Thoughts on Aircraft vs Armor

Hans von Hammer

 

 

But wouldn't that same logic apply to armor? 

 

You can drop a crate of C-Rats, a tarp, or camo-netting over a bunged part or even a whole area on a tank or track...  Aircraft are a little tougher, since pilots and crews didn't live in their planes...

You can, sure, but I haven't seen the same pride of old kits over in armor. 

For example...Great Wall comes out with a new Devastator. Sparks a mini-debate where people come out of the woodwork to defend the old Monogram kit.

Bronco comes out with a new-mold M24 Chaffee. Don't see a lot of  stubborn defense of the old Italeri...

I went through a five year phase building 1/35 Tamiya armor. This'd be from about 1980 to 1985.

I had only built a few armor kits before, of the Renwal/ Monogram ilk and didn't think much of them. Also I had little to no knowledge of the European side of WW2.

But I got to be friends with a guy who built a LOT of armor, say eight Tamiya Pz 4's at a time because he war gamed with them and they got shot up. He knew a lot about the subject, and while I didn't care to build german armor, I did build a lot of Soviet stuff.

So to me "old" armor would be something like the Tamiya 251 with the panzergrenadiers jumping out of it.

Old airplane kits- a lot older.

A big reason I like older kits is that I'm cheap, and will make no bones about it. Simple as that.

Wabashwheels

Doogs,  It's funny, just last night I was reading through some threads and came to the realization that the folks here in the armor category do seem to have a closer knit fraternity than the aircraft people.

OK, bad jokes aside, I don't know--I don't build aircraft-. But the "Auto" guys are really quite a nice lot of chaps. I can't remember ever seeing a major dust-up in there?

Now, you get into the "Diorama" section and.....

Hans von Hammer

But wouldn't that same logic apply to armor? 

You can drop a crate of C-Rats, a tarp, or camo-netting over a bunged part or even a whole area on a tank or track...  Aircraft are a little tougher, since pilots and crews didn't live in their planes...

Thats one of the things i prefer about armour over aircraft. Its not an excuse to not make an effort, but armour is less prim and proper than aircraft and i feel i can relax more when i am building armour.

Ok, we have this difference between armour and aircraft builder. So where do those of us who build both stand.

i never thought i would like armor building (i used to build only planes and cars/trucks) until i actually built a tank (a small 1/48 Panzer IV i believe) amd i loved it!

i think armor is actually a bit more fun to build because A) you can easily display it "in combat" in a diorama, whereas if you want to display an aircraft it usually has to be sitting on the tarmac. B) you can be a little more harsh on your finish and weathering. i mean planes are only dirty at worst, tanks get filthy. plus the odds of finding a cool looking field applied camo scheme (especially on german armor) are alot better, which makes it easier to make a unique model. C) alot of the planes i like are too big to store easily (even in 1/72 scale, most of them would have to be hung from the ceiling) as i have always been a bomber guy (stull dreaming of a company making a 1/48 B-52 in plastic lol) granted, i like my fighter planes too, but even if its a 1/48 fighter, i can store TWO 1/35 Panzer IVs in roughly the same amount of space.

i think the AM stuff is probably a bit more popular among armor modelers for two reasons: 1) most armor is in a bigger scale than aircraft (generally speaking) so the details have to be a bit better because you dont have to strain as hard to see the incorrect stuff. i mean its alot harder to notice the 15 pieces of PE in the cockpit of a 1/48 spitfire, for example, than the turned metal barrell and fruil model metal tracks on a 1/35 Tiger. 2) most AM stuff for armor is where it can actually be seen, on the outside of the vehicle. on aircraft, alot of it is folded up inside a fuselage that has opening between the size of a dime and a quarter, and often not enough light gets in to even see it (although when you do, the results are spectacular!)

That being said though, i do still really enjoy building both, and you can learn techniques that can help you from one catagory to another (i.e. the process for making exhaust stains on wings and fuselages can be applied, with a little modification, to armor for rain streaks and faded paint) both are a blast to build.

