Најважније вести

Tony May
Nice, going old school with this one, Mr. Grinter or are you planning to challenge yourself to bring this up to Eduard/modern KP/Tamiya levels? (I might be the only one delusional enough to think that I might be able to though. lol)

Brian Grinter
I'm actually just sticking my stash in here, way too many kits
Bought these years ago with the idea of a Battle of Britain diorama

Tony May
Oh, I see, just finally getting everything documented then. You should still do that BoB diorama! I have a few dioramas I'd like to do as well, but I don't have any for the BoB or anything else specific to a time frame where there would be several of the same type of aircraft there. My primary interest is a wide variety of aircraft of different variants & from conflicts spanning from 1930-1980. I also want to build more technical vehicles, Triple-A, bits of details & to add figures around the models on the shelves to busy them up a bit.

I did a complete inventory in the closing months of 2022 after having a couple of TIAs in July that year. (Minor, self-resolving, strokes.) There were kits there I had completely forgotten about & there were kits I was sure I had but they couldn't be found anywhere. Most of the kits were bagged & stored in large Rubbermaid totes so some of those kits I hadn't seen in over a decade.

As I went through them I finally properly divided them between my adult son & I. He was well on his way to becoming an even more prolific builder than his father, grandfather or great-grandfather before him. He wasn't picky about the kits he would build either as where I was becoming increasingly focused on detail & accuracy so I was happy to pass on kits I was steadily replacing. He wound up with more than 250 model aircraft, he soon passed the 300 mark though, plus he's built up a nice little section of 1/35 armor. Not long after I finished doing inventory C19 left my son legally blind though.

He hasn't touched a kit since then & although he's already clarified that he's never going to try a vac kit, build anymore biplanes or anything from WW1, that he hasn't given up on model building. Even still his omissions account for something like 1/6 of his stash of 1/72 scale models. I'm honestly unsure if his visual acuity will permit him to build anything in 1/72 since it's not just vision loss but severe retinal damage on both sides that resembles severe macular degeneration. (Two minor examples; He cannot read large print books & he has to use a 41" TV as his computer monitor.)

Speaking realistically I think that building older 1/48 aircraft models & older 1/35 tank models are his best bet for being able to continue modeling. They have fewer parts & the parts aren't so small or fiddly. He has a small handful of 1/48 aircraft models already & quite a few older 1/35 armor kits. However, as I said, the vast majority are 1/72 & some of his tanks/AFVs are quite recent releases.

I haven't asked him to join me in a build session since he lost his vision because I'm pretty sure I know what the outcome will be if he tries to tackle a 1/72 plane or a top of the line 1/35 tank; I'm just not eager to see the face he'll make at that time.

That said I guess if we do find he cannot hack 1/72 scale any longer or top notch 1/35 AFVs we can work on liquidating them in exchange for stuff that he'll definitely be interested in but will be easier to build?

Brian Grinter
yeah - I was starting to find I was getting doubles unintentional and also forgetting what I'd bought, e.g. accessories for kits.

The BoB diorama morphed into just trying to build representative aircraft of those operated by both sides in the battle.

Sorry to to hear about your son, I find it hard enough with aging eyes so must be devastating. Hope your plans come off

Tony May
I can relate to forgetting about what I had or didn't have so well that it almost hurts. Those TIAs did a number on my memory. I had some cognitive & memory tests done on Monday morning into the afternoon. I was shocked at how transient my memory actually has become...

Yeah, your choice to switch the diorama into building a representative aircraft from each side is more in line with what I've always done. The only difference is that I choose to have representative aircraft from conflicts that took place from 1930 to 1980. My favorite period is 1935 to 1945.

I've always thought that the September 1939 start to WW2 was a pretty stinky Eurocentric viewpoint. The Japanese Invasion of Manchuria from 1931 to 1932 laid the groundwork for Japan to have the resources to declare war ten years later against both the United States, the British Empire & the Dutch East Indies at the same time. Even before that it laid the foundation for the start of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War which played out with strange bedfellows cooperating with one side or the other.

The Chaco War of 1932-1935 tied together many strings between the Great War, the Russian Civil War & the war that was to come. While there isn't a huge story to tell in the air conflict it made for strange bedfellows on either side. Perhaps most importantly was how the Italians developed & experimented with their tactics via training Paraguay's soldiers. This would effect Italy's military in a detrimental fashion from then until the fall of Mussolini as the successes they experienced early made them reluctant to reexamine their tactics, logistics & their technological development largely stagnated.

The 2nd Italo-Abyssinian War began in 1935 & ended in 1937, during which the British, French, Germans & even the Japanese played a role in attempting to position themselves with one side or the other.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 can be thought of as a crucible in which new technologies, tactics & equipment were fielded. Most of the best pilots of the Luftwaffe & Regia Aeronautica cut their teeth over Spain. While not AS organized the International Brigades on the Republican side of things reads like a who's who of which would later become the allies. (Apart from political dissidents from nations on the other side which joined the Republican cause.) This also played a role in developing AFVs for the war that was to come in Europe. The Pz.Kpfw.I provided to the Nationalists could do nothing against the T-26s which the Soviet Union had provided to the Republicans & yet they found themselves facing one another on the same battlefields doing essentially the same job. This resulted in many developments in armor & armored warfare doctrine.

For the period of 1930 to 1945 I will build everything from training aircraft, transport aircraft, army co-op aircraft, reconnaissance aircraft, fighters, bombers, all their lovely sub types & variants.

After the end of WW2 though I drop transport aircraft from my list of aircraft I'll build. I recognize their crucial importance but they progressively get larger as time moves on & I just can't justify either the expense or consumption of space.

I'll still keep up with trainers that helped train pilots that would later go to war, as well as active duty army co-op & combat aircraft that saw action in pretty much any major conflict between 1946 to 1980.

Admittedly though my coverage of the aircraft that were involved is nowhere near as thorough as it is for the years preceding this period. For example I could build a dozens of MiG-15s, MiG-17s & MiG-21s but still likely have more to build more considering how many nations they served with as well as how widespread combat action took place while using them. Another note of difference in my planned projects is that plus sized combat aircraft like the AC-130, AC-123, B-52D, etc. are just too big! As such I really want to build them with a reduced degree of focus on detail in 1/144 scale while still acknowledging their importance by including them in my display case.

My eyes too are aging though perhaps not to the degree of most. Until my mid-30s I had eyesight superior to 20/20 vision. No sooner had I learned numbers & how to sound out words I was describing the color schemes, sounding out the names of airlines & reading off the tail numbers of airliners which my late father could only see as some type of aircraft at the end of a contrail. At the age of 5 I remember being extremely surprised to learn that other people couldn't see stars during the daytime. Due to this excessively sharp vision I adamantly refused to eat bakery items that had been marked down or were given away from a food shelf. There are reasons you don't want your vision to be THAT sharp, some things you're better off not knowing/seeing.

In my mid-30s I thought my vision was finally starting to fall into decline because I had trouble focusing on reading, I couldn't make out each & every leaf on the tree at 50 yards as where I once was able to see their major "veins" at least. I finally got tested after developing Type 2 diabetes & learned that my vision HAD fallen ... to 20/20 vision. However they could make lenses to make my vision a little sharper & to magnify what I was reading. That restored some of my vision but it's not anywhere near where it used to be; Whether that be for good or ill. I'm overdue for my latest vision test though.

My vision issues aside, I am hoping my son WILL be able to handle his 1/72 kits & still build his armor. However I just don't have confidence in his vision being sharp enough for it. If it isn't, I too hope plans will play out to where he can still build. Thank you for those well wishes.