Let's have some Press Car Reviews!!

[WillyChang]

Ok, the manuals are coming along beautifully... but me was thinking how about another tab for contemporary Tamiya reviews from magazines?

Some of us would be sure to have old magazines like Radio Race Car (UK), and the like which were there from the early days. Reviews on these were generally b&w too, only in the late 80s did they go colour.

How about it, Chris - do you have server room?

[WillyChang]

oooh... and how about those full-page colour ads too that Riko used to do?? Spent hours drooling over those...

[RETRO R/C]

Sounds nice - however this would take up alot of space......

We have to get everyone posting their trades and pictures correctly in their showrooms first I would imagine.

Chris would have the definitive answer - I am just going by our discussions in the past ......

Cheers

Darryn

Want more than Just Tamiya ??

Visit my page !!

[netsmithUK]

I really like the idea! But it requires a lot of input from our members.

If we could get an idea of how many people would contribute then I can work out if it would be worth setting up the system to handle it. I would hate to go to all the trouble to then only to recieved 3 articles.

Let me know what you have got, how long it is (pages), number of pictures etc and what format it is in. And I'll see what we can do.

While we are on the subject I quite like the idea of havinh a definitive shot of the boxes top and sides and then a shot of the internals for each car. Again it would need a lot of input from you NIBers out there. I want top quality pictures where just the box fills the picture and everything is dead square.

Let me know if you can help.

Regards

Chris

[robysoldtamiya]

Well I have a lot of old (Italian) magazines with interesting articles.

Count me in.

Roby

[DJTheo]

Have 2 already on my site, more to come in future...

http://www.vintagetamiyarc.com/

[WillyChang]

I'd suggest we'll just scan them in, like we do manuals.

Say 150 dpi, in colour or greyscale depending on source.

Either full page or partial (cut out all the ads).

Wouldn't bother with OCR or anything fancy like that.

Spacewise, I don't think it'll take up even a fraction that of the manuals; but how are you going for server space Chris?

[WillyChang]

quote:

If we could get an idea of how many people would contribute then I can work out if it would be worth setting up the system to handle it. I would hate to go to all the trouble to then only to recieved 3 articles.

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D'oh! I've been collecting kitbox pics of 1st 100 off the usual sources too, but have been using the 3/4-view format (top & 2 sides).

But I guess if you guys wanna go make minature box models, then Chris' idea is way better.

[netsmithUK]

minature boxes....what a cool idea!

But seriously I'd take whatever I can get and what ever people want to contribute. Not sure about the language issues though...

Chris

[bholio]

I have a few 1980's RC Car Action magazines. I remember a review of the 959 in 1 of them. I'll scan what I can.

However, isn't this a copyright issue? Tamiya makes money selling the kits and probably doesn't care about publishing of the manuals. However, these magazines might care if you copy and post their content. It's what they sell..

I don't think there is a language issue. If you can't read the language of a particular article, too bad. Enjoy the pictures.

Edited by - bholio on 17 Oct 2002 15:20:43

[mr_lister999.]

they probably won't mind if you quote the magazine name and the author of the piece. Probably best to drop the company a mail asking 1st though.

-------------------------

If practice makes perfect, and no one is perfect, why practice?

[netsmithUK]

To be honest, talking over the legality of it is a bit splitting hairs, we already host manuals without permission and some of use even produce reproduction decals, which is also questionable. The fact is particularly for magazine articles from 15 years ago, I don't anyone would care at all, some of the magazines will be out of production.

We will of course quote and credit all reference sources and also not use anything less than 15 years old. If its newer than we can report on it but not reproduce it.

I am happy to do it first and see what happens. The risk is mine and based on experience the worse that will happen is they will ask us to remove it if they don't want us to use it.

If we start trying to find original authours etc its basically going to be too much effort and will never happen.

Chris

[bholio]

As for copyright, it's your website..