TheWildChild i'm also a Dio builder and i find it hard coming up with new ideas for aircraft scenes. They are getting very simnilar. The good thing with armour is that you can have the same idea but it looks different because of terrain. Aircraft tend to be on a flat terrain with the only difference being grass, desert, snow or tarmac. At least with armour you can out in tree's, buildings, slopeing ground etc.

But, in the defence of aircraft, there are some great schemes out there, and as ku8ch as i like a good German 3 colour scheme, it don't match some of the aircraft schemes.

DoogsATX

Hans von Hammer:

 

 

But wouldn't that same logic apply to armor? 

 

You can drop a crate of C-Rats, a tarp, or camo-netting over a bunged part or even a whole area on a tank or track...  Aircraft are a little tougher, since pilots and crews didn't live in their planes...

 

You can, sure, but I haven't seen the same pride of old kits over in armor. 

For example...Great Wall comes out with a new Devastator. Sparks a mini-debate where people come out of the woodwork to defend the old Monogram kit.

Bronco comes out with a new-mold M24 Chaffee. Don't see a lot of  stubborn defense of the old Italeri...

That's because I'm not doing much armor as of late, lol..   Kidding.. That's mainly because I don't have much in the way of Monogram or Italeri armor that I feel all that "loving" about... Granted, the first armor kit I ever built was Monogram's M48 Patton, and I built it into a diorama, but, being just a kid ( about 14 or so) at the time, didn't know an M48 from a Sherman... I got Shep's dio-tipsheet in it as well, and that M48 was the "star" of the very first diorama I built too, BTW...  Used the Monogram figure set too... No hobby shops were within biking distance for me either...

I was much more into aircraft then, and having a living reference to a lot of them, in the form of my dad, I went in that direction...

I get bitten by the armor "bug" and it then becomes my sole-purpose in life, but I gotta get inspired first... When I do, I generally build a diorama of something I either saw personally, or actually was directly involed in...  When I saw "Greatest Tank Battles-73 Easting" on the Military Channel, well.. There you go..  I wasn't with the 2nd ACR, but I was there (in the 3rd AD NBCCC) and we were pounding the Iraqi positions with our guns... So I began hitting Ebay for M109A6 kits...

Other times it's just dioramas of stuff that happened out in the field back in the good ol' days when I was still a gun-chief... Or just a gunbunny...  Lotta humor in those...  But overall, there aren't kits from anyone except Italeri of M109A3s, so that's what I buy...  (BTW, I'd buy the Italeri Bronco M24 before the Bronco it, as long as it's cheaper...).  Armor kits are even more outrageouly-priced than some aircraft kits, so I shop for the Italeri/Tamiya kits of the 80s over anything else, although I DO have a few AFV Club/Dragon/Trumpeter/Academy-types in the stash... Only because I got a deal on Ebay though..

Also, my dioramas tend to be quite "earthy" ones when it come to armor... I like doing landscape, and like having a lot of it on the vehicle, lol...  Desert dioramas don't allow for that... I prefer temperate regions, especially "WW3" ones, centered in Western Europe, after we've pushed Ivan back through the Fulda Gap after a few Sub-KT tactical nukes have popped off and left his massed formations smoking wrecks, and the Apahes and A-10s are just flying around now, "tank-plinking"..  Something about a T-72 or T-80 with a catastrophic turret separation that I find....  Soothing... Much moreso than an Arab-manned T-72... Arabs can't win wars, so it's forgone conclusion that his Soviet junk is more often found dead than Ivan's junk...

However, I digress...

Yeah, I take GREAT pride in "defending" the old, "inferior" armor kits, and love to scratch-build stuff for them, but there isn't the same number of "old Armor kit" guys as there is in the Aircaft world.. But I still love the Tamiya 80s stuff...  However, armor has gotten to the point that about every type of armored vehicle one can kit has been done, with numerous overlaps, that the obscure AFVs, and AFVs that were only built in the dozens, are being kitted with all the same parts, but a new set of decals to depict a (gimme a break) "captured" tank, and the Paper Panzers are even more frequent... Not m' thing...

