Greetings fellow modelers,
As a few of you know, Berny, aka Berny13, passed away a few months ago. He was an avid modeler and a good friend. In his honor, I will be hosting a group build. At first, I tried to find out what planes he was associated with while he was in the United States Air Force and use that list as a theme. But as I started going through all of his posts, I realized that he had modeled almost every subject possible.
He started out with cars. At one point he modeled armor. And when he did model planes, he even modeled Migs, so it seemed that nothing was off limits. I also know that he had an attitude that you should at the very least enjoy building your model. So I finally decided that there would be no particular theme to this build except one. HAVE FUN!
So the rules to this build will be very short and simple. YOU HAVE TO PARTICIPATE! It is funny, I have only participated in one group build that lasted a full year, but I did notice something that bothered me. There were a number of people who it seemed rather obvious were only there to collect the stupid badge. A group build in my opinion is supposed to bring people together and share ideas, help each other with problems, answer questions, and even proudly show your accomplishments with.
The following paragraph is a new edit to the original post.
I am making an edit to this post because I realized that some people were taking the following paragraph to the extreme, which is not what I meant. All I mean by "authentic" is, if you are going to build strictly "out-of-the-box" (OOB), simply state that. If you are going to make modifications, please either do research to back up the modification or simply state that you "like doing it that way". I just don't want someone making stuff up. I want to keep this build fun, not a chore.
There is just one more rule to this build. Berny was very particular to being authentic when building his models. I will not be the one checking each person’s model to see if the paint colors, squadron, years, etc. are correct for each model. I will leave that to each individual. (If I happen to know the answer I will be happy to respond!) For me, that is a big part of modeling, doing the research. It will be good though for participants to ask if anyone else in the build knows the answer, that is the great thing about a group build. Just do the best you can, there will be no firing squad if you get something wrong. After all, we are all human, and we all do make mistakes!
I am going to start the build on Berny’s birthday, which is February 22. Anything and everything that you can build is acceptable (within the restrictions of this site of course!). It can be something you are building on another group build. You can build as many models as you like. Beginners and experts alike are welcome. This build will last one year, ending on February 21, 2013.
All finished builds will be entered on the first page of the build. This is not a contest of speed. It is a contest of fun. I will have the badge ready at the start of the build. I would like to start a list on this post of interested persons and what they are going to enter on the build. So anyone interested, please let me hear from you!
Ken