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Nothing special here - just another Mad Ax project thread, which some thoughts, musings, insights and ramblings about scalers, GMade, pandemics and life in general. This thread might get way more interesting in the future but right now it's just a handful of photos and a few things that might be worth knowing if you're thinking of getting a scale rig in this sector. Although the BOM is now a few years old and the chassis had been updated, so possibly this thread is too late to be of use to anyone. Well, who cares? Read on. I've been wanting a BOM ever since they came out. For a long time I refused to look at the new Eastern breeds, but when the BOM appeared I immediately fell in love with the chunky body, aggressive half-cage and chunky tyres. I even loved the boxart. In fact I loved both box arts - there are two 'factory' schemes, both red, one with a white panel down the side and one with some white stripes. Last autumn I figured it was time for a new dedicated scale rig. I'd been running my SCX10 G6 edition for years and although it was still running well, it was starting to feel a bit tired. Also my updates to make it into a more scale-looking rig with the Proline Cherokee body had compromised its true climbing potential a little, and to be honest, I was just looking for excuses to buy something new. I really loved the look of the BOM, it seemed to tick every box, I wanted something to be a dedicated rock-climbing truck with loads of articulation and a realistic but aggressively-modified body, and so I bought... An MST CFX-W. OK, it was a bit of an impulse, after hovering my finger over the BIN button for so long, to switch at the very last moment and buy the CFX-W instead. I just happened to find one in Europe and it had the right body too - the J45C Land Cruiser clone. And so last year's scaler build (mostly undertaken as we went into our first winter lockdown) was with the MST. I even got the opportunity to get it muddy during a brief window of non-locked-down-ness before Christmas, before festive excess and emerging variants put is back into a third lockdown. But the BOM never left me alone, I was still in love with its looks, and capable as the MST was, I still wanted to have it in my fleet. I figured it would probably remain a distant dream, something to want but never to have. And then a couple of weeks ago I got a message to tell that my daughter and I had been in contact with a confirmed covid case, and we had to spend 10 days at home in case we were contagious. That meant I needed to take some time off work, but I couldn't go out and enjoy the summer weather or take my daughter anywhere interesting, so I'd have to find plenty of things to keep us occupied at home. Now, I already have plenty of projects, but most of them require the workshop, which isn't really child friendly, at least not for a pre-schooler. If my daughter behaves well during the day then she gets a bit of iPad time before dinner, and building a kit is a great way to spend that time. I can sit next to her, be on hand to help with her games and try to add some context to them, involve her in conversation and show her what I'm working on, but still do something I want to do. So, before I could stop myself, I'd hit the Buy button (with expedited delivery), and Modelsport got busy boxing up my latest purchase. It arrived nice and early on Friday morning, but as chance would have it, my wife also got pinged by the Test & Trace app and had to isolate with us, so she handled the childcare, which freed me up to do some actual paid work, so it would be Saturday before I got around to building the kit.