear the record: The Sea Vixen, in reality, is not a transforming robot named Migsmasher. Despite its unique design, it was not built using alien technology at Locale 86 of MISHMASH. This would be the British analog of Area 51, if such a thing existed, but it doesn't. So don't start nosing around, OK? The acronym stands for "Military Intelligence Special Handling - Most Awfully Secret, Hopefully". The radar system was also not based on the guts of a Kenmore kitchen microwave. Finally, the Observer was not placed next to the pilot (instead of behind him) so that he could serve him tea at 4 o clock. No truth to that one at all. That stuff did NOT make it into the book. Just the facts, ma'am.

By now you have come to know that I digress off into weird tangents from time to time, right? You still with me? Hello?

A number of these books will be for sale at the Telford show. The balance of the books will be available for sale a little later on, as rush shipping costs a LOT! I will let you know when they become available. Latest by early December, I would wager.

The BarracudaCals website is due for some minor changes. The main splash page will be changed from BarracudaCals to Barracuda Studios. From there you will be able to go to BarracudaCals to spend yourself into the poorhouse on decals, or to BarracudaGraphs to buy the new book. As far as seaching for the site, you can type in either BarracudaCals.com, BarracudaCast.com or BarracudaGraphs.com. It will take you to the same site. They are linked.

Well, that enough for now. I have a hungry teen that wants me to make dinner.

Can't promise that I'll be blogging regularly for the next few weeks. I have a lot to do to get ready for Telford, but I'll make an effort to post a few announcements about some new resin products that will be available for sale at Scale Modelworld before I leave.

Lots of exciting things to come.

Happy modelling! Roy