Specifically, "Modernize an Old Kit"...
Take one Monogram 1/48 T-28 Trojan, CA 1960.
Add
Black Box Detail Sets
Karaya .50 cal Machine Gun Barrels
Lone Star Detail Set
MV Products Lenses
Quickboost Engine and Cowl set
Eduard Gas Caps
Is that what "modernize" means now? Just adding a bunch of after-market parts?
I don't want to get off on a rant here, but!
It seems to me that either nobody is interested in scratch-building anything anymore, thus making all of the old-school skills and techniques obsolete, save maybe using a razor-saw here, and the using the occasional bit of solder there...
Anybody wanna know how to make a throttle quadrant using stryene stip and stretched sprue? Anyone?
How about casting a part in resin yourself?
Need a canopy.. Wanna learn how to draw-form one? Vac-form?
Boxing in the gear wells with sheet is easy. Evem easier to make the interior detail... Wanna see how?
Got a pin-vise? Know what one is?
Need open cowl-flaps and have a box of tea-candles?
Know where to get fine mesh screen for intakes in a hardware or craft store?
What th' hell is happening to this hobby?
Is this the future of "Fine Scale Modeling"? Buy everything pre-made?
Ok...
The reason I say these things is more or less an overload of confusion, frustration, and even nostalgia on my part..
I've spent the better part of two years now working on my first FSM article, "How to Build a Model Without Opening Your Wallet". It's really a good write-up too... I know, I wrote it.. But now, it seems as if i may be too late.. It appears as if the Modeling "Community at Large" has moved onto better places... So I hit the big ol' DELETE key... Done writing stuff like that ... Phooey to it... It's become "Bill Haley and the Comets" in a "Black Contry Communion" World... Outdated and useless.
I say "Outdated" because it is, I guess...
The plethora of After-Market goodies has taken the "Gizmo" outta "Gizmology". The "Art of Scratch-building", (and it is, indeed, an art) has become as old as the kits I build... No longer does one need to have anything more basic than a knife (and maybe a motor-tool) and some sandpaper to produce whatever one desires. That is, if you need to replace anything at all, in the first place...
Most new kits come with After-Market parts it seems... I mean, I saw the Tamiya Spitfire and Mustang kits After-Market replacement parts-ads even before I read that anyone had built either kit! Same-same with that 1/32 F-80 from Trumpeter!
It's "Useless" because, well, nobody uses it! Not anymore anyway... Nobody wants to know how to make a jig to hold gun-barrels in place to add the cooling-jacket holes, because they can buy the barrels...
Don't need to know how to drill out the holes in the Monogram SBD's diveflaps.. They make brass ones.. Heck, nobody even buys that kit anymore.. Too much stuff to add, there's a better kit somewhere, has more "detail", with an after-market set of "Razzmatazz-100's engine and bomb crutch assembly"... *Sigh*
It's not easy for an Auld Phart like me to change... I've got a parts-box tat has some greeblies in it that I've toted around since 1975, fer cryin' out loud... 'Course, maybe there's still hope.
Maybe they haven't yet made a kit of the collapsable engine-hoist used in WW2, and someone will want to build one. Or the air-compressor and inflatable rubber jacks used by WW2 aircraft recovery teams. They still haven't done a kit for those items, have they?
I know, I'm just grousing... It ain't FSM's fault.. Ain't you modeler's fault.. I's pretty much my fault, since I'm the one that didn't change... You guys with the Monogram Mafia" badges know what I mean..