Jump to content

BillDevins

IPMS/USA Member
  • Posts

    1
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by BillDevins

  1. This discussion has been going on a long time. Personally, I am a stickler for accuracy in my own modeling and will spend hours correcting the tiniest "flaw" in a kit. I never expect anyone else to live up to my standards of accuracy. That said, there are errors and there are errors. Separating them is a headache we judges often face. As for "We judge on construction only" I move that research and thus a certain accuracy are part of construction. Modelers should not be given a free pass on obvious errors. The judges's decision is final. Some anecdotes: My 1/76-scale Char B.I has the exhaust suppressors pointing INWARD as per the kit instructions and my research. In real life they probably could easily by twisted into any position. Being dogmatic on something like that is foolhardy. Like Nick, I did not notice Gil's error on the Hawkeye until he told me. This one is tricky. Had no one pointed it out while judging I certainly would not have picked it up. Had a member of the team noticed it at the time it would be a tougher call. Once I had a judge tell me that "NO P-40 ever had the antenna post" in the position it was on the model. "No'' and "never" should be warning flags when judging. I asked him about the position of the antenna on a nearby Yak-3, and he replied he didn't know anything about Yaks. I pointed out that his P-40 comment, even if true, was "insider information" and could not be used to as a judging criteria. A guy saying "I was crew chief on that plane and I can tell you that none of them were painted that way" is working on insider information. Additionally, what he really means is that "None of the planes I remember seeing were..." At one Nats we had a Huey with the main rotor mounted upside down. Two camps quickly emerged - the fatal error camp and the ignore it camp. The instructions were confusing and could easily have resulted in an upside-down assembly. But, both rotor blades were going in the wrong direction, so the symmetry was there. (I have seen helo models with one blade facing against the others.) And the error was not even obvious to everyone who knew something about the Huey, like putting the landing skids on backwards, eg, would have been. My ruling at the time was the wrong-way rotor discovery was based on "insider information", and thus should not be considered egregious. So, a flagrant inaccuracy can be treated as any other modeling error - how serious is it and how does it affect the model in comparison to its competition? Backwards landing gear on an Me 410, or tank tracks going in opposite directions, are modeling errors and need to be evaluated as such, along with decal silvering and alignment, etc. As for Gil's lovely Hawkeye, I don't know what I would say the day of the judging. His handiwork would have to get its shot along with his competition. Like a seam line or paint overspray, even an obvious "accuracy" error is not necessarily fatal. It is just one more thing for the judges to evaluate.
×
×
  • Create New...