A burnout's return to the fold, needs your help

[LSP_Mike]

That which we strive for is intrinsically more valuable.

[MikeC]

I know how you feel.  I have done some writing for one of the British modelling mags, and also a good number of book reviews.  The book reviews are great, 200-300 words per review, so no great burden, and as I'm very much a bookworm it should be heaven.  Yet I'm sitting here typing this and looking at a book on the Hind (helicopter, not 1930s Hart derivative) that's been next to do for a good couple of months or more.  "Writer's block" seems quite inadequate to describe it!

 

As for articles, the particular mag I write for does not generally have deadlines, but even so the feeling of pressure is there.  There are some positives: it's great to see your work in print, and especially great to see that your model has "got the cover".  I've made and enjoyed one or two models I wouldn't have considered buying (1:72 Gnat for example); but again I have that writers block!!  I'm doing something for one of the online mags atm.  I finished the model ages ago, thoroughly enjoyed it, and consider it one of my better efforts; but I've yet to do more than start writing  my notes up and taking the photos of the completed model. 

 

I don't know what the answer is.  I've tried small, simple kits as an OOB build, and unless I keep a firm lid on it, the AMS starts kicking in.  But from past experience, I do know this: it will pass.  Perhaps part of it is that the downside of writing and being paid is simply that it ceases to be a hobby and becomes "work".  But you are not alone.

[Uncle Toby]

When I began editing and writing for the modelling media, I had been a mainstream print journalist for decades. The rules and ethical standards we follow in print journalism are rigid and were second nature to me.

So I was stunned (babe in the woods I was) to find that it was common practice for model magazines to put Major Kit Maker's latest release on the cover not because it was necessarily a great kit, but because a deal had been cut with the advertising side. I hate quid pro quo journalism with a vengeance and editors soon learned to leave out of that kind of fraud. It deceives  everyone who buys a kit based on what they believe to be the integrity of a magazine or web site's recommendation, and as consumers we should refuse to tolerate it.

Another, stranger but slightly less pernicious practice is how certain magazines manage to scoop the competition by getting their built up review in print just days after the kit hits the street. They build a plastic Potemkin Village, which is to say they leave out all the parts that can't be seen in photos. Back in the late 1980s, I saw a review of Bill Koster's magnificent mixed media 1/48 A-20 Havoc that was reviewed in a major US magazine almost the week the kit dropped. Of course, the major outlets get advace pops, but this was crazy. The kit had a hundred vac-form parts alone, and as many or more EACH in WM, resin and PE. (I'd gave a leg to find a copy of this kit. Mine was thrown out by a crazed ex-girlfriend.)

So how did Model Magazine X get those lovely photos of the built-up item? They photographed a painted and decaled shell, that's how.

Now, that kind of thing is quite rare. More often, there's an editor like me standing over the write/builder pleading, cajoling, threatening him to get the build done, shot and written so we can beat the competition by a month.

If you suspect the article you are reading sings the praises of this or that new model or accessory a bit too flatteringly, beware. Don't buy based on such "objective" reviews. After all, it's our money they're trying to pick from our pockets. Don't surrender it without a fight.

Addendum: Just as I posted my edit of this I was reminded of an imporant point in this discussion of relations between industry money and modelling media.

That is, most major magazines, if they are promoting products sold by a particular distributor (let's say, just for example, HobbyLink Japan) they will include HLJ's logo prominently on each page. That way, nobody's being fooled.

I've even written reviews in such sponsored sections that were critical of certain products being featured by the distributor. It was, IIRC, HobbyLink, a company I always found to be very consumer friendly, unlike others I could name They did not so much as grumble about it to the management. And by not complaining, they come out on the modeller's side. You can't buy that kind of PR.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Uncle Toby
Typos, clarity. Addendum.

[Out2gtcha]

What a bunch of well thought out and thoroughly useful advice and replies.

 

Toby,

You definitely have a writers flow and that seemingly always interesting lilt to your responses. Well thought out replies are always inherently more interesting to me personally.

