Who are building kits in this forum...?

General Discussion General Modeling Discussion
1

I pretty much hang out in the Aircraft and Group Build forum on this site, mostly, as I build primarily aircraft, after years of building armor. I love to view the work and tap into the vast knowledge base here. Over the past few months, I noticed a fewer and fewer builds with pics on the aircraft site and decided to take a look at other subjects and noticed a huge difference. Armor, for instance had three times the amount of work illustrated over the Aircraft site, based on my sampling. That led me to do an unscientific analysis of all the major subjects to see what I would find. I chose to only include the Aircraft, Armor, Auto, and Airliner/Civil Aircraft sites in my final stats only because they were most comparable. The other subjects either didn’t have the volume as the others. So, pleeeeeeease to not be offended if I did not include your favorite subject. There is the same level of passion in all subjects.

My sampling included looking at the first three pages (60 threads) of each subject and reviewing each thread to see if a model was either WIP or completed with corresponding pics. This review was performed over a 5-minute span to capture a particular snapshot in time, so it is by no means definitive, but still speaks to it overall.

What I discovered was the following:

Aircraft - 15% had threads with either WIP or completed kits

Armor - 46%

Auto - 61%

Airliners -21%

So, what can one glean from this:

Probably absolutely nothing, as this was a total stupid piece of analysis with unscientific data, but I thought it was fun anyway…

We can all agree that I had way too much time on my hands, today, and time would be better spent in the Man Cave building kits!!!

2

[Y]I love your post and want to marry it…nice work with the nouns and pronouns…not too wordy and concise…interesting use of structure; a few run-ons but that’s comma-counting…nice writing here…[Y]

3

Perhaps I should have proofread it before I sent it out… I am spoiled with a team of editors at work…goes to show I need them. [proplr]

4

I think including particular subject type from the GB area to their respective forum would alter those stats. I know on the Korean War GB I am running has a very high ratio of aircraft to armor.

5

I find it difficult to add my pictures to the site. Not sure if im doing something wrong or what, but you have to upload your pics to a picture managing website like flickr or one of those then link the photo, to me this is a pain.

6

Maybe[;)] nice idea .Ron

7

Agreed…I did notice that there is a large number of aircraft-related GBs and failed to mention it.

8

I agree with Manstein… great post Hutch, well written too.

I like your analysis as well. I would doubt many would take the time to surf the different arenas and come up with the estimated percentages (myself included). I do like to visit other subject posts occasionally, but my first choice has always been armor / ground items.

Thanks for the good read, and, just for the heck of it, here are a few pics of an old Matchbox JU 188 I finished a week ago or so. I wanted a quick, simple build for a change. The only thing I added were a pitot tube and two underbelly antenna.

This was a test of patience, the kit is a real POS with maybe 50 pieces total. I figured, give it a half decent paint job and see what happens (it’s an ok “3-footer” - - from 3 feet away it doen’t look too bad)

9

PS

As usual, on my “after the fact” proofread, I now find errors… oh well

10

Interesting…two points I’d contribute real fast…

1 - As mentioned, lots of a/c heavy group builds. And so probably less independent WIPs as a result.

2 - There seem to be a lot of either “kit” discussion or technical/history discussions going on in the aircraft section. My P-47 flaps post before it degenerated, for example.

I’d be interested to see, of all the WIP threads active in the last, say, three months, what percentage are a/c vs. armor vs. autos, etc.

11

Reminds me of the thread I started ‘average age & life lessons from modeling’

I kept the thread going until i had over 100 replies, all were averaged to the second decimal place only to find out at the end of the thread the first reply (milairjunkie) guessed 40 years old, which was the average age!

Far as lack of WIP’s in some threads it may be the threads are not group builds or they feel the WIP’s are taking more time away from building without enough interest once posted to make it worth while.

12

I’m building a kit.[*-)]

I build models.[:^)]

Like mentioned already, I won’t do a wip thread because it’s already being done in a GB thread.

13

Ditto.

Though once I wrap these two and break out the big Eduard 109, I may well do that one as a WIP…I had a lot of fun WIPing the Dauntless awhile back.

14

I build. I just don’t do WIP. I have joined a couple group builds so naturally have to do some WIP for them. I was doing pretty good till I went to school in August but still manage to get at least a little time at the bench or booth almost everyday. Takes a lot of time to snap pics, edit, upload, link to them and post what you’ve been doing. I appreciate the folks that do it. Maybe I’m just a little too solitary. [H]

Tony

15

As a modelr of all thing military, rather than just one genre or the other, I see this as well: Part of the issue with Armor vs Aircraft is that, unlike aircraft kits, armor kits by their very nature tend to build up very quickly, in a just a few hours, whereas aircraft can take quite a bit longer due to the amount of interior detail work being substantially higher than armor on average…

With the open cockpits, pulled-back canopies, and/or plexiglass noses/turrets, vs a couple open hatches with no interior lighting, aircraft are more complicated… The amount of post-assembly detailing in the Armor world is generally in the external stowage/painting aspect…

Aircraft, generally speaking, also have much more complicated paint-schemes. In an average, four-hour work session, I can knock a tank out to about 80% complete… After four hours with an aircraft, I’m at about 80% with just the cockpit or engine…

I also tend to get much more involved in researchng and detailing aircraft models than I do armor kits, simply because aircraft interiors are more interesting to me, vs tanks and AFVs, as they’re “too much like work” in that I lived in them in the real world, vs only “being around” some aircraft, and up close and personal to even fewer, and actually flown in fewer still…

Also, being a diorama builder, if I’m working on an armor diorama say, once I complete the tank to the point where it’s time to go on the diorama for attachment and final assembly, the WIP goes there as well, and probably seems unfinished to the Armor Forum members… Same-same for aircraft…

That’s when the other sub-assemblies of diorama construction start,e.i: base, terrain, structures, figure-selction and modifications, etc…

16

The simplest explanation for the lack of new builds surfacing is that the bulk of the membership (my self included, just to be fair) has been spending the bulk of it’s time on the ‘Odds and Ends’ forum, blathering away about one non-modeling subject after another.

That being said, I am currently in the process of building my first Civil aircraft, a Monogram Tri-Pacer in 1/32, the old “Blue Box” one with the guy taking a picture of the hunter posing over his dead mountain lion.

17

WELL WELL WELL interesting post hey you shot 5 holes in a divit ACESES5 ABOUT DONE TRUMPTER 1/35 39(H) 10.5 cm GESCHUTZWAGEN

18

Simplest, perhaps… Accurate? Probably not…

Working on several even now, just with breaks between coats/colors of paint… A 1/48 Fujimi Val is about to get a coat of Dullcoat in few more minutes…

Then it’s on to the fading, chipping, and pastels…

19

Funny how you characterize the armor vs aircraft paradigms. With me the opposite is true. I found that my armor builds take much longer than my aircraft builds. Not sure why. Must be my practices/techniques as I always probably spend way too much time on sexy camo patterns (see below) or experiment too much with full interior (see below)…burned myself out. I found that the aircraft details to be more appealing…maybe it was just a change of venue. Anyway, interesting perspectives.

20

After chuckw’s incredible Bf110 build this year, it’s intimidating to think about posting WIP’s of my stuff. It’s not just the detailing, but his combo of education and entertainment sets the bar pretty high!

Now if we could all build our own Fritzi’s and Hannah’s to hang out on the bench…[;)]