Rick Griewski

I am going to post my Marder IIIH conversion here (soon) for your reasons. Bazillions of rivets, carriage bolts with and without washers and nuts.  Heaven help me if I get them mixed up or worse too few or not enough.  There is much variety across the produced machines.
 
I have a seriously wonderful tank builders tribe in my local club.  They have picked out the colors, advised on soft or hard camouflage patterns and weathering.

I am going to post my Marder IIIH conversion here (soon) for your reasons. Bazillions of rivets, carriage bolts with and without washers and nuts.  Heaven help me if I get them mixed up or worse too few or not enough.  There is much variety across the produced machines.
 
I have a seriously wonderful tank builders tribe in my local club.  They have picked out the colors, advised on soft or hard camouflage patterns and weathering.

Easy now...  
 
Update coming soon...
 
Stefan 

Good call on the Airscale and other aftermarket products to spice up the IP Ray. That'll totally transform the look.
 
On the other two areas ripe for improvement, how much will actually be seen when the model is sat in your display case? That engine looks like it sits a long way back inside the snout of the beast and viewing reference photos, the main gear bays are all dark and shadowed by the wings. 
It could be you could save yourself a little mojo sapping super detailling unless you enjoy adding bits and bobs of course 
 
I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Cheers.

Going through the kit, I saw three areas in need of attention:

 
The main gear bays, the engine intake, and the instrument panel. Here is a better pic of the IP:

 
The detail is pretty faint. I doubt I could make it look good trying to paint it. I will remove most of the detail and add Aeroscale decals and whatever PE bezels best fit. I have collected them for years:

 
The engine intake is lacking details such as various boxes, piping, etc. I will add those, shouldn't be a problem.
As for the wheel wells, they are too shallow and no piping. I will add the hydraulics, but I am not going through the pain of deepening them. Too much work, plus that would cause problems with bottom of cockpit/exhaust pipe fit. As it is, I am going to have to do some carving and slicing to make them fit.

Thank y'all!
 

It just occurred to me that renaming this topic might give Bob some more mileage.  So renamed it is....

Under Paul's system, I'd fall into a 2 with aspirations to a 3. While I don't consider myself an Artist, I can see there is artistry, even in model tanks, and the planes the people build here are art. I guess I lean more toward artists than realists and do not feel constrained to make my models look like a particular tank or airplane in most cases. I've used Generic Serials on every Sherman so far.
 
What's interesting is that you can almost break down the car world in the same way.
1. Guys who wash and maintain their car, change the oil, and basic stuff.
2. Guys who do brake jobs and can fix the easy stuff, sensors, etc.
3. Guys the clutch is no problem; can deal with most mechanical stuff, cam swaps, and carb swaps. Engine swaps, rebuilding engines etc.
4. Custom fuel injection system, custom suspension, make own frames, rebuild rear ends and transmissions. Cages, custom turbo or supercharger setups
 
You even have the subcategories.
Stock car guys: They work to achieve factory boring status, right down to the chalk marks and factory labels the dealerships normally remove!
Hotrodders: They want to go fast, fast in a straight line, fast around corners, fast up mountains, fast through deserts, just fast!
 

 

Thanks for the clarification Paul. I tend to put folks who scratchbuild entire models in a category all their own.
I guess we all have been in the first 4 categories at some time or another. My relatively recent 'pragmatic'
approach is the result of one fact that has finally sunk in to my thick skull, ... too many models, not enough time.

Why do I have the strange feeling you are depicting me ...? 

*If* I know the subject reasonably well it has to look right shape-wise - at least to my personal eyes.
 
Actually, if I'm honest, it's the research and challenge of 'fixing' things I find that probably gives me the most satisfaction in modelling...
 
Oh, and I aspire to #5 on that list: which is probably why I can never, actually, finish anything!!
 
Iain

There are so many wonderful posts on this thread already! I’ll try to contribute a little something worthwhile.
 
Salvador Dali once famously said “Don’t worry about perfection, you’ll never reach it” and the same could be said for ‘accuracy’ because even if one is building an exact 1:1 replica of the real thing, some compromises will be inevitable. As we get smaller in scale the compromises we all have to make get ever bigger. But whatever compromises we make: what we do should always be enjoyable or else why are we doing it?
 
