Builders of fire apparatus, police cars, ambulances, wreckers, utility service trucks, hearses and flower cars, air tankers, Hospital ships, fire boats, SAR, Police, Fire & medivac helos lend me your ears
![Smile [:)]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile.gif)
Ok first off this is not a rant, and I in no way intend this to be negative towards FSM or SA, the publisher, editors or the moderators of the related sites. It is just an idea I had last night that may help us get some attention for our little segment of the hobby.
We often complain there are not many kits for us to build without doing some serious scratchbuilding, kit bashing or use of aftermarket parts, it is a legitimate complaint but who's listening and what have we done to change that.
Trumpeter is planning to release a 1/25 scale 2002 American LaFrance kit in 2006, this is the first new fire engine model in years. I know this is not news to many of us, however it gave me an idea.
Fine Scale Modeler and Scale Auto accept photos for the magazine, what if we could get everyone we can to send photos of their emergency vehicle builds, just flood SA & FSM with photos of these vehicles, then maybe when it comes time for them to review the Trumpeter ALF they would have enough pics of our work to devote a good section of an issue to our part of the hobby, maybe get the ALF on the cover instead of buried on page 9 and have all the builders pics in the issue be Emergency Vehicles instead of hot rods, tuners, tanks and fighters. Maybe even get a one issue return of The Model Firehouse (Scale Auto used to have a regular column dealing with fire apparatus). We can't get mad at the magazines for not catering to us if we don't give them anything to work with.
Here are the links for submitting your pics to Fine Scale Modeler and Scale Auto
Fine Scale Modeler
http://www.finescale.com/fsm/default.aspx?c=ss&id=21http://www.scaleautomag.com/sca/default.aspx?c=ss&id=21&mid=4741&auth=465b8485f251f9b07f65b995dda603c1f0a00719402e816560a3d8f26664564bIf the magazines were to run an issue devoted to emergency vehicles what kind of message could that send to the manufacturers, I think Trumpeter might be pretty happy if we could get their new ALF kit on the cover of one or both of these magazines and might encourage them to follow up with another kit. We shouldn't complain if we don't do something.
So are you with me or is this just a hare brained scheme caused by a lack of sleep and too many glue fumes.
Get out there and start dusting off all of your emergency vehicles get them pretty and takes some pics. Go twist the arms of others you know who keep their builds to themselves, make them takes some pics and send them in.
Perhaps we could get a how to take good pics thread started too, to help those who are camera shy, SA & FSM can't use the pics if the quality of the build doesn't come through.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings,
Aaron