It's like I'm actually there

If you're anything like me, you're pathetic and a failure. You've failed to achieve your childhood dream...becoming a pilot.

Okay, that was a bit dark, but I'm willing to bet you a banana split there are a lot of modelers who not-so-secretly wish they were pilots. We all have our reasons for not having achieved that dream, and at the end of the day many of us turn to scale models as a way to engage in our passion for aviation.

The internet has given us a new to enjoy aviation through the videos on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, but unfortunately the majority of them (including television shows on the Discovery and even the Military Channels) are aimed at the casual viewer not hardcore aviation enthusiasts like us. I swear if I see another video showing fast jets to the sound of Van Halen's "Dream" I'm going to shove the thickest, most flash-laden sprue from an early, Eastern Bloc model and shove it up my, well, you get the idea.

That's why I was thrilled to find this video. Maybe you've seen it.



Pilot and aviation journalist Jeff Ethell introduces us to the P-51D as if we are about to take the controls ourselves. He talks about the amount of oil to look for during the pre-flight, tells us to ensure the supercharger is set to Low, and the speed to expect on the base leg of your landing. Absolutely great stuff.

Be sure to watch all three videos of the P-51, as well as the other aircraft in the Roaring Glory Warbirds series.

Now if only someone would do this for the F-16, F/A-18, C-17, etc.

One step forward, one step back

I really like what I've seen from the folks at Cyber-Hobby over the last year. Until I picked up their F6F Hellcat at the IPMS Nats a few weeks ago, my experience with their kits had been virtual, having seen them only online. Their SB2C has been very well received by the modeling community despite the existence of the superb Academy kit, and their Meteor looks equally nice. I was eager to fondle another example of their work.

When Cyber-Hobby released their Sea Venom in 1/72 scale, I was intrigued. Cold War British aircraft are not of special interest to me, but there's something about that big, bulbous nose that intrigued me, that and I've always had an affinity for smallish aircraft and armor. When I saw photos of the Sea Venom on the various discussion boards and saw the finesse of the moldings, I knew I had to have one.

Last week I scored a Sea Venom on eBay for a good price and received it over the weekend. In terms of detail and molding, it's really, really nice, folks. The bad news is, it has its share of flaws. Danielle Lang was kind enough to do a thorough evaluation of the kits on Britmodeller.com and share her findings on this thread and this thread. She compiled quite a list of issues. Say what you will about "rivet counting," but I appreciate reviews like this because they make me a more informed consumer, and that's never a bad thing. I bought the kit, aware of those shortcomings, and having it now I can say I'm looking forward to building it.

Almost.

Why? The one glaring shortcoming of the kit is...drum roll please...the lack of an opening canopy! This is not 1971, right? This is not a Frog kit sitting before me, right? I find it surprising that anyone would produce a kit these days without an opening canopy. Maybe Cyber-Hobby wanted to hide the inaccurate instrument panel.

Let's hope this never happens again.

Airfix and cup holders

The great thing about buying a car is that you can literally have one custom built just for you, assuming you can afford it of course. You can specify the engine, color, seats, audio options, pin stripes, and so on. Of course you always get a cup holder, and even Ferrari touts the presence of a cup holder in its literature for the F12 Berlinetta. Big fucking deal. Even the shopping cart at my grocery store has a cup holder.

So how close are we to being able to log onto Tamiya.com and customer order a Bf-109? I can see the orders coming in now: David from Jacksonville wants a Bf-109E, version E-4, without a resin interior, with resin flying surfaces, photoetch for the cockpit, markings for Helmut Wick, and so on. Pretty cool, eh?

We might just be a step closer to that reality with Airfix's recent announcement of a kit to convert their impressive Vickers Valiant to a Reconnaissance or Refueller airplane. Someone at Airfix was smart. With all due respect to my friends in the aftermarket industry, someone over there in Kent said, "Hey, why should we let some cottage industry chaps do this when we can do it just as well?"

Brilliant! It's a smart move by Airfix. They don't have to manufacture, box, and store two additional (complete) kits, and they are assured of selling additional Valiants as we choose to build either or both of the variants. And we modelers benefit knowing that the parts should fit flawlessly, which isn't always the case with aftermarket parts (think resin shrinkage).

We're living in good times!

Old dog, new tricks

We're dazzled by the state-of-the-art kits that sit on the shelves of the LHS and in our stashes nowadays. Look at the Cyber Hobby SB2C or the Eduard Bf-110E and you'll see the finest examples of how manufacturers are leveraging technology to give us exceptional models that make kits manufactured 30 years ago look like toys. I couldn't explain how a "slide mold" works, but I'm sure glad the folks at Dragon do!

That said, I'm always thrilled to see a 20- or 30-year old kit built and painted particularly well. Only the best modelers can take an old, 70s era ERTL or Hasegawa kit and turn it into a masterpiece. It gives me hope for all those "obsolete" kits I see on the vendors' tables at IPMS contests.

This 1/72 A-7A, from Floridian Ken Belisle, started life as a Hasegawa kit. Yes, the same one released in the 1970s with minimal cockpit detail and raised panel lines. It stopped me in my tracks when I saw it at the Virginia Beach IPMS Nats a few years ago. Ken is, in my opinion, the best 1/72 scale modeler in the hobby these days. He could've built the Fujimi kit, which is miles ahead of the Hasegawa, but he used what he had in his stash and showed us what real modeling looks like.

