Christmas in August

It’s that time of year again. The IPMS USA National Convention is less than a week away. Christmas for scale modelers! I’ll be attending the convention for the fourth year in a row – this year it's within driving distance – and I couldn’t be more excited. Well, I could be more excited, but not by much.

What am I looking forward to? First and foremost, looking at a helluva lot of models! I enjoy seeing models online throughout the year, but nothing beats seeing them in person. I always come away inspired and motivated. I’m particularly eager to see what shows up in the Miscellaneous categories; there are always two or three that surprise me with their creativity.

World Trade Center model at the 2012 IPMS National Convention

I’m looking forward to the vendors. I’ve been in the hobby long enough to have practically everything I want (and if I don’t, I can usually find it online), but it’s always fun to browse the vendors room and discover things I wasn’t really looking for. I’m excited about seeing the new Airfix 1/24 Typhoon in the flesh, eager to see what new tools John Vojtech brings, and looking forward to seeing Click2Detail’s products for the first time.

I’m looking forward to entering my models in the contest, which is something you should do, too. My models have flaws for sure. I know they’re not going to be competitive, but I appreciate the opportunity to share them with other modelers who, I hope, will enjoy seeing them, and my $35 registration fee plays a small part in supporting the convention.

Even though it’s an obligation and a challenge, I’m looking forward to judging. I was an “OJT” last year, so this time around I get to be a full-fledged player. (In truth, an OJT's observations are taken just as seriously as those of the certified judges.) With the possible exception of watching a master modeler at work, nothing will make you a better modeler than judging. I'm going to learn a lot.

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends, David, Lonny, Bruce, Jason, Mark, Adrian, and others whose attendance will surprise me. I’m also looking forward to the seven-hour road trip. I’ve already started to assemble my music playlists!

What am I NOT looking forward to? Most directly, I’ll miss my friends who cannot attend, Graham, Mark, Mark (2), John, and Awan. I’m bummed they can’t be there and the experience won’t be the same without them. I’m not looking forward to encountering “that guy.” He’ll be there, you can count on it. I’m not looking forward to the vendors room closing and the hour following the awards banquet when everyone is packing up their models. That’s the moment you realize the convention is over and you have to wait an entire year for the next convention. (Actually, the 2015 convention is in July, so it will be only 11 months away!)

If you’ll be at the convention, look for me and say hello. Like modeling itself, blogging can feel isolating at times, so it’s always a pleasure to meet folks in person. Until then, happy modeling or safe travels.

In the mood for: Seaplanes

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul...I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. There is magic in it."

---

Herman Melville understood the allure of the sea and explained it beautifully within the first paragraphs of Moby Dick. Ishmael, our hero and Real Man by anyone's standards, chooses to go to sea not as a passenger, he tells us, but as a sailor. Men for hundreds of years have followed Ishmael's lead and joined the great (and not-so-great) navies of the world either for the pure air and exercise that Ishmael sought or for the money, which he didn't fail to mention either.

Aviators, though their eyes are usually turned skyward, are not immune to this longing for the sea, and many have chosen to fly aircraft off aircraft carriers -- and even from cruisers and battleships when naval aviation was new back in the 1930s and 40s -- rather than concrete runways. Those  pioneers saw the practical and tactical value of flying aircraft directly off the sea, and they modified aircraft with pontoons and other technologies to exploit those capabilities. I'm fascinated by function over form, so it shouldn't be strange that I've been enticed to build models of seaplanes recently.

Over the last year or so I've purchased quite a few seaplanes, which are far from my usual interest in modern jet aircraft. How did this happen? Is the same longing for the sea that Melville wrote about applicable to scale modeling? Is it just a matter of time before I start buying ships?

My fascination with sea planes might have been sparked watching Kermit Weeks's in-cockpit "Kermie Cam" videos of his Sikorsky S-39, flying it off the lake on his Fantasy of Flight property in Central Florida.

Or maybe it was photographs of exceptional scale models of seaplanes, such as this scratchbuilt 1/72 Loening C-2H Air Yacht 1928 by Flikr user Franclab.

I know for sure why I bought an Eastern Express 1/144 Be-200. It was just after stumbling upon this video of a Be-200 performing at the Gelendzhik Hydro Air Show in Russia and being smitten by its unique, head-on profile.

To be fair, I've had a few seaplanes in my stash going back to my high school days. A couple of years ago, writing about the challenges of rigging, I mentioned my Williams Brothers 1/72 Douglas World Cruiser, which as some of you know can be built with either wheels or pontoons. I've also had an LS 1/144 Emily for nearly the same 30 years, which has called its siren song to me now and then.

More recently I've picked up an Airfix 1/144 Boeing 314 Clipper at Mosquitocon back in April, a fugly Amodel 1/144 Be-12NH, and a Sword 1/72 SO3C Seamew during my last visit to my LHS just last week. There are a few more on my informal wish list, so don't be surprised if you see one or two under my arm at the IPMS Nats next week.