 

I don't have any good answers either honestly, but do go through bouts of AMS and MoJo loss, as it seems every summer I get distracted by warm weather activities, and bench time slips, as well as skills built up.

I tend to try to rekindle a passion for a particular air frame and try to let that drive some modeling MoJo but it doesn't always work. 

Occasionally I'll even watch YouTube vids of Reno, or AirVentire in Oshkosh that can kick off the building ambitions.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forums BTW!

[Uncle Toby]

Thanks so much. I sit here in my tiny Brooklyn apartment (though I remain a Texan at heart, a liberal voter who's still pretty handy with my old 1911 Army Colt I've had since I was 13), and the three walls around my bed are literally stacked with kits, expensive reference books, and AM accessories. I recently threw out the first batch of abandoned half-built kits, along with their AM accessories (just those that could not be used elsewhere).

Lord that was painful.

Point is, most of us veteran modelers have ridiculous hoards of potential projects within arm's reach. So why do we so often feel we have nothing to do?

I hesitate to mention the following for fear of sounding like a pecker-matching blowhard, but it's relevant here:

I often mention in posts that I'm a long-time aviation journalist because it establishes a certain bonafides in certain arguments. One of...no, THE best perk of that has been getting to fly in the airplanes I once only fantasized about. It started at the then-named Confederate Air Force. I was a reporter in a nearby city in the Rio Grande Valley and was curator of their model collection for a time, as well as a colors and  markings researcher on restorations. So whenever a WW II warbird was going up for a check flight, I'd call dibs. Got a B-29 ride and a very cramped hop in a P-51D with a jump seat, among others.

Them I graduated to what became about 20 hours in various ANG and Reserve F-4s. Then Blue Angels No.7, F/A-18D, an F-15D out of Tyndall AFB during William Tell, then another museum gig where we only had flying jets, eight of them, including an F-104D in which I got three flights. And those are just the highlights.

Early on, I planned on doing a model of every one of these a/c. I began collecting the kits, markings, reference books, etc. Now, 30 years after first getting that notion, not one has been built. Still have the kits, the most recent I just located last week, but I have no excuse for not immortalizing the single greatest thrills of my life.

I've done a few presentation models for those pilots who flew me, but not one model for me.

I once used a borrowed civilian Fouga Magister for a photo ship (no ejection seats!), and that's the one I really want to build. Can't find a 1/48 Magister kit. Is there such a kit?

But I digress.

The whole point of this is that I am retired now (at least, I get SS pension, but writers tend to die at the keyboard). I live alone, and I'm bored, uh, witless. There's nothing in my way.

So can somebody tell me why I can't get off my ass and build a presentation model just for me?

[Uncle Toby]

Oh, got a sort of funny confession to make. Last night, after reading you guys' kind responses, I got this sudden urge to totally rebel against the AMS-stricken rivet counter in me. I was going to do something totally crazy and wrong. What, you ask, was that?

Well, I just made an impulse buy in my LHS of an overpriced Tamiya "white box" P-38H, which is nothing more than a marketing gimmick to squeeze more mileage out of the P-38G molds. The two types were externally all hut identical. Hell, Tamiya didn't even change the decal sheets.

So in my crazed state of mind, I decided I was going to build my 38H, paint it in a NMF no P-38H ever wore, and mark the model with a Bombshell Decals sheet I've been dying to use for years. The sheet is gorgeous, for a Lightning called San Antonio Rose. Which was a P-38L. Insane, right?

I went out for a half hour to get some zip kicker. When I looked down at the kit box with that inappropriate sheet lying on it, I caved. "What were you thinking, you lunatic?"

I'll always wonder if the earth would have fallen off its axis had I gone through with it.

[MikeC]

6 hours ago, Uncle Toby said:

Can't find a 1/48 Magister kit. Is there such a kit?