There is a continuum or hierarchy of model making which is usually dictated by experience (and before anyone gets upset there is nothing wrong with being in any of these groups):
1. Those who are working to assemble a kit they bought without a major mess-up and get it painted and decalled according to the manufacturer’s instructions. 
2. Those who are working to assemble a kit and have it painted and decalled according to some of their secondary source research. 
3. Those who work to build a kit and modify it somewhat according to their primary and secondary source research. This is to further approach a more accurate representation of the overall shape and details of a chosen aircraft type. They then have it painted, decalled and weathered according to their research.
4. Those who are willing and able to wholesale modify a kit to get a particular kit to model a particular airframe at a particular time and who will do a great deal of  primary and secondary source research to enable them to paint, decal and weather their chosen subject.
5.  Scratch builders who do extensive, independent primary source research, who experiment with many methods and materials in creating a one-off and who can create components in a variety of media and can paint, decal, weather their subject in an entirely controlled manner to achieve the result they want.
 
Every one of these groups is represented here. The great thing about LSP is that each group tends to help the others: Group 1 to remind the other four to ‘Just put a model together and have fun like you did when you were a kid!’ Group 4 to help people in groups 1,2 and 3 how they overcame problems when they were less experienced. Group 5 to show to everyone the art of the possible. I won’t list all possible combinations but you get the picture.
 
There are two schools that work within those groups (and the Venn diagram that represents these two groups has a healthy overlap).
A. ‘Realists’: Fidelity to the real original is all: This group would be likely to match colours to chip samples using RLM or Federal Standards. Everyone from group 2 on through 5 could belong here. Modellers like Paul Budzik tend to reside in this space.
B. ‘Artists’: Creating the right impression is all. This group would be likely to simply choose colours from a palette because they simulated particular light conditions or took account of scale or wanted to create an impression of a deeper cockpit opening. The ‘Spanish School’ tend to reside in this group.
 
I mostly belong in groups 1 and 2 and occasionally I venture into 3. Like @mozart I try to get it ‘as accurate as I can’ and like @Stokey Pete I try to have fun while I do that. I get my ambition from @airscale (wow) and sense of perspective and new subjects to research from @Christa (thank you buddy), my hope that I too can do more challenging work from @tomprobert , collaboration from @europapete and awareness of what the industry does and how to correct what they don’t do well from @thierry laurent. And I thank the moderators who keep here the best modelling site on the planet.
 
Are my models ‘accurate’? Nope. But each is as well made as I can do it at the time and I enjoy every minute of it. That is not only due to the building and painting process itself but also down to the great community here. Thank you all.
 
Kind regards,
Paul.

Not a single one of my models can be called accurate. I started out sweating on the little inaccuracies, and found I just didn’t enjoy the hobby. Added to that, I junked models because I deemed them not accurate enough. I was constantly making comparisons between my own, and some of the modelling superstars we have here. That caused a complete lack of enjoyment.  
I soon switched to a system of overlooking shape and proportion inaccuracies. If it looks like what I’m trying to build, that will do for me. 

4 x HKM B-25's
2 x HKM B-17's
2 x HKM A-20's.
4x Hasegawa P-40's
2 x Tamiya P-51D/K
2x Tamiya F-4U Corsairs.
2 x HB P-61's.

Actually I never made a full inventory of all the kits I have purchased for the last 40 years. I think I would be really afraid if I got the full picture...

That’s just ridiculous!! 

Not that sure the Beaufighter is too big for them as they released the Mosquito. However, was the Mossie a good seller? That may be the most important point to go on releasing 1/24 twin engine planes.

How about a Hawker Fury like my 1/24 build? 
 

do yourself a favor and fit the wing to the fuselage with the lower airintake at the same time to push it forward 

That's what I mean Paul, VR goggles would have me hooked, and yeah, the rest of your description has been
the case with me too. One more mission, next thing you know the sunlight is showing thru the curtains.
 
                      WHAT ??? 

 

Concord
F-35
Avro Anson
 
 

— All the available I-16 types by ICM and others (13)
— P-51B and D plus Alison variants (9)
— Bf-109 all variants A to K by various manufacturers including resin and kits plus conversions (29)
— Albatross WNW, Roden (8)
— Ju-88 and conversions 9 variants

I looks like Bf-109E is the maximum for one kit at 9
 
 
 

P-51
P-51
P-51

Looked over the stash. The winner of the "Why do I have so many of these?" Award for 2024 turns out to be five Swallow/Tomy/Doyusha A6M2's. 

The largest number of 1/32 and 1/24 kits by subject matter I have:
 
Fw 190s & Ta 152s - 39 stash, + 7 built and 1 underway. 
Bf 109s - 27 stash, + 6 built and 1 underway. 
 
Hundreds of other subjects as well, but none come close to the numbers of '190s and '109s. 
 
And I will build them all.
 
D