SHOULD IT ALWAYS BE STRAIGHT-FROM-THE-BOX!:
A LETTER from a reader recently brought me down to earth as they so often do. He was commenting on some of the items that appear in Sca/e Aircraft Modelling saying that he wouldn't be seen dead completing a model exactly in the way that it came straight out of the box. Many must surely agree with these sentiments and for my part the few models I get time to make these days have little modification on them as if I did I would never get them finished. Yet I feel it is so important that the modeller should never accept exactly what he is told by the manufacturer and check up on markings and colour details. We have been attuned to accepting without question what we see in the printed word but need this necessarily be so. How many times have you caught out a report in the national press where the information given on an aircraft is so obviously wrong. Ally this to the need for a little general enhancement of the product by adding custom-made undercarriage doors as the kit ones are too thick, add cockpit detail where this is absent and change markings on the model to suit your own requirements. One always needs to produce that little extra on a model that stamps it with your own individuality and as far as competitions are concerned, often allows me and fellow judges to know who the modeller was by the standards he keeps.
I am sure that some of my readers will see things in the way that I do. Modelling for me is a pleasant hobby that I can take up or leave as I see fit and all I need is a pastime that can be done at home in the evenings without the hassle I have had to put up with all day at the office. For those people there's little hope but if they were to take that little extra care in firstly researching the model they are going to make, check on what the manufacturer has to say and see if there is any way in which the model can be improved simply and without too much trouble then I am sure that they would get far more out of their modelling in the long run. I am as guilty and as lazy as the next man but I found in the days when I was more active than I am now that it is sometimes surprising how one can easily alter a manufacturer's suggested camouflage pattern to fit the picture of the aircraft you have seen somewhere or change the markings so that the model takes on that special look that only something carefully done can achieve.
There are many ways in which this can be done and it is not the place in editorial to list them. If examples are required look what Mike McEvoy has done to the review model of the TSR.2 in this issue. He has given it squadron markings and a sharkmouth. Stretching the imagination you may say as the TSR.2 never got further than the prototype stage, but as far as prolific Mike is concerned a way in which he can express himself almost in the same way that an artist takes licence with a painting.
Having been taken to task yet again by one of my readers I can say for sure that I will look again at the model I have on my workbench at the moment and take the trouble to get a picture of the real thing before I go much further. Straight from the box modelling is fine when you have no time for anything else but to make a model a thing of beauty and express your own individuality, it should never be followed to the letter.