There are indeed, although not as many as it may seem, the Avant-Garde/AMK and Wingman kits are, I understand, reboxings of the Kinetic kit:  https://www.scalemates.com/search.php?fkSECTION[]=Kits&q=Fouga+Magister&fkTYPENAME[]="Full kits"&fkSCALENORMALISED[]="1:00048"

 

 

5 hours ago, Uncle Toby said:

I'll always wonder if the earth would have fallen off its axis had I gone through with it.

Been there,  never quite done that.  I have a 1:48 T-6G on the go, and the rear canopy in the kit is the wrong configuration for the subject I'm doing, as is the exhaust.  I tell myself that there is no such thing as the Model Police, if I just go ahead they won't confiscate my stash and ceremonially drum me out of IPMS, yet there it sits on the shelf of doom because I can't quite manage to get on with it.  Still, it's not as if I haven't got enough to keep me busy anyway.

[Out2gtcha]

There is definitely something cathartic about making a model exactly how and why you want. I've done a couple crazy what-ifs, and they were both very rewarding.

[Uncle Toby]

On 7/10/2021 at 1:24 AM, MikeC said:

There are indeed, although not as many as it may seem, the Avant-Garde/AMK and Wingman kits are, I understand, reboxings of the Kinetic kit:  https://www.scalemates.com/search.php?fkSECTION[]=Kits&q=Fouga+Magister&fkTYPENAME[]="Full kits"&fkSCALENORMALISED[]="1:00048"

 

 

Been there,  never quite done that.  I have a 1:48 T-6G on the go, and the rear canopy in the kit is the wrong configuration for the subject I'm doing, as is the exhaust.  I tell myself that there is no such thing as the Model Police, if I just go ahead they won't confiscate my stash and ceremonially drum me out of IPMS, yet there it sits on the shelf of doom because I can't quite manage to get on with it.  Still, it's not as if I haven't got enough to keep me busy anyway.

You reminded me that I started to do a Korean War T-6G FAC using an AM sheet I had with the ageless Monogram kit, which is IMO still excellent even at 50 years on the market. What aborted the thing was AMS. I went to my bookshelf and by the time I got through skimming my T-6 volume I was so befuddled with all the subvariants and mods to the plane by 1950, I gave up.

 

On 7/10/2021 at 1:24 AM, MikeC said:

There are indeed, although not as many as it may seem, the Avant-Garde/AMK and Wingman kits are, I understand, reboxings of the Kinetic kit:  https://www.scalemates.com/search.php?fkSECTION[]=Kits&q=Fouga+Magister&fkTYPENAME[]="Full kits"&fkSCALENORMALISED[]="1:00048"

 

 

Been there,  never quite done that.  I have a 1:48 T-6G on the go, and the rear canopy in the kit is the wrong configuration for the subject I'm doing, as is the exhaust.  I tell myself that there is no such thing as the Model Police, if I just go ahead they won't confiscate my stash and ceremonially drum me out of IPMS, yet there it sits on the shelf of doom because I can't quite manage to get on with it.  Still, it's not as if I haven't got enough to keep me busy anyway.

I'm only aware of the one from Bill Koster's fine line of handmade 1/48 kits. These were short run mixed media kits with vac-form airframes. One of the last he did was a Magister. While I still have a couple of these old gems, I never saw his Magister. The old Koster kits go for absurd prices on ebay. Thanks.

After I posted that I remembered two memorable things about my one Magister flight. That it was so nimble I was able to shoot down on a four-ship of F-4Ds by barrel rolling completely around the Phantoms, then shooting down theough the top of the canopy when we were inverted at the apex.

The other thing is that I had no clue the thing would not have ejection seats. It's a 2-seat military jet. Right. I was not happy at first. But we survived to fly again.

[quang]

On 7/10/2021 at 1:06 AM, Uncle Toby said:

I once used a borrowed civilian Fouga Magister for a photo ship (no ejection seats!), and that's the one I really want to build. Can't find a 1/48 Magister kit. Is there such a kit?

 

5 hours ago, Uncle Toby said:

'm only aware of the one from Bill Koster's fine line of handmade 1/48 kits. These were short run mixed media kits with vac-form airframes. One of the last he did was a Magister. While I still have a couple of these old gems, I never saw his Magister. The old Koster kits go for absurd prices on ebay. Thanks.

