Chuck Kourouklis

Enjoying the link? I carved out the really belligerent parts - it just had to be shorter and cleaner. Still think it does the job, though.

Yeah. Finally.

First, get it straight who's appointing himself - then ask him.

"Foaming at the mouth" isn't the sort of language to indicate you don't think anybody's off-base. And an honest examination of this thread will reveal that the true "foaming" started not in the criticism, but in the same, sad personal attacks on the critics, as it has been, time immemorial in these forums, rinse, lather, repeat. So now it's an abuse of over-privelege to have a frank discussion about a kit in a forum ABOUT model kits, huh? And you guys have the brass to harp on twisted panties?

Riiiight. It's all tizzy over that lousy little pair of pants the emperor forgot to put on today. Got nothin' at all to do with the mob waiting to lynch anyone who points it out.

Danm straight, Bob Not only is this the sort of false equivalency I've had eviscerated for 15 months now in item 2 of the linked blog (look at that beauty: wanting a kit to BE WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE = laziness and absence of skill, makes you a gluer, not a builder), it totally ignores the inevitable, obvious notion that there are still plenty of ways for a builder to express his skill with an accurate kit, and that some of us would rather spend that same effort and ability enhancing an accurate kit than correcting an inaccurate one. But such are the flights of gibbering irrationality these guys have to resort to to support their attacks. I'm still trying to understand how anyone can sell himself on the idea that the burden of credibility doesn't fall on manufacturers to deliver on the promise of a scale model, it falls on us as consumers not to risk upsetting them!

And I, on the other hand, have the hope-springs-eternal attitude of critiquing the kits but buying them anyway - I'll probably have a fourth copy of the Kit-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, thanks to all the goodies in the latest-version-that-should-have-been-first - not to mention a history of actually fixing a lot of the problems I harp on. Precisely ZERO of which has shag-all to do with anyone having eyes and brain enough to tell where a kit might be going off course or not in representing its subject. But my case (never mind myriad others) does expose the inanity in the angles you guys always use, groping to justify your hysterics at anybody pointing out issues in a kit. And as long you all exhibit such a comprehensive inability to deal with those criticisms without going all ad hominem on the critic, picking and pecking away at the barely veiled misdirections you decree to be necessary credentials, you will inevitably betray your reactions for the hysterics they are. E v e r have you done so, and EVER will you. And I'll tell y'all who's NOT GOING TO WIN: a n y b o d y who'd appoint himself sanitizer of whatever opinion he doesn't like in a discussion where criticism of the subject is to be expected.

Thanks for the update, Mr M!

oh, just caught this - no, what was suggested is that Sean's model, built from a test shot, may have been short-shot relative to the resin patterns with the wider door frames that look better. But yeah - I'd expect a lot more of a mess around the window perimeter from a short shot.

Yup. Saw that.

Just trying to give back a little ground after all the grillin'...

Well if I read Brett right, it ain't just the material but the injection machine - which on test shots is usually smaller, older, not quite up to full production line standards. So the pressure maybe isn't quite fully calibrated and the mold doesn't fill completely. The window perimeter edges look pretty clean for such a scenario as that. On the other hand, one would certainly hope the upper border isn't as wavy as it appears...

I'd love it if you were right on that, Brett - it was one of the key gobs to smack me on that first plastic body shell pic, like "where did those curves come from?"

Here's the comparison that really has me wondering what happened: That's a pretty agreeable side day light opening on the pattern. WIndow frame and radii seem pretty good for scale there too. So how did we get to this DLO (side window outline) from those patterns?

Went after some of the more overhead shots I could find of 1:1s - the red one particularly goes some modest length to vindicating the Moebius curvature as seen on Sean's model, but the bottom one, not quite so much... pretty angle-dependent.

Absence of the crest ain't a problem at all. But the spacing of the vertical grille bars is off, and the headlight nacelles seem pretty large for scale, with a more deeply tunneled late '70s look. On Sean's model, they give the impression of either lining right up or even possibly overlapping inside the edges of the raised hood section, where they're pretty well outside those lines in the two 1:1 pics above. Off-putting as it is for its absence of finesse and precision, the Motormax nacelles actually seem somewhat closer - for size and relative depth anyway, though they have some problems of their own.

I've seen that exchange, Brett. The Moebius rep did NOT acquit herself (himself?) well.

But that's the exact thing of it all, Mike. As Bob T2 said above, there's a lot of stuff lately so far off that you don't need to be any kind of "expert" to see that it's off. And I have some understanding of the process, thanks, and the reason it turns out to be irrelevant to this discussion is that this process also produces good kits. Why can't the results be more consistent? And I'm sorry, but unless there are significant changes from preview shots, you can judge from pictures. In all my critiquing, I have found some time, shock and surprise, not only to get some stuff built, but reviewed for national publication. Saw one preview shot of a kit hiked up in the front driver's side with a wheel off center, thought to myself, surely that's a pre-production problem - and don'cha know, wound up evaluating the final version of that very kit with that very issue. Headlights too far out and rear quarters too truncated and wheel arches too flat and roofs too low and upper fenders too broad are all things you only need a fair set of eyes connected to a fairly functioning brain to see in pictures, and there have been too many times in my experience that this stuff came out in 3D exactly the way it looked in 2D previews. Sure, there's engineering you can't see in photos that'll make a kit more seductive once you have it in your hands; the latest drag version of a certain kit is compelling enough almost to overcome its problems, but in the end, it's another case of great design done in by an inaccurate body. And this is a forum dedicated to discussions of kits. Why shouldn't this stuff come up? *sigh* I've had this false dichotomy and irrelevant challenge covered in items 2 and 3 in that same blog for how long now? Suuure, we never build, and we certainly never FIX anything we complain about. It's amazing that no matter how many times the handle snaps right up and thwacks you guys between the eyes, some o' y'all just WON'T STOP STEPPING on that rake. Even the fact that somebody fashioned a rake specifically for you to step on doesn't seem to slow you down. Post script - oh, and until any of you guys produce masters for Ed Fluck, I'd kinda stifle this sort of tripe around plowboy, too.