Here's a build of an "obsolete" kit I spotted on Aircraft Resource Center this week. It's the old ESCI 1/48 F-4 Phantom, and I think it would pass for a Hasegawa kit in any contest. The finish really sets it above most kits we see online.

I also noticed this build from André Teppers on Missing Lynx of the venerable Italeri 1/35 Steyr RSO (which has recently been superseded by Dragon's new offering). I can't wait to see this one painted!

Do you have old kits in your stash that you're too quick to dismiss?

This could really suck

There are many skills in our hobby that are inherently difficult. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the challenges of decaling, but other tasks come to mind as well, such as applying a natural metal finish or masking and painting canopies. One of the lessons I learned far too late in my modeling career is to charge head-on into anything that intimidates me. Worst case scenario: I fail miserably and toss a $15 model into the trash. Big deal. Try, try again as they say.

Thanks to Alclad, a gift from the gods to modelers around the world, I've achieved a degree of confidence with a NMF, and I have a Fujimi Judy in the stash awaiting my attention just for the exercise of masking its ridiculously complex canopy. What next?

The one area that still needs my attention is rigging. (Okay, there's vacuform models, too, but no one really builds those anymore, right?) I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't attempted rigging since I built Airfix's tiny Tigermoth many years ago. It was a half-hearted effort due to Justine Bateman detracting my modeling after I heard a rumor that she didn't wear underwear while filming Family Ties.

Mind you, I'm primarily a jet guy, but I do have a couple of kits in the stash that have intrigued me over the years that require some rigging. I recently acquired the classic Airfix Handley-Page HP 42 after seeing the plane in Imperial Airways livery, and I have a Williams Brothers 1/72 Douglas World Cruiser in my stash that I bought when I started getting serious in the hobby some time around 1985, a plane that I've always thought was particularly rugged.

 With that enthusiasm I nervously clicked the Buy It Now button on eBay for an Eduard 1/72 Nieuport 17 with the intention of using it for my first, earnest foray into rigging. Was I foolish for choosing to do this in 1/72nd scale? Perhaps. Okay, yes, but it's my scale and I'm a glutton for punishment. I also picked up Eduard's WW1 photoetch seats at the IPMS Nats.

Next I had to find a few articles online about rigging. I found this thread on ARC's forums, this article from John Seaman on Austin Scale Modeler's Society site, and another one on
ww1aircraftmodels.com.

Finally, being a JEEP, (that is, "just enough education to pass" in military slang), I disguised myself as a 19 year-old girl and snuck into a beading supply shop and bought some monofilament thread.

Now I'm ready to begin this new chapter in my hobby. It could really suck. And it could really be great. Some of the best looking aircraft ever manufactured were the early bi-wing types, so if all goes well I may find myself spending less time on jets. Time will tell.

The weird and the bizarre at the Nats

Hidden among the ever-popular F-16s and Sherman tanks in the contest, in between the deeply discounted Hasegawa Bf-109s in the vendors room, exists the weird and bizarre world that is scale modeling. Here are a few of the more esoteric and stranger things I noticed, excluding of course the attendees ourselves.

Looking through the contest room I found what may be the first entry of its type ever to be entered in the Nats, this tiki pole. There was at least one entrant from French Polynesia, so I'm guessing that he was the modeler of this most interesting model.

I saw this entry of a stealth fighter. I'm usually not a party pooper in our hobby, but please, let this be the last of its kind. The idea has been done many times before, and it's not funny anymore. And more to the point, no one can do the concept any better than this modeler. Kudos!

You know you're living in the best of times when you can find a book that completely documents the jerrycan. Yes, that's right, those little water/fuel cans that most of us glue onto our tanks and softskin vehicles as an afterthought. Are you sure the jerrycans on your Matilda should be three-handled rather than two? The book has been described as "lavishly illustrated" and "superb" by reviewers and people are even tweeting about it. If it's not in your library you're a loser. Contact Casemate Publishing for your copy today, and be sure to suggest a book about Italian crowbars circa 1935-38.

Japan is often known for its eccentricities, and our hobby is not a sanctuary for those seeking the unconventional. I found this model of dumplings from Bandai on Hobbylink Japan's table. Not buying it may be my one regret coming away from the Nats.

Speaking of Japan, I spotted these anime models in the back of the vendors room. I'm always surprised to find that naked women can make almost any grown man giggle.

Sitting next to a model of the World Trade Center was this model of Epcot Center's Spaceship Earth. It's always nice to see a model reflect the location of the convention.

Finally, I captured these two signs in the vendors room in the final hour of the show. I never understood why eBay sellers discount items at 5 percent off, so I almost LOL'd at this one. Guess which vendor took home most of his stock.

I'm already looking forward to next year!

Dang, I bought the wrong kit!

So I'm unpacking my haul from the Nats this morning, eager to fondle one of the kits I was most looking forward to buying. In the final 30 minutes of the vendors room I was excited to score what I thought was the new Tamiya 1/72 A6M5 Zero, which if you haven't seen it is a gem of a kit. But no, what I actually grabbed off the table was their 1/48 version of the plane. Dang!

Anyone else do that? Or maybe buy a duplicate of something you already have?

Oh well, at least I scored a $50 kit at a deep, deep bargain.