The Scale Auto Magazine website and forum will be closing as of this Friday. The October magazine was the last SAM magazine. We all thought that the SAM website would live on. But no, that is going away also. Too bad. There were a lot of really good and helpful modelers on that website.
FSM is usually skewed toward planes, ships, tanks and military vehicles. I hope that FSM will include more reviews and articles on cars, trucks and cycles to pick up the loss of SAM.
SAM web site just kind of went out in a puff. I was on the website and then it just went away. It just died. https://finescale.com/pages/scaleauto/
Yes, sad. I had beeen with it since the very beginning. But my frineds there are many other forums out there. If you want a list of ones I peruse, pm me.
I suspect that FSM will.
For years, figure painters could point to FSM and say there was nothing there for them. Now there’s a monthly feature on painting a figure. Same goes for sci-fi modelers-now there’s regular content.
There might not be enough car modelers who are willing to pay to subscribe to a magazine, and maybe not enough to support a specialty forum-again, we can see a parallel in the figure painting area of the hobby. But there are still enough modelers of all interests who are willing to subscribe to keep FSM and this forum going. So, we adapt.
Also, anyone can submit an article on car modeling, too. Don’t sit and wait, if you don’t see the content you want, take action.
Sad that Scale Auto magazine and forum are gone. Model Cars Magazine forum is still very active. I believe that a new associate editor named Larry Greenberg is now on board to try and help get their ?magazine up and running again. In view of Scale Auto’s demise for commercial reasons I guess, it will be interesting to see if MCM makes it back into print on a regular basis. As far as I know Model Car Builder is still going. Truck Model World a UK magazine exists along with an American Truck mag I believe.
What does that leave us auto modellers. FSM, Airfix ScaleModelworld and Tamiya International as general modelling magazines carrying auto subjects along with all the other content.
There are already some of SAM’s members posting in the Auto section here now. This is good for this forum as it will become even more active. I managed to get the DVD with the 35 yrs of issues just before they shut down the site. It will be nice to have those builders over here, as I don’t like to hop around multiple sites for threads. If I can’t find it here I usually go “squirrel” and move on to other activities.
BK
Any site is what the members make of it. If a bunch of car modelers started posting in the auto forum, general modeling forum, etc. then the site would start leaning in that direction.
To be honest, in the armor forum genres, this site is often thought of as a junior varsity site compared to sites that focus solely on armor modeling. Although there are plenty of high level armor modelers here.
Most of the members here build more than one genre. I myself build mainly armor and sci-fi, but also build cars and planes.
Amen, Rob!
That’s why I like this forum, even if it isn’t as lively as it was years ago. It’s a casual atmosphere for a casual builder, without a bunch of armchair modelers pointing out if there are too many or too few bolts on a roadwheel. Sure the specialty sites are useful, but I don’t need the agra.
I agree, but sometimes this site goes too far in the opposite direction. Someone puts the tracks on backwards and someone points it out for “next time”, and is then chided for pointing out the error and to just have fun.
I agree. If one is gonna post photos of their builds on here, they have to expect and accept critiques of basic construction items such as following the instructions regarding track direction. Isn’t that where the “fine” in Fine Scale Modeling starts?
I don’t think we’ve ever gotten as bad here as it can get on Hyperscale.
Baron,
There are worse sites. That’s why I only ever lurk. I think the difference here is we try to be helpful, not get into a sausage size contest.
So all that stuff is just gone? It’s a shame that it wasn’t archived and put as a read only category under autos here.
I 100% agree that we should have access to old threads here.
BK