So I either build what I came into contact with, crewed, lived in and on, or I build the oldies... Druther have the Italeri 105mm towed howitzer over the Dragon(?) version.. Not enough difference between the two to justify the price of the latter..  Same for the M7 Priest, the ARV, Deuce & a half, etc...  Italeri is more than good enough for diorama work.. 

I like both the Tamiya Jeep and the Italeri Jeep (to include the SAS types), and both are priced close enough to the same around here... I need LOTS of them kits, since I've got so many "Mauldins" to do, and most all involve a Jeep or two...

Like this one:

The above needs no caption, lol..

 Aircraft are hard to do with Bill Mauldin, since the only one he drew that really involved any "action" was one where a bunch of dogfaces are flat on the ground in the mud, still stateside during the big "Louisiana Manuervers" of 1940-41, but the "Red Army" P-36 that was responsible for making them all drop into the Cajun muck & mud is pulling away with a rifle and bayonet sticking out of it's side, and we hear Willie say, "Nice work Joe. I think I heard a muffled scream..."...

Anyway, that's my long-winded take on it... Plus, I think there are a lot more members here doing armor that're Vets, so even if they do Panzers and Chi-Has, they're drawing on their own experiences of living in dirt, right there with the vehicles thay model....

Sorry if I completly fall out of the discussion right now,
I didn't feel like reading ALL the 5 pages, but I read some here and there,
and what I think about this is,

Well, As I never build anything else but aircraft, I do call myself a '1/48 scale modeller',
since I have tanks and personnel in my stash, but I haven't build any of those yet.
I do meet all kinds of people at my IPMS and must say, between the aircraft-, diorama-, tank- and etc. modellers, nobody needs to defend anything at all when buying PE or anything other, we're all with the thaughts that you just need to build, buy and/or do whatever you feel like doing or wanting to do.

Allthough I do see that quite a lot of the guys say that, when you buy a PE-set, they ask you,
But why don't you (scratchbuild) something yourself?' or 'Why would you spend money on something you can't see?' (and this go for both tank and aircraft modellers).

About the costs, I think that it's a common thing amongst a lot of modellers,
especially the older ones, because of
'Back in the day an airfix kit costed only 5bucks and now you have these 100dollar Betty bombers'
or
'Look how much I payed for this tiger tank back in the day, Now they cost 3 times that!'
I think that everywhere you have nitpickers and people who do look at the price vs quality.

Only explenation that I have for the PE discussion,
A lot of PE parts that are beeing used by the aviators, are to be mounted inside,
where you can (most of the time) hardly see them, so that's why they need to be 'defended' of spending your money on 'something you can't see',
where that Armor Pe sets are most of the time, are to be mounted on the outside, where they are much more visible.
I think that's sort of the most logical explanation of those differences.

Regards Ninetalis

I think you gotta have a foot planted in each genre to really understand it...  It then just depends on which foot you got your weight on...

Serously though, most armor guys will spend their time trying to figure out say, the fuel systems on the T-62, and ask about it, since it's largely exterior... Most of a tank or AFV's intersting stuff is indeed, on the outside...  The "PE stuff" isn't all that, it's mostly generic, and it's pretty common... Latches, gun-mounts and tow-pintles, brush-guards, hatch-springs, etc...   'Course, you can get way more into it thatn that, with brass making up 50% (or more) of your build (ever see just how much brass there is available for say, an M3 Half-track? It can range up to around 70% of the finished model, lol)... Not much chance of that with an aircraft...

Well, I do have to say that, with most of the Armor modellers, I don't know any guy who buys stuff to be mounted on the inside when it is no visible, but when they have PE or anything else that they get for free with it, they do use it, but they wouldn't when they'd have to buy it seperatly.
Except when they make it visible, then they go far to make it look right and realisticly, but so do some aircraft modellers, and sometimes that stuff isn't visible at all!