I suppose it doesn't matter why we like what we like. What can we do but embrace these whims and see where they take us? I think they offer a pleasant distraction from building, in my case, yet another Hasegawa F-4 or Trumpeter F-105. An opportunity to stretch our skills, use different colors, and try new weathering techniques. In the meantime, if anyone has a Sword 1/72 JRF Goose they'd like to sell, give me a shout. I'll provide the water.

The best painting tip ever

Do you remember how as a child you used to draw pictures of landscapes? You probably represented the sky as a strip of blue at the top of the paper, because you knew the sky was over your head, like this.

A few years later, your brain matured and you began to see the sky as it actually exists in your world. It's not simply over your head, it extends down to the horizon as well, and your pictures started to look like this.

What happened? You began to draw what you see, not what you know is there.

I'm always amused when I hear people ask questions like these:

• What color grey is the interior of the F-16?
• What is the FS color used for inert AIM-9 Sidewinders?
• What paint should I use for tires?
• How do you paint a black aircraft?

My answer is almost always the same: Paint what you see, not what you know is there.

Too often we look for documented standards and out-of-the-bottle solutions for questions like these. In our search for accuracy we want a paint specifically called "tire black" or the FS number for those missiles.

Instead we should be using our observational skills to look -- really look -- at the tires of aircraft and ask ourselves, "What color do I see? I know it's rubber, but what color is it?" When you do that, you'll find yourself seeing tones of grey, possibly with bluish or reddish tones. You'll probably notice that the color isn't consistent across the entire tire. The part that makes contact with the ground may be lighter than the sidewalls. It may be dirty. The tire may even be stained from fluids dripping from the underside of the aircraft.

If you're looking at photos of an inert Sidewinder, what shade of blue is it? Dark, light, medium? It is a pure blue or faded? Look at the blue in that jar of Tamiya XF-8 on your workbench. Is it a close match? Oh, you say it's not? Would it be closer with a drop of two of white? Would the result be so far off from FS 35109 that your friends, rivet counters, and IPMS judges will laugh at you? Probably not.

Years ago I built this model, an Italeri 1/72 MiG-29. I knew I wanted it in West German markings and had the appropriate color references, but because I use Tamiya almost exclusively I couldn't simply buy the colors I needed. I had to mix them from scratch, using colors that were close but requiring some adjustment to get right. The result, I think, looks pretty good. One of the grey might not stand up to a paint chip of FS 36320, but when viewed in my display case or on a table at a contest, it looks convincing.

My suggestion is to become a student of color. Familiarize yourself with color theory and the color wheel associated with it. Study photographs closely. Look beyond what you intuitively know is there and study what actually exists in front of you. This will make you a better modeler, particularly when you don't have easy, off-the-shelf solutions.

The passing of Andrei Koribanics

I know most of you don't do figures, but that community lost one of the greats overnight, Andrei Koribanics.

Andrei was best known for his outstanding miniature creations in 54mm and larger. When I first started painting figures back in the mid-1990s his "Eye Deep In Hell" was for me one of the best examples of modeling and painting I'd ever seen. He wrote an article about it for Internet Modeler back in 2001.

You can see more of his figures on his personal web site.

Andrei was also an accomplished aircraft modeler and was particularly adept with bi-wing aircraft, which as we all know are extremely challenging and require an almost engineer-like prowess to master. It's incredibly rare to find a modeler who excels -- and I mean truly excels -- at more than one area of our craft, but Andrei did. For that reason alone he will hold a special place in scale modeling history.

You can see more of Andrei's aircraft at:

World War One French aircraft
World War One Central Powers aircraft
Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero

When to call it quits

One bit of advice I often give modelers who are struggling with a challenging build is to continue it. Well, that's easy to say when the offending piece of shite is in someone else's hands!

Tonight I struggled with my latest project, a Hobby Boss 1/72 Rafale M. I've intended to take it to the IPMS Nats in August, and although I'm not a trophy hound by any measure, I'd like it to look good, and I generally try to make every model better than the last. But this thing is kicking my butt. Here's the list of things that have gone wrong:

• I used the seat belts from Eduard's photoetch set, but the seat looked terrible after I painted it. I've since decided that I'll make my own seat belts from now on as I think they look much more realistic than PE.
• I carelessly joined the two halves of one of the external fuel tanks, which resulted in a significant step that required more filling and sanding than it should have.
• There's no intake trunking of any sort, but by the time I realized that I'd already assembled the fuselage.
• The intake-to-fuselage join is very bad and required a great deal of finagling to get right. Yet more sanding awaits.
  Speaking of the intakes, I glued them to the fuselage before I added a nose landing gear bay / lower fuselage part, which also will require a lot of filling and sanding. In place, the intakes will obstruct my ability to adequately address that seam.
• I think the main landing gear should be attached to the landing gear bays prior to joining the upper and lower wing assemblies. I didn't do that. I'm sure I can make them fit, but will the result be fragile? Don't know. Maybe.
• I was planning to display the model on a mirror, so detail in the main landing gear bays was important. It would've been easier to do that prior to attaching the bays to the lower wing halves.

