Hello everyone, I have been reading several posts for the past few weeks. First of all I must say of all my hobbies(more on that later) I have found the modeling community to be the most accepting of opinions and in general everyone is supportive and complimentary. Anybody feel like a group hug? (just kidding, I always try to have a sense of humor) Specifically opinions on things like accuracy, etc. I was most intrigued by the many paint discussions. I was so happy to see most discussions ending up with the conclusion there is seldom if ever an exact shade of a color or cut and dried scheme. Obviously a specific airplane is a different story.
I have been involved in hobbies from collecting real militaria, coins, knives, slot cars, rocks, gems, minerals, and restoring real cars. Nothing turns me off more than a discussion by the few resident experts in a given hobby insisting or worse being everyone’s buddy because they have the biggest or most, therefore they are the experts. I can’t tell you how many car guys will argue about the particular shade of a paint color being correct or not. Even in the underside of body panels that have never been exposed to UV light two different cars will appear different. I bring this up because having restored cars, and knowing a few people in the auto paint business paint mixing until recently was almost black art. Why? simple, paints are mixed by weight in grams. Even at Home Depot the formula is a weight of each base color. The real problem comes in when the mixer has to put in what can be a single drop of pitch black or other color that can drasticly alter the shade. Mixology has certainly improved, then there is the consistency of the base chemicals. I could go on but I am very happy to see this hobby realizes this. To think RLM81 was always the same is insane.
Now for a few questions
Is there a spread sheet or reference of what is available by scale for planes and armor?
Same for detail parts?
I am on model #1 (last one done about 1978) ME262 1/48 Revell (warm up, done flying gear up. can’t wait to try first airbrush!!!WOOHOO!!! I need a dude to fly her, a pilot, Is it realistic to cut up the standing pilot with the kit? Is there another cheap option? Anyone have a donor? I decided to do this before starting my Tamiya 1/48 ME262 and 1/48 King Tiger.
Is it common to have multiple kits going?
Thanks for any feedback. I hope to contribute in areas of painting and related hardware.
First of all, welcome the FSM forum. As you noted, we mostly try to help each other and above all be friendly. I’ll try to answer your questions.
I am not aware of anything like that. Squadron and several other model companies put out catalogs that would essentially give you the same information. That is currently “in production” ie available items. Long out of production kits are sometimes available on a dusty back shelf of your local hobby shop, at swap meets or on ebay.
Same answer as #1
Some modelers do major surgery on figures and come up with something drastically different to suit their needs. Others use figures from the “spares” box that they have accumulated over the years. There are a very limited number of ground and aircrew figures available in kit form.
Yes. Some people have 3 or 4 or even more under construction at the same time. Most models hit certain points where paint has to dry, glue has to dry, etc and you can work on another model while waiting for these events to happen.
As for q 1 and 2: you can find a lot of info on the web. There are review sites such as 1/72 census. SMAKR, aircraftresourcecente, cybermodeler, internetmodeler, modellingmaddnes and hyperscale. You can find loads of info there on what’s avaible.
3: If you don’t have a sparesbax (yet) them there are manufacturers that make 1/48 pilot figures. Since these are often short run resin products they can by quite expensive.
I really can’t say a whole lot different from what has already been said. But I’ll try to interject my two cents anyway! [:D]
Question No. 1- Wow. From what I’ve seen, if there WAS a spreadsheet that had ALL that information on it, it would be huge. Not only to you have the mainstream manufacturers, you have all the cottage industry stuff (ie, vacuforms and resin kits) also. That’s not even counting the discontinued items. There is a really good hobby store not too far from me, and he has at least three asiles completely packed with kits. And he’s not even close to having everything. My recommendation would be to simply Google a particular kit once you get the fancy to build it. Then you can find out the information on a kit-by-kit basis. Sometimes you get more kits and aftermarket stuff than you can shake a stick at, and sometimes all you come up with some obscure $200 vacuform kit with no clear parts (I’ve been there…).
No. 2- See No. 1
No. 3- Go ahead and cut up that figure. (There’s nobody tellin’ you that you CAN’T, right? [;)]) You’re just going to need some putty to fill up the joints (elbow, knee, hip, etc.) that you cut up. In this case don’t worry about smoothing them out too much. Just try to match up the folds of the fabric. This is probably easier in 1/72 because it’s smaller, but then again, I’ve never tried this personally.
No. 3- Let’s see… Right now, I’ve got… five? On the bench right now? Yup. It’s five. So yes, have as MANY going at once as you feel comfortable with. Just watch- they tend to get away from you!
Thanks for the imput. I was affraid of hearing the “cut the pilot routine”. Creative and artistic I ain’t, but I gotta get over trying something and remind myself it’s a $15 kit and this is the one to experiment on.
Quite frankly I look at a lot of the finished models you guys post and think I’ll never be able to end up with something that looks that good…but I’m finally gonna try!