It just ranges from person to person I would say, not so far as, armor modellers are more this and aircraft more that and cars more whatever, it just depends on how well that person wants to understand how his machine works or how well he wants his models to lean towards the real thing.

I know aircraft people who do as crazy stuff as armor guys would do, I can only speak for myself when I say that I don't know that one 'group' of modellers does more than another.
I just know that in every group there aren't to many persons who are that fond on PE-sets, because of the prices sometimes, some PE kits cost more than the actual kit itself.
But other stuff, resin and scratch building seems to be fair more popular. Especially scratchbuilding,
also seems to be more respected 'cuase of the fact that it needs more creativety then going to a store and buy some PE-sets.

Regards Ninetalis

I built a lot of armor and then switched to a/c and now build ships.

Armor/ aircraft to me the main difference is painting. I used to build the whole tank and then paint it, then screw on the turret.

Not very sophisticated...

bondoman

I built a lot of armor and then switched to a/c and now build ships.

Armor/ aircraft to me the main difference is painting. I used to build the whole tank and then paint it, then screw on the turret.

Not very sophisticated...

 

One thing I like is that the surface of the plastic doesn't have to be clean when you airbrush as it's armor and not supposed to be very clean.

I don't know any guy who buys stuff to be mounted on the inside when it is no visible, but when they have PE or anything else that they get for free with it, they do use it, but they wouldn't when they'd have to buy it seperatly.

Well, a lot of it depends on the AFV being modeled (and when).. 

For the guys that just build them for the exteriors, and keep them buttoned up, no, not much sense in doing interior details.. But for un-buttoned vehicles with side hatches, like the Panzer IIIs and IVs, M109 series howitzers with open hatches, numerous IFVs and APCs, etc. with ramps down (like the M113-series especially) most interior detail HAS to be modeled, whether there's after-market or not if they even begin to think they want to compete with those types...

Judges (myself inclued) will look inside open hatches and there had better be something in there if you even want to be considered for placing, much less ever winning... And there are far mor armor modelers that will scratch-build interiors vs aircraft modelers that will do the same...

For us diorama builders, it's even more a scratch-job if we're doing a knocked-out vehicle, there are absolutely ZERO A/M sets for modeling that kind of stuff (even if I was inclinded to use it).  Modeling knocked-out armor is then actually a heavily-detailed construction job, rather than one of destruction...  Especially when you consider that the cause of the destruction is seldom readily apparent, since HEAT, HEAP, and SABOT rounds make only some small holes, and the damage comes from the target-tank's own ammo and fuel...  Goes double for AFVs like the M-113, M551, and M109, since they have aluminum armor, and aluminum is a flammable metal...

I just know that in every group there aren't to many persons who are that fond on PE-sets, because of the prices sometimes, some PE kits cost more than the actual kit itself.
But other stuff, resin and scratch building seems to be fair more popular. Especially scratchbuilding,
also seems to be more respected 'cuase of the fact that it needs more creativety then going to a store and buy some PE-sets.

Dunno about that either, lol...  If I had to say that I find one thing pretty constant, it's that the art of scratch-building is dying more quickly than any other aspect of the hobby, since the pletora of P/E and Resin after-market parts, as well as manufactuter-supplied P/E parts, make it next to impossible to get someone to go "old-school" and scratch-build...  I myself don't bother with scratch-building a parts if there's a PE set included in the kit... I only refrain from buying the stuff... 

But no way could I build say, a winning entry for the out-of-box category at the IPMS Regionals using a Monogram M48 Patton when the next tank over is a Dragon kit with manufacturer-supplied PE set... Out-of the box is out of the box, and folks would take advantage of that... I know I would, lol...  (Maybe they need to split the category into two, ie: Armor kits manufactured 1990 and Earler and 1991to Present. But that's another thread..) "Stowage" is another aspect to armor modeling, since just about can go, as long as it's reasonable and beliveable.. Wouldn't be all that unrealistic for an M4 Sherman to be rolling through the French countryside with a guitar-case or even a bath-tub strapped aboard... Neither would it be unthinkable for an M109A3 to have a couple folding lawn-chairs or office chairs in the bustle racks, even a lawn-chair turned crapper... (I say the latter simply because I biult one for my track, lol. Got tired of squattin' in the field...)

