Hey Fellow Modelers,
If you were King of the Aircraft Model Manufacturer’s what would you do? What would you change or how would you do it better?
If I was King, I’d make canopies in at least two pieces: the frame in one piece and the clear canopy in another. That way we could EASILY paint the frame any way we needed to! Wouldn’t that be great?!
What would you do?
Thx, John
I’m not that picky. I’d just want a 1/72 Spruce Goose so I can round out all the major aircraft in that (my) scale. Oh yeah. And an ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. Or that other Russian monstrosity that was supposed to have twelve engines…
Geeze! Now you got me started! Okay, that, and the absolute highest price for any kit is $20.00.
In order to be anywhere near scale thickness, the frames would be really fragile. It’s been tried in a few kits using PE, but that’s probably more difficult than masking & painting the clear parts. But, If I were king, I’d issue the whole Century Series Aircraft in modern tooled, highly detailed, 1/48 scale kits.
Regards, Rick
Set a cap on kit prices: 1/72 no more than 20.00, 1/48 no more than 35.00, 1/32 no more than 60.00, etc… all kits include cartograf decals. All aftermarket resin sets cannot be more expensive than 15.00. More diversity. There are Luftwaffe aircraft that are not in production that are very interesting. The rest I don’t know…
I would make sure the modelers wouldn’t need to go buy expensive AM, everything would be IN the box.
A1/32 FGR PHANTOM WOULD BE NICE
If I was King of aircraft model, I would order all kits to be made snap-together only.
JUST. KIDDING!
I guess I would probably implement some standardizations.
All cockpits should mate with the fuselage the exact same way, so we can choose whichever aftermarket cockpit and be sure that it’ll fit.
All instructions should give color reference for all major paint vendors. No more matching/guessing.
All non-transparent sprues be molded in white plastic.
Minimum of 2 photos of the finished model on the box. This helps impulse purchases which is probably the backbone of the industry. I want to be able to make the purchase decision on the spot instead of going home to look for online reviews. How else am I supposed to collect a stash of kits that’ll never be built?
All kits, regardless of brand and scale, must include a piece of bumble gum (just like baseball cards) for the kid in all of us.
I would make the day 28hrs long so I could have more time with the hobbie.
Thad
…be able to retire and spend all my time enjoying this hobby and still get the bills paid on time.
I would come up with way of doing natural metal finishes that wasn’t so difficult and frustrating.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
I would get the model I wanted in the scale I wanted with all the detail I wanted, it would have a prefect fit for a price I could afford.
For every type/model/series of an aircraft kit manufactured, the decals for every unit that used that aircraft must be produced and distributed as widely as the model.
Price/price,and Price[2c]
First, I’d request someone manufacture an accurate 1:72 B-1B. Next, how 'bout if Hasegawa would finally include weapons with their kits!!! [;)] Frank
Airbrushes would never clog, decals would never silver, photo-etched instructions would MAKE SENSE, and everything would glue togethor using only one substance…styrene cement. [^]
1: I would forbid the development and release of any further ME-109 kits in any scale or media for at least five years. I like the 109, but there’s too many kits of it out there.
2: If the model will be a tail sitter and the manufacturer knows it, I’d make them include a nose weight of adequate mass and proper shape to go in the nose with no problems so we don’t have to go searching through our nut and bolt cans to find the right size and weight combination by chance.
I’d keep the prices down, what was stated earlier sounds quite reasonable to me.
1/72 scale aircraft would have to have, at a minimum, the quantity and detail the old Monogram 1/48 kits of the mid 80’s had. 1/48 would come with AM goodies to really superdetail. Same with 1/32.
Manufacturers would do surveys to find out what we’d like to see before creating new kits. (The ME-109 comment comes to mind…)
The engineers or mold makers or who creates these models would be required to build the test shots and correct bad seams and ill-fitting parts BEFORE the kit would be allowed into production. And I would have a Quality Review panel of modellers of all experiences build test shots as well… and pass judgement.
Models would be researched and molds updated before re releasing an earlier kit as a ‘modern’ version… as in the case of the A-10 with LASTE, for example.
Moulded weights, at least twice the minimum weight needed, for tail sitter models.
Wheels would be molded in both perfectly round (for in flight models) and with the weighted, bulged look.
White styrene would be used to mold kits, save for clear parts.
Clear parts would be molded as thin as possible; vac formed canopies provided where possible.
All kits would have some basic reference material; such as pictures of the aircraft used as the pattern.
Quality decal sheets with full stencil markings. And at least 5 different marking options.
PE that fits properly… [:D]
“…mandate that any aircraft kit produced in 1/72, 1/144, 1/32,1/100 or 1/200 must have a 1/48 counterpart kit produced…This I command!”
Everything would be on-line…that way I could run a survey of the most desired kit in the most desired scale. The next year that would be the new release…the survey would include questions on PE and decals as well…While it is fun to search e-bay and the rare kit sites I would want to give something back to the consumer directly.
I would cap prices on the new release as well…I like the max per scale previously stated, somewheres along those lines. In each kit would also be a list of reference sources. And for a real kick I would try to line up folks with first hand knowledge of the type. For example pilots or groundcrew who could answer those nasty authenticity issues like “what color was this or that Hurri’s prop hub?” Perhaps they could even answer a FAQ survey for the type in question…
I would consider retooling all of the existing kits to reflect todays current standards by which we ALL judge.