Here's my honest self-assessment. What this mess comes down to is poor planning on my part. I need to get better at "seeing" the model coming together, visualizing how the parts join and adjust the detailing and assembly processes accordingly.

Yes, the project can be salvaged, but it won't live up to my expectations, and that saps a great deal of my enthusiasm for it. I'm asking myself if I should continue to struggle with it or set it aside and buy a new Rafale M. I'm leaning toward the latter; time is precious and I tend to think we shouldn't waste it doing something that's not enjoyable.

Stay tuned.

6 mistakes that companies make

Companies across the US, Europe, and Asia makes mistakes all the time. I'm not necessarily thinking about the big mistakes, like Coca Cola's introduction of "New Coke" back in 1985 -- which, by the way, I first tasted on a trip to a meeting of IPMS Ocala (Florida) or Pizza Hut's body spray. I'm thinking of the small mistakes that most people don't notice, such as the local restaurant whose employees can't give clear directions to their location.

Businesses in the scale modeling industry are not immune to these mistakes. We spend a lot of time discussing model accuracy -- and we should -- but I can't help but notice the simple things that companies do that could negatively affect their businesses.

Here are a few that I've seen. (The list does not apply to hobby shops.)

1. You show us CAD images of a new model when it's too late to make changes based on our feedback. Although I would argue that no company is obligated to incorporate customer feedback into their products, it's frustrating to see a model using, presumably, the very CAD images that will generate a kit and know that our feedback won't be reflected in the final product. Many manufacturers are getting better about this, but sometimes a simple line drawing or artwork is a better alternative.

2. You don't provide high-quality images of your products on your web site. Modelers face a huge number of options when choosing where to spend their money, so one of the best ways to entice us is by serving up good images of your models or aftermarket.

3. You have a section on one of the big discussion forums (e.g., ARC, Britmodeller, etc.) but don't keep it up-to-date. I know that's a time-consuming commitment, but an inactive forum makes your business look inactive. Stay on your customers' radar; post often.

4. You announce a new product on a discussion forum but fail to provide your web site or purchase information. This seems obvious to me, but it happens.

5. You don't accept PayPal. People complain about their fees and T&Cs, but PayPal has become the de facto standard for making electronic payments. Using PayPal won't make you a millionaire, but I suspect it will generate a few extra sales every month.

6. You publicly bash other manufacturers' products. It's unprofessional. Focus on producing high-quality products, and everything else will take care of itself.

This is about something

Earlier this week my friend over at Doogs' Models vented a little, about the need to buy an airbrush. Before the week is complete I feel the need to vent as well, as always, in good fun.
 
Imagine if I walked up to you empty handed and asked, "What do you think about this?" and then gave you a blank look until you you were forced to respond, "What do I think about what?" That would be annoying, right?

Ambiguity. Not good.

That's what a few of you are doing on the forums. As yet another sign that I'm getting increasingly crotchety as I get older, here's a collection of the most ambiguous subject lines I've noticed so far this year, with my sarcastic responses that I wouldn't dare post for realz.

In need of some help	Like how to write a clear subject line?
Looking for advice	Always make a list before going grocery shopping.
Any plans for these?	Do you mean my childhood hopes and dreams? Nope.
Need help with my bad memory	Try Gingko Biloba.
Would this work?	Yes, but only if you have faith. (See Faith conversation below.)
Any thoughts on this vehicle?	Yes.
Is it true or a fantasy?	If you're referring to my marriage to Kate Upton, it's pure fantasy...on her part.

Some people have an affinity for one-word subject lines:

Remember

Idea?

Faith

Origins

Question *

* Arguably the most ambiguous subject line one could ever use on the interwebz.

And some people like to use ellipses, though not always correctly. I have a theory that these are Mad Men fans, aspiring copywriters trying to use a marketing ploy to entice us to click. Don Draper wannabes, you rock!

Model shops in....	Antarcta? No, but a the rate Hobby Lobby is expanding, you never know.
I wonder...	Who wrote the book of love?
Cruel, but......	Unusual punishment.

The point I'm trying to make through this inept use of humor is, if you start discussions on the forums, please compose a descriptive subject line so we don't have to guess what you're asking about and be forced to click into a thread that we might not be able to contribute to. It's simply the polite thing to do.

BTW, does anyone remember the name of that actor who was in that war movie with the fighting and guns?