As I pointed out a few pages ago, I'm a "Military Modeler" if you have to categorize my likes... I build ships if they're necessary for the story I wanna tell, as well as automotive, and I also build Sci-fi, although they are of a military nature, be it Colonial Vipers and Cylon Raiders, or X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, etc. ... 

But I generally don't have much to do with their hooch, since the sci-fi stuff I do is usally limited to building the ships in "Hangar Decks", "Launch-Tubes", and just want to put them into shadow-boxes so I have an opportunity to do some electrical lighting and fiber-optic stuff because I just flat like the way the "Blinkies" look, lol... Also gives me a chance to do a lot more "Forced Perspective" and mirror-work, especially effective for "Hangar Decks" and "in flight" stuff...

Still, I think the "Spirit of the Thread" here is more about the difference in  "attitudes" of the Armor vs the Aircraft Modeler... I can't really give a good take on either, since I build pretty much equally in both worlds, and then only dioramas... 

GreenThumb

bondoman:

I built a lot of armor and then switched to a/c and now build ships.

Armor/ aircraft to me the main difference is painting. I used to build the whole tank and then paint it, then screw on the turret.

Not very sophisticated...

 

 

One thing I like is that the surface of the plastic doesn't have to be clean when you airbrush as it's armor and not supposed to be very clean.

Depends.. If it's returning to the battalion motor-park after leaving the wash-rack, or just cleared a turret race-deep stinkhole..... 

But seriously, that's a technique-issue, and I've never been a slave to washing either aircrafy OR armor kits parts uless it's visibly coated in release agent, or it's resin... Most of my work is painted with enamel or laquer and generally "hot" enough to burn through the silicone..  Just shooting some Dullcoat over the parts will burn that crap off..  Gives the parts some "tooth" for that Tamiya acrylic to grab when you're brush-painting too...

Hans von Hammer

 

GreenThumb:

 

 

bondoman:

I built a lot of armor and then switched to a/c and now build ships.

Armor/ aircraft to me the main difference is painting. I used to build the whole tank and then paint it, then screw on the turret.

Not very sophisticated...

 

 

 

One thing I like is that the surface of the plastic doesn't have to be clean when you airbrush as it's armor and not supposed to be very clean.

 

 

Depends.. If it's returning to the battalion motor-park after leaving the wash-rack, or just cleared a turret race-deep stinkhole..... 

But seriously, that's a technique-issue, and I've never been a slave to washing either aircrafy OR armor kits parts uless it's visibly coated in release agent, or it's resin... Most of my work is painted with enamel or laquer and generally "hot" enough to burn through the silicone..  Just shooting some Dullcoat over the parts will burn that crap off..  Gives the parts some "tooth" for that Tamiya acrylic to grab when you're brush-painting too...

 

I agree Mike but what I meant was more along the lines of dust on the kit prior to airbrushing and between colors. This LAV-25 I have has been sitting for months with only the NATO Green color on it. I am not going to try and remove the dust before spraying the NATO Brown next.

If it's dusty or anything it doesn't really matter to me because the vast majority of armor kits I see completed are made weathered and dirty in one way or another. We can't get away with that with aircraft especially if it is going to be an Alclad II paint scheme.

For armor stuff PE is better than resin (in my opinion) for parts like exhaust covers, side skirts, headlight brush guards, etc because you can easily give it that "beat to hell" look by bending it, curving it, etc.... probably another reason why aircraft doesent need much PE: unless its a crashed or battle damaged plane, it really doesent get beaten up other than the paint..........although it would be really cool if somebody made a "battle damaged panels" set for 48 and 32 aircraft (and the massive 1/24 birds as well). it would be awful neat to show off some of those Eduard and Verlinden interior detail sets with a big, gaping hole in the nose or fuselage of a b-24 or b-17...but thats just my opinion lol.