You don’t need the Koster’s vac-form.

Here’s my 1/48 scale Fouga Magister in the Patrouille de France 1965 livery built from the AMK superlative  kit.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by quang

[quang]

8 hours ago, Uncle Toby said:

The other thing is that I had no clue the thing would not have ejection seats. It's a 2-seat military jet. Right. I was not happy at first. But we survived to fly again.

No ejection seat indeed.

The normal procedure for leaving a Magister in flight was to turn plane upside down, open canopies and … unbuckle seat belts .

I guess you missed a memorable experience!

[Uncle Toby]

Well, I was too embarassed to add that the owner and pilot did not even offer or mention parachutes. But I was well aware that in that catagory of aircraft (jet, experimental, private) parachutes are required by FAA regs. I should have refused to fly. It was irresponsible. Of him and me.

[Uncle Toby]

Oh, hell, I may as well add this in case anybody cares: Lately, for no real reason, I have thought back to those 4 or 5 ejection seat types I've ridden, some once, one 3 times, the F-4's Mk. 7, 10 times.

For each flight, most military, a few civilian jets, my ejection and emergency ground egress training varied from intensive to zero.

You would think the Blue Angels might mention how to use the seat in their F/A-18B and D (I rode one each with them). Not one word of emergency info. Not one mention either time. And both BA flights were both long and physically exhausting to boot (They always do that if they know you have previous fighter rides as a civilian. I'll tell that one some day.) So the basic odds of an accident were even a tiny bit bigger.

My very first ride, in that ANG F-4C, had me go through a full day of E and E training, folllowed by a test.

My first Aces II flight (Tyndall AFB, F-15D) got me a half-day in the seat seat/ cockpit simulator. Then they hung me up from my chute harness for training ion the self llowering rig in case you come down dangling from a broadcast tower or something. My training chute harness was rotten and snaped dumping me about six feet down ratherf gently. But so panicked were the officer and tech sgt in charge of me, it took me a half hour to, first, convince them their media guy was not hurt at all, was not angry, and most of all, was not going to rat out them for something that was no one's fault. I feared my flight was going to be cancelled.

I know this is long, but to my surprise, people with an interest in bang seats (it still amazes and fascinates me, these seats, their history and what miracles of technology they are. And how dangerous the early ones were in which, if you got out and to the ground alive, you were most likely crippled not just enough to never again fly, but to never walk again.

Let me end with this: Only decades after I stopped playing military beaurocracy as a military aviation journalist did it hit me how the US navy risked a PR disaster by negecting to tell me how to save myself from permanent wheelchair flying or death by not taking 30 seconds to say: "By the way, when I say eject, or you see the light, take one second to put your head against the rest and elbows in your lap."

Almost the sole reason the Blues and T-Birds always travel with a two-seater is to fly local media, knowing they will get breathless stories about these goglike aviators, the kind of PR money can't buy. Two of.the three Grumman cat fighters the BA flew from early in the 1950s until they got F-4s at the end of the 60s, there was no two-seat version (the early F9F versions and the F10F Tiger had no two seat version) but the team always had a T-33 or some other nimble jet for the press. So killing a reporter rather than impressing him would be a disaster.

 

Why didn't I raise my hand and ask for egress training? Every time before jet flying I made it my business to do my own research (once even using a Detail and Scale book for F-4D cockpit familiarization.) I never met a cockpit or rocket seat that I had not already memorized, sometimes using my modelling detail references.

Okay:

If this was abuse of the forum, please tell me. It feels a little wrong and may be really boring. It won't hurt my feelings and is preferable to having people rolling their eyes when they see I've posted another Grampa Simpson ramble. Old I am, but I try to avoid being an old bore, even if the professional writer in me is unable to shut up about this world of flying machines I learned to love as a toddler seeing Daddy's B-47E buzz the house.

