Basta

I assume that you have served in the German armed forces, as was obligatory for all German adolescents until sometime in the late 1980s, and thus have been - for lack of a better word - indoctrinated on certain levels, since you say that you have no problem with "truncated" liberties, having already experienced them while being enlisted and thus totally taken care of as well as paid for your time of service. I live in a major metropole in an apartment, and have always worked independently, and under the current restrictions millions of people like me are forced into a state of martial law that strips us of the most basic rights. Freedom of movement, of congress, of association. Heck, of walking the street after 6 pm, as if covid becomes more lethal in the late afternoon. I have a much more jaundiced view of government than you do, and with reason; up until this crisis, our government has for years been attempting to starve out its own health services with the endgame to privatize them, leading to numerous strikes and protests. This same government now laments that its hospitals are overburdened and uses this to justify its draconian policies.

Okay, I tried to avoid this thread as long as possible, but I'm pretty taken aback by the general complacency I've read. In the country where I "live" - I put live in quotes because life as I knew it has been reduced to a cruel shadow of the world that was - we are under curfew and no one can currently leave their home after 6pm, and our third round of martial law - again to last at least 6 weeks - will be implemented next week. Martial law is exactly what it is; you cannot leave home, even to go to the corner grocer, without your ID and a sworn and time-stamped document of your intentions. You can do so for one hour per day. You can be arrested for not wearing a mask on the street. Restaurants, cafés, bars and cultural activities are closed and have been for most of the year; travel outside the EU is banned and inside you must have a certificate that you are covid negative to travel anywhere else. This is a country that professes "liberty," but it has become a cruel joke. A good friend's father is in his 90s and was drafted into the Hitler Jungend at age 16; he survived the end of the war and later became an international nuclear engineer. He said that even at the worst of the war one could go anywhere one wanted with no fear of interrogation. He is amazed by what is happening now. I'll leave it at that.

First it was the WNW Gotha; I could manage to justify the size of it but not the - I thought at the time - outrageous resale price. Then the Trumpeter Su27, which was the opposite. Currently it's the 1/350 Kaga with all the PE fixins for which I can justify neither. Nor the insane time sinkhole. It's certainly the one that I'll finally get.

Most excellent all around. We're going to have to call you the Moth Man from here on in.

I sense a certain megalomaniacal giganticism taking over at HPH; aren't they also the ones who are putting out that German WW2 heavy lift freighter that doubles as a coffee table?

Since this momentous offering will be announced tomorrow I feel compelled to add my 2 cents and predict a really awesome new car or cycle or tank, or a really awesome new RC car or cycle or tank.

Just picked this up today, first plastic to appear since the incredible 1/48 GWH Su27. And 20% off; how could I say no? Recently I've got a thing for 1/350 pre-Dreadnought BBs and IJN CVs; currently stalking a reasonably priced Kaga, not easy let me tell you. The Tsesarevitch was a French-built Russian BB, with a tumblehome hull, which looks exactly like a French baroque bombe chest -- what a coincidence. It was sorely tried by the Japanese and of course the worst abuse came from its owners, but it managed not to sink, only to be scrapped after the revolution. Lovely model, finely detailed, with all the PE included by Trumpeter, who truth be told seem to set their A team to making ships.

New tools from them are just as rare as from Tamiya if not more so. But Tamiya is a cut above and so gets all the pining after.

Well yes and no. ZM is clearly the ultimate extreme of the hatches-open, Swiss-army-knife philosophy of modeling, where it looks like the kit, however masterfully detailed, still needs final assembly. But average Joe modelers have not been clamoring for it; the semi-exploded look arose from competition modeling, to impress judges with super detailing. Tamiya first picked up on it, and now ZM, who cultivates a certain personal eccentricity for marketing, uses this to set his co. apart from the pack and he's gone down this route rather fanatically. Personally I'm not a fan. I like my plane to look ready to fly, not under major overhaul or a lab anatomy model, and often kits that do open panels don't do them well if you want them closed, the Revell 262's gun bays being a perfect example of probably shouldn't have given the iconic lines of the subject. But to each his own. Personally I'd like a ZM Horton but can't justify the steep price for how I'd build it, ignoring 95% of the parts. It's basically a clamshell with bits but the kit is a hi-tech tinker toy.

My grandfather came to the US from Poland as a small child with my maternal great grandparents at the turn of the twentieth century. He enlisted in the Polish cavalry in the Great War and won the equivalent of the CMoH for outstanding valor. He survived the war and returned and married and had a family and was a professional violinist. He never spoke of the war to them other than to say that he had served. When he died, my grandmother discovered his medals and the citation in his papers; needless to say they were all rather stunned by the revelation.

Thanks but of course I knew that. I was just pointing out in a not-so-subtle way that this is in no way a "poll" but just another wish-list thread, and a misleadingly titled one at that.

Simple question; is anyone actually tallying the replies to this "poll"?

UPS in Europe is awful and unreliable and should be avoided at all costs. Rates are high for all shipping I find, thanks to a number of countries having privatized their postal systems under cover of the EU and then they are free to ratchet up their rates viciously.

Su27, Su27 and Su27... and then the Chaika and the Su33. Did I mention the Su27?

Thanks for the link, the model is very good but the tarmac is just fantastic.