Really, Mike? "Decency", to wait to have the thing in your hands? I have had that whole angle, along with a host of other tired old tropes, torn to pieces for more than a year now. Yours is item 4 at the April 2013 blog linked in my signature below. That's how predictable, rote, and constantly regurgitated all these canards are. So without any sort of RATIONAL argument, try to make it a matter of "decency", I guess. Okay, then how exactly is it INDECENT to judge a kit on pictures - most particularly, when you've done it before, and things have turned out in your hands exactly the way they looked in those pictures, time and time again? This fluff about gratitude is a fine little warm-and-fuzzy, but Moebius doesn't RUN on gratitude and they don't CLOSE DOWN on criticism. Moebius runs on SALES, and I'd have to think making sure the side window opening and the door frame around it don't actually get worse from tooling pattern to production certainly wouldn't hurt. Then again, considering all who are willing to lap up "good enough" and browbeat anybody who asks for better, maybe US manufacturers indeed know the market better than I do. But people who constantly make criticism of inanimate objects grounds for personal attacks are on distinctly shaky ground, daring to bring up topics like "decency".

I'm just fine with the 1/20, pretty excited! Don't mean I wouldn't get a 1/25 if they got around to it...

Well, if nothing else, at least we're now seeing the tires the rear fender arches were sized for from the start... That angle and even that book have come up several times in discussion 'round here before, Ken. And Tamiya certainly got their approach to work - but I'd argue that's because they'd mastered the sorts of distortions to flatter a subject, and I've long held we're less likely to notice deviations of that variety. Far as the Mustang goes, you're not alone in thinking the model looks better. But implicit in the definition of a "model" is something that represents a subject as closely and accurately as possible, and the body shell in this kit is an objective failure in that regard. I'd go so far as to say the mode of thinking expressed in Master Modeler is no longer entirely current. It was conceived at a time when scaling techniques stopped well short of assuring you scale accuracy not just in linear dimension, but in every angle and every change of curve radius. So while their masters might have been bang-on in every linear dimension (as the old Monogram 1/24 '69 Camaro is purported to be), two factors may have contributed to a master not "looking right": 1) 3D curvatures, much less straightforward to scale accurately, were probably off, and 2) the paradigm of holding a miniature up and standing right next to the 1:1 to compare it may have played a part. That latter has been used as a justification for all sorts of "shape-teasing" and it practically guarantees a distorted result. Unless you constantly view your model at a distance proportional in scale to that from which you'd closely examine the 1:1 - if it's 3 to 4 feet from a 1:1, that'd mandate your eyeballs around 1.5 to 2 inches from your 1/25 model - it just won't add up. Your actual working distance from a model is more like what, 1 to 2 feet depending on how you hold it? Which puts your perspective of the model around the equivalent of viewing the 1:1 from around 25 to 50 feet away. This is why I'd argue that photographs, for all their distortions from perspective and focal length, are probably a somewhat more reliable comparison standard than standing feet away from the 1:1. What do I have to buttress my point of view? The Polar Lights '66 Batmobile - very publicly documented as patterned after 3D scanning of the subject - looks right. It may not have the correct number of apertures in its strobe, it may not have been possible to mold aerials and gadgets perfectly in scale, but in gross proportioning it looks ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. And it is gross proportioning we're talking about - off by close to ten percent in this LX's roof height, very noticeable to many - before anybody starts greasin' this "perfect model" slope that just don't slip. Then there's Moebius, and Revell itself. Both have developed kits from traditional scaling methods and from CAD data. Guess which efforts reliably look more like their subjects. Revell's 2nd-gen 197 Mustangs and the '15 are in an entirely different league for proportional accuracy than this LX, and unless there's been any "teasing" that we don't know about in those examples, I'll have to guess there's more accurate data gathered by more contemporary means playing a part.

Hey, Rob - only posted pics of stuff changed or new from previous version. Chassis is still stock, no tubs. Sox & Martin 'Cuda is missing stock hoods and two stock tires at a minimum, far as I can reckon after a skim... (edit - as Brett posted above, re 'Cuda...)

Sure, Marcos, I've actually gotten a great deal of personal satisfaction out of doing just what you describe. For those who'd say that you're less of a modeler for pointing out kit problems, though, or assuming you're just automatically incapable of fixing stuff if you do - well, that's the endlessly-reshoveled pile of horse dung where I draw the line.

Icing.

See, Harry, that's why this forum needs "LIKE" buttons.