I have reviews (Radio Control Car Action)

- Bruiser (premier issue)

- 959

- Hotshot

- Blackfoot

And others.

I'm scanning Bruiser now and hope to send tonite. I'm on dialup, so sending is a big deal..

[TWINSET]

Haven't got access to the original of this article (read it when I was a kid withh a new scorcher), but it'd be cool to see the pix again!

Basically, this guy had sealed his scorcher box so it was airtight, and made a socket in the top to charge the batteries - good so far.

According to the mag, recharging batteries produces (used to produce) flammable gases, so the first spark form the speedo blew his car up.

Accompanying this was a picture of a scorcher chassis in bits - I LMAO!

[bholio]

So we don't duplicate effort:

I just sent the following to scans@tamiyaclub.com

All from Radio Control Car Action (USA)

Bruiser

big wig

Blackfoot

hotshot

wild one

I'll send some more after hearing that the first batch is OK.

[WillyChang]

RCCA only started up in 1986, I think... so it *just* scrapes in the 15 year mark (if that's what we want). There are several more UK magazines that were active since the 1970s.

Haven't had much luck getting backissues from RCCA, anything older than 2-3 yrs is usually out of stock. Guess they shouldn't mind much if we post them online, they won't be able to prove they'll lose revenue or stuff like that. We might even be giving them free publicity.

[WillyChang]

quote:they probably won't mind if you quote the magazine name and the author of the piece. Probably best to drop the company a mail asking 1st though.

id=quote>id=quote>

I'd suggest we scan them in straight off the original page; like newspaper clippings on your 'fridge door. The magazine's name and author would all remain there in print.

[netsmithUK]

Got the first batch of scans from BHolio and they are great!

Give me a couple of days to work out the best way to integrate them with the site.

Cheers

Chris

[WillyChang]

How about whack on another 'tab' after "User Rides" for each car?

Then have a menu under there - for when you get reviews from different magazines on the same car.

[netsmithUK]

Its a bit trickier than that, I'm afriad.

First of all I need to automate the process - there is too much to do to manually be changing the site all the time. So I have to make sure it works as streamline as possible.

Main issue are:

- any article can have any number of pages (ie not all the same length)

- any car may have more than one article written about it.

- all articles need to have source, author and contributing member linked to it some how.

- all images need to be protected from web crawlers etc, and people looking to pull them all off in one go to try and make a quick buck via ebay

Its going to take a while...

[robysoldtamiya]

I started with project Assault Vehicle.

Roby

Edited by - robysoldtamiya on 18 Oct 2002 11:32:12

[terry.sc]

Got most copies of Radio Control Model Cars from first issue onwards(1980), and Radio Race Car the same. Also got most of Radio Control car Action from 1990 onwards. At last a reason for hoarding them all these years. If anything in particular is needed I'm sure I could find it and scan it, but finding time is the biggest problem for me.

"You win some, you lose some, you wreck some" - Dale Earnhart

[bholio]

I've sent in the the 959 and Hornet for Radio Control Car Action.

I have a few reviews left. Fox, Stadium Blitzer and maybe 1 or 2 more. Going thru these magazines is pretty interesting.

Are you guys interested in stuff like 'Project Frog', where they upgraded a Frog with aftermarket hop ups?

[WillyChang]

quote:

- all images need to be protected from web crawlers etc, and people looking to pull them all off in one go to try and make a quick buck via ebay

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Give us a monotone graphic or just text and we can easily watermark the whole page... all the scans for our private use anyway, it shouldn't spoil their usefulness.

Maybe put a link to its contributor so if anyone is desperate for a hires original, maybe they can ask the contributor direct. Saves some bandwidth...?

[WillyChang]

quote:

Are you guys interested in stuff like 'Project Frog', where they upgraded a Frog with aftermarket hop ups?

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Ya, of course!!

RCCA also had a lot of hopup projects for Boomerang/Hotshot; complete re-chassis with aluminium was pretty common in the 1980s.