A long view about Modeling
By Mario Covalski
Perhaps, some assiduous Modeler Site readers have been very surprised at reading our current cover article, and I think It’s a good opportunity to deal with a topic which had never been tackled in our editorials, the specialization in our hobby.
By the time I was a solitary builder…which lasted for nearly all my lifetime, I didn’t use to get in touch with other modelers, except for a casual conversation or through magazines. I believed that knowledge was something natural if you wanted to do things the right way around the hobby.
So, if I decided to devote to building airplanes, then, I would buy or search for references about them, but if my choice were cars…then I’d obtain all possible bibliography to that respect.
At times, when surfing the web, I’m surprised at reading some messages at discussion forums, finding out that there exists many historians-modelers, that actually pretend to be modelers but are historians for certain, maybe without realizing.
Then, long discussions about facts that have nearly nothing to do with gluing… painting…and applying decals, take place.
It’s obvious that these modelers have found a hobby within the hobby, becoming “experts” on certain topics.
When we undertook Modeler Site, I decided that it should be a virtual magazine about modeling in general, trying to include as many subjects as possible, and if, in some cases we didn’t achieve our aim, it was not owing to our lack of desire or decision.
It would have been easier to concentrate all my effort on F1 cars, which I’ve been devoted to, for the last 10 years. For instance, I could be considered an expert when speaking about the Ferraris of the ’70. I’ve read a lot about them, I saw their races and have many references, pictures and bibliography on them.
However, modeling means to me more than historical knowledge about a group of subjects, actually, it means to be in permanent contact with scale models, and even today, I’m visibly moved when I see a good aircraft, armour model, or such as it happens with the particular subject we’re dealing with this month, an old RC model.
Along my life as modeler, I’ve built all kind of subjects as science fiction ones when I was a kid, next came the RC models, plastic in its different facets …etc. I can’t limit my modeling activity to my knowledge, I’m not and don’t want to be an expert, and the knowledge I find and need, is related to the SCALE MODEL I’m building circumstantially.
Well, I don’t criticize those who discovered a hobby within the hobby and feel that, becoming experts give their lives some meaning. You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder… but from my point of view, I sincerely would not call this, plastic modeling. Experts only speak about what they know, and scale modeling is to do what one “feels”.
If I’m expert on F1, then, I would turn my hands just to F1 kits, but I can assure that, if you practice this hobby, like me, along enough time, you’ll build all kind of models.
Experts usually spend their time speaking about their knowledge, and obviously, they will not devote to other topics, because if so, they will stop being experts…and this must not be the message novices should receive…
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