Jump to content

Hobby fatigue


nah00

Recommended Posts

I wouldn't say I'm suffering from hobby fatigue, just a little diversion. I recently learned that there's a hobby shop just down the road from me in Heathcote, 5 minutes drive away. It's in a nondescript industrial estate, nothing to look at from outside, but stuffed full of goodies inside. Glenn, the owner, is into scale models, mainly armour and aircraft, so that's the majority of his stock. I went up there as I knew he also had the usual paint, adhesives, tools and the like, and I wanted to restock on all these things. I also thought it would be good to support a local business.

 

Now I used to be an active scale modeller myself, many years ago. I belonged to the Sydney chapter of IPMS, and used to edit the club magazine as well. My main interest was Great War and Golden Age aircraft, with a bit of armour thrown in as well. A lot of what I wanted to model was only available as vacforms, or rather crude injection moulded kits from small suppliers. I also scratchbuilt a couple of very early biplanes. But I moved away from near the club's meeting place, and gradually returned to railway modelling.

 

When I visited this hobby shop I was amazed at the number of very high-quality plastic kits for all sorts of aircraft and armour that I would've killed for back in my IPMS days. Some are reasonably mainstream, and some are quite obscure, but they're all very desirable. So I'm having a little break from railway modelling and doing some aircraft and armour kits instead. I mentioned one of them previously, the Austin armoured car, but I've got some other  armoured vehicles in the new "stash" as well. 
 

I've always been fascinated by the Soviet and British tanks that were based on the running gear/suspension designs of American engineer J. Walter Christie. So part of the stash are kits for the Soviet BT-2 and BT-7 "fast tanks", a German Panzer II Ausf.D and a British A13 cruiser. I've also got some tasty aircraft kits as well. Both the Austin and the BT-2 are ready to paint, so I'll post some photos when they're done.

 

spacer.png

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

Edited by marknewton
  • Like 5
Link to comment

Nice find mark! Always nice to have a little gem of a place like that nearby. As you say always nice to support a local shop. Sadly we have lost the old fashion hobby shops around here. Few small chains, but nothing like those old time packed to the gills places.

 

i did a lot of 1/72 armor and planes when I was a kid. Few bigger things, some motorized Tamyia tanks, but the 1/72 were great as they were a buck or two so I could do a little extra work here or there anytime and go grab one and devour it that night.

 

when I got my first exhibit modeling job as a kid someone asked me how I got started and I told them about my plastic models and model trains and they asked me to bring some in, so I did. One was a 1/48 motorized tamiya tank and when the lead exhibit designer saw it he almost cried. The last year of design school he got a summer job at a small film studio that was doing all model work for the movie silent running. He and another student spent a couple of months whacking bits of the top of a few hundred tamiya tank models to stud the underside of the spacecraft domes! The lead model maker had decided those were the best thing at hand to match the art directors vision and they were cheap and the student labor was cheap. Gene said he felt so bad cannibalizing all the models for details and tossing the rest of the kits.

 

jeff

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I have not done any real modeling in years.  I did buy one or two Panther tanks in 1/35 IIRC like 20 years ago and have them here somewhere.  Maybe I should find them and put it/one together and show my son what modeling is like.  When I was a kid the Tamiya 1/35 (and other brands) were the ultimate want.

 

I did a bunch of 1/72 and 1/48 or so aircraft as well.  As a kid, at the end of the Vietnam war, my dad and I put together a Phantom and a Mig-21 and I had them hanging in my bedroom from the ceiling.  I was probably like 7 or so.  Right at the tie of Yom Kippur war as well.  I remember looking at the Hasegawa and other 1/48 airplane kits with lust in my eyes.

 

What I need right now, however, is another hobby, like I need a hole in the head.

 

Keep brining on the pics of everything -- especially the tanks and airplanes 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
21 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Nice find mark! Always nice to have a little gem of a place like that nearby. As you say always nice to support a local shop. Sadly we have lost the old fashion hobby shops around here. Few small chains, but nothing like those old time packed to the gills places.


Jeff, I was amazed to learn there was a hobby shop so close to me. It was purely by chance, too. I'd stabled my train at Mortdale one night and gone into the mealroom for crib. One of their drivers was sitting in the corner building a kit when I walked in. I went over to see what he was building, and asked him where he got it. He said "From the bloke at Heathcote". He told me where his shop was, and off I went on my next book-off day. I'll definitely buy from him whenever I can, he's got some great stuff and he's a nice bloke to do business with.

 

21 hours ago, cteno4 said:

i did a lot of 1/72 armor and planes when I was a kid. Few bigger things, some motorized Tamyia tanks, but the 1/72 were great as they were a buck or two so I could do a little extra work here or there anytime and go grab one and devour it that night.

