Modelling Pet Peeves

Oct 22, 2004 114 Replies

I've been looking online recently at some model show pics (and model club websites as well) online, and I've been seeing plenty of items that show my modeling pet peeve. Cockpit Canopy Frames that are just painted the "outside" color (vice having two coats of paint, the inside color THEN the outside color). Don't know why but this drives me to distraction (I know, I need to get a life). Anyone else have any "favorites?"



Don McIntyre Clarksville, TN


Yeah! My biggest pet peeve is they all look better than my models!

Bob

D> I've been looking online recently at some model show pics (and model

Would this be a hairy or shaved peeve?How do you get fur out of your teeth?;) But seriously folks...mine is pre-shading that makes a plane look like a checkerboard.

1) Wrong/ficticious ordnance load outs.

2) Live ordnance loaded on aircraft with all of the maintenance panels opened up.

3) Inert ords loaded "for color" on an aircraft which is suppoed to be on "combat alert".

4) Flat tires. (I REALLY hate this one...especially on jets)

aircraft with 50 mission markngs that look like they were just built. luft 46 overdone girls that won't...oops.

here's another.Fictitious squadron markings/codes/pilot names on an otherwise accurate paint job,on an airplane which is so well documented you could probably find out if the assembly line worker washed his hands after going to the bathroom before turning the last screw.And in which the modeler admits this then said he just didn't feel like putting the right codes on.I mean...why bother?It's not the same as a fantasy scheme,which I could at least understand.

Poor fit of parts.

I don't mind surface detail that isn't right as I can sand, fill and rescribe, but when the parts just won't fit I get po'd.

Limited run kits quite often have this problem due to poor engineering, but some of the big companes occasionally do it. Mach 2 has to be among the worst.

Tom

be invisible. At the size of normal photo etch, these railings would be 8 or 10 feet in diameter. Jerry 47

>

Mat finish in place of gloss or semi-gloss - and visa versa.

Jack G.

Contest/exhibition "officials"...who carry around dental mirrors, flashlights, and/or paint chips.

Not my cup of tea either, but when I found the re-issued AMT Batwings at Hobby Lobby at the first of the year, I was really tempted to pick up one and give it either the Luft '46 treatment or my good guy version you could call USAF '45.

Just remember: B-52s in olive drab and red-white rudder stripes -- win every single time. ;-)

WmB

To reply, get the HECK out of there snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net

I've built two of the German paper projects--did one in Cuban markings and the other in Israeli.

Mark Schynert

I don't consider that to be *too* bad. Antenna wires on aircraft would be pretty much invisible in smaller scales as well. But, like painting eye detail on figures, it all falls under the "perceived reality versus actual reality" argument. Such detail is "assumed" to be there, and the viewer expects to see it. Model building is as much an "art form" as it is an "engineering skill".

Every 2-3 years I try using some photo-etch on a model- then I remember why I haven't done it for 2-3 years. Kim M

One of my pet peeves is people dissing others' models because they don't conform to *their* particular personal standards. See my sig....

Concur. I think there are going to be a lot of particularly over-weathered Revell U-boats surfacing in the future...

And I'd re-engineer the way Trumpeter did the working oleos on the gear for the big Su-27...in fact, I may be able to do it myself...

I guess mine would have to be what truly feels like the growing expectation of others that if a detail set for kit "X" is available, it damn well better be used, or else you just haven't put any effort into your project, and it's just not good enough. We get so caught up in trying to perform to someone elses expectations hoping for acceptance that many projects that could be finished and on the shelf sit in the box partially done waiting for that last bit of fluff to make it "just right". Unfortunately, there is no "last" bit of fluff. Some new widget a half degree more accurate comes down the pipe to supercede what you just bought and installed, or that your paint job that you spent weeks/months researching is half a shade off, thus negating any idea that the project is "just right".

When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. --Leonardo Da Vinci EAA # 729686 delete the word spam from email addy

Twenty-something-year olds at model contests who loudly proclaim, "THAT'S NOT the way that airplane looked in (WWI, WWII Korea, Vietnam, fill in the blank for any war before they were born)."

The statement is usually made in front of a pilot who flew the particular aircraft in the (fill in the blank) War.

Art

Welllll, I think the Triebflügel is actually an exception--it's really a

1:1 Nazi commemorative martini stirrer.

Mark Schynert

I like the "(Insert subject here) never looked like that!"......"Funny, sure as hell looks like it did according to these official photos from the Archives." Lots of funny stuff like that related to ships.

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