Personally, I like the shapes.  As wide and varied as airplane shapes come in, I like them all.  Some more than others, of course, but I can't think of a one that would make me turn my head away.  Some have a truly gripping effect on me.  Shapes of jets I saw as a kid at Selfridge, or those my dad built models of and hung in my bedroom, provide pleasure that's hard to describe or rationalize.  Some with long surfaces and curved edges and balanced proportions strike me (and others) as just so pretty.  Simply their black silhouettes at different angles brings an involuntary "Oooooohhh!" to the lips.

At the FineScale Modeler aircraft forum recently, somebody asked about the accuracy of a particular kit.  The subject is a stone classic sort of airplane that everybody is familiar with.  The kit that was questioned has a couple outline issues that are not glaring, but to someone who has poured over photos of the real thing on many, many occasions, and has had the lines branded into their brain, can see the model's not quite "right".  One guy typed in to say it was fine.  I said it wasn't quite.  Guy number one came back with a crack about "river counters" and how they spoil things for the rest of us.  I suspect I was the "rivet counter" in question.  I don't count rivets, but I can see shapes.  Years and years of looking at airplane books and magazines at bedtime (with too much beer or wine) has imprinted the correct shapes of many types in my head.  I love the correct shapes.  The incorrect shape is a little like a small pebble in my shoe.

Attraction to the shapes led to my in-flight jobs. (There was also the mistaken notion that building them that way would be a faster method to create a collection.)   Any airplane shape looks its best in the air.  Some look better on the ground than others, but in flight is where the shape is best observed.  That's just the way it is.  Thankfully, for my personal viewing pleasure if nothing else, this idea of showing models in flight seems to be gaining some popularity.

Detail once was my passion.  Drilling out 72nd gun barrels was important.  Full cockpits and plumbing in the wheel wells was what it was all about.  Today I couldn't care less.  Models of airplanes with covers off, panels open, radomes swung to the side, guts exposed, are interesting engineering feats, but a model of an airplane?  More a model of a machine being deconstructed.  What's been done to the  shape?  The shape is the soul, the raison d'etre.  Ruin that, and what's the point?  Build a model of an oil refinery if detail is the point.

Comments

[Karl Juelch]

You really got to the heart of the matter--shape is what makes aircraft so special (well, that and they are machines that FLY--how cool is that?). I scratch my head in bafflement when I see model after model after model displayed with open canopies--don't people see how that completely breaks up the SHAPE of the airplane? I can't understand the obsession with cockpit detail--how do cockpits even begin to approach the coolness of the SHAPE of the airplane? I can understand maybe doing some models to show off a cockpit, but every single model? Really? Are cockpits really THAT worthy of attention? Sometimes I wonder if the open canopy, detail obsessed modelers even understand or appreciate that shape is what makes airplanes the magical machines they are. Kits are routinely dinged for having "sparse" cockpit detail, and no one argues, but say something about the shape of an kit being wrong and you will be damned for being a "rivet counter". Makes no sense at all to me.

[Pat Hawkey]

Thanks for backing me up, sir. My thoughts haven't changed one bit since posting that one. I look at Black Box (and the like) resin cockpits and shudder. Who wants to spend time on that nonsense? (I guess plenty of guys do, judging by the availability of that stuff.) I have an absurd number of kits with glued-up fuselages and wings -- taken to that stage just to see the shape. Hopefully, I'll get back to them all one day...