 

All of my aircraft modelling was 1/72nd scale as well. I did some 1/72 armour too, and the only model I have left from those days is an ancient Airfix model of a Great War rhomboid tank. Which I found the other day in a box of assorted bits and pieces - and I see it still isn't quite finished. Oh well, no excuses now! 🤨

 

spacer.png

 

spacer.png

 

spacer.png

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

  • Like 5
Link to comment

I did a bunch of 1/72 armor.  As a teenager I found a book in the library called "Operation: War Board" or something like that.  I basically had it on permanent loan, do re-checkout, until the library wouldn't let me any more.  Then my parents found me a copy for Christmas or my BIrthday.  It was home made game rules for H0-ish models using table tops and yard sticks and dice.  Some dude and his son had made it up.  It was awesomely fun.  About the only real H0 stuff you cold find was the Roco stuff from Austria (at the time) so we mostly used 1/72 tanks and stuff and those were all kits (unlike the Roco).  (I did get some soft plastic stuff in 1/72 as well from Airfix or someone like that).

 

Good times.

 

Link to comment

At about 12 my best friend, who lived a few houses away, and I were awash in 1/72 armor (dad always has extra jobs for us to do to pick up a couple of bucks) and we had dozens and dozens after a while. We ended up creating our own war game using them on the big back cement patio. Started out with us putting a few of our early, junkier made models out and each of us taking turns lobbing little stones at them underhand, no sides just who could hit something and how spectacular the explosion! 

 

We then evolved to more sophisticated games arraying them out in our opposing sides and had 3 levels of “power” we assessed each piece at. Then I had built some little Guns with a piece of wood with a slot in it and a tiny hinge stand. Rubber band attached to the front and you could draw back a little steel slug in the slot and let it loose. My dad had A huge bag these three different sized steel slugs like 5mm in dia and like 1/2”, 3/4”, and 1” long for some odd reason. at first it was just taking pot shots at each other’s models but slowly a more refined game developed. We use to come up with odd basketball games and scoring to even up playing basketball as I was almost a foot taller than my friend so we just applied these ideas to the tanks.
 

Eventually we had a fun game where you could either lob a slug in an arc or shoot it directly opposing models. You had to put the little gun next to the piece and use the slug size to match that piece of armor’s power rating. Hits were scored and ranked on the pieces power rating that was hit. We had rules like level 3 armor took a 2 or 3 slug to take it out but took 2 level 1 slugs to take it out, but after the first level 1 hit it could only fire level 1 slugs. We had a whole system of leaving slugs next to pieces that were partially disabled and flipping over destroyed pieces. Lots of different strategy where to place what ranked piece and what to risk what kind of shot at what size slug what way. We’d take turns back and forth until we ran out of our pile of slugs and take score to see who won.
 

All quite fun, surprised my dad let us do it but we had to wear safety goggles and stand aside while shots were taken, but we still had a couple thumps on the head, but nothing more than a little bump! 
 

then it was pick up the pieces and go and repair damage for the next battle. Lots of putty and scraps of styrene to rebuild, sometimes we left the scared areas just primered to be a bit battle weary. It was a great way to learn some scratch building to fill in destroyed or lost bits from battles. Kitbashing as well as quickly we each had a box of destroyed bits and pieces to Frankenstein on damaged models, kind of fun as probably what happened in real life. I know it sounds like sacrilege to modelers to destroy and rebuild the nice models, but to 12 year olds it was grand! I think we were at this for like 6 months straight! A few years later we got a couple of war board games and were like hey this is like playing tanks in the back yard!

 

jeff

  • Like 2
Link to comment

We would take the plastic army men and set them up in the basement holes dug for new houses, along the top and in the caves and stuff and throw rocks and dirt clods at them to see who could knock the other guys army down first.  Or we did it along our 100 foot plus long driveway that went down a slope and had dirst sides (driveway was stone dust) and an incline on one side.  Again, set them up, knock them down.

 

The "Operation War Board" stuff we would do with my dad Sunday afternoons a few hours each week using a ping pong table.  It was more formal -- like a simplified version of a set of miniatures ruls applied to H0 or 1/72.  I still have the book somewhere and want to buy a ton of 1:285 micro armor if I can find it and convert the book so instead of 1" it is 1cm (which will give more realistic ranges).  Still super simple rules but on a slightly bigger scale due to the smaller vehicle scale.  Some day...

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Lol, yes I think this all evolved out of the old set up your army men in the sandbox and bob rocks at each others’ forces!

 

jeff

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...