Thanks again, my peers. For reading and every thing else you do for me, an average modeller at best.

And Grampa S. returns with more flying gibberish in a long add:

A very late recollection re flying civilians in war jets. I can think of three that were PR nightmares, though none fatal. Of course, you are all familiar with the old French git who panicked and shot himself out of a perfectly good Rafael.

Not so well known is what happened when an ANG A-7 attack unit flew the local vicar. It seems the congregation were up in arms about all the low-level training going on right over their rooftops.

"Oh," replied the wing commander, "it's all perfectly safe. We'd even love to take you along on one of our sorties." Normally, this would involve a safe, low-G trip to the range for bombing and strafing practice (great fun, that, though my air-to-mud rides were in early F-4C/D Phantoms with Vulcan pods on the centerline station. I will never forget the sound of 4000 rounds per minute of 20 mm in 2-second bursts. Like revving a chainsaw.)

Where was I? Oh. So they take the man of god up for some dogfighting. The upshot (quite literally the upshot)? A midair collision, with the vicar suddenly and violently ejected from his destroyed SLUF. So much for the safety demonstration.

I'm surprised they didn't  stop these PR flights, but nope.  Now, the Thunderbirds, I'm told, disabled the stick in the rear seat of their F-16s after a near-crash while the civilian in back got them into a flat, inverted spin.

Not so the US Navy. My first Blue Angels flight I logged 40 golden minutes as pilot in command. I'm still proud of how well I did for a civilian. My pilot, later a 4-star admiral, knew I had a little jet time, so he was going to make me work hard for this ride. We began with standard familiarization maneuvers to give me a feel for the Hornet. I did a few aileron rolls, a loop, etc. 

Then, he turned all military on me, screaming insults over the intercom about my "pussy flying."

He ordered me to put the a/c up on one wingtip and do what's called "turns about a point." It's one of the first things you learn in any pilot traing, the reason being you have to learn how to maneuver without gaining or losing altitude.

So off I went, thinking I looked pretty sharp.

But no. He roared, "This ain't no lizard **** Cessna. This is a fighter aircraft designed to break things and hurt people. Now fly it like one. PULL!" (Are your RN pilots as insufferable as their USN counterparts? I think not. When I was at Combat Jets, we had a Hunter in the jet collection. For airshows, we had to fly in an ex-RN pilot from London just to fly the former G-HUNT. He was surely the most humble career fighter pilot I ever met. Never found out how a RN guy got so high-time in an RAF mount.)

My manhood was in the balance, so I pulled as the G-meter rose fast.

"I f**kin' said PULL! You deaf?"

At six G's Lt. Jock got what he was fishing for. My bodyweight was now 1200 pounds and I was not fit for high-g flight. I was no longer able to push my head back into the headrest, and suddenly my body folded like a deck chair and my face crashed into the top of the stick. Lucky my visor was down.

And he wasn't done with me. After talking me through my first (and so far, only) Immelman, we RTBed and, while performing the requisite snappy BA overhead break for landing, he blacked me out at a very brief 8.5 Gs.

And here comes the apology for my long-winded flying tales. But, you see, it's sort of like the modelling journalism dilemma. I have one root in one world and the other in another world. Two of my oldest, closest friends spent their entire careers as full time Texas ANG fighter pilots. They began in F-102s and 101 Voodoos in the 1960s, retiring flying the F-16C. They find my ability to weasel jet rides hilarious, made more humiliating because I get such a thrill out of what they got paid well to do every day.

And you can't describe it to your girlfriend. She just won't get it.

Once, after climbing down from the Starfighter, we were greeted by a local news crew.

"How was it?" bubbled Barbie.

Still a bit dazed, I muttered, "Better then sex."

My GF was standing next to me.

"Yeah," she snorted, "right."

My only thought just then was, "If she really knew the truth...."

 

Edited August 3, 2021 by Uncle Toby
Addendum, encroaching dementia

[LSP_Mike]

Any old boxart?

[MikeMaben]

Stop , yer makin' my head hurt ...