Nostalgia hit again. With the events of the past year, I have a lot of my family's keepsakes in the house that I still need to go through and catalog–I imagine my brother still has to do the same with a lot of the stuff he has, too. With the holidays approaching, I got to thinking–which can be a dangerous thing, especially when you're doing the 7 days, 12 hours a day thing…
I was remembering back to the early days of FineScale Modeler, back when it was the fresh face on the plastic modeling scene. Why? Maybe because the first several issues came out in late 1982, my first year in college. When I needed a break from the academics, I'd reach for FSM. Why? In no particular order:
The early issues were cover-to-cover reads for me. Usually, I'd read it at least four times in order to make sure I could catch every work of every article and every ad for stuff I had never heard of before. FSM wasn't afraid to publish full-blown scratchbuild articles, or involved conversion articles, or even superdetail articles. In fact, I have two copies of the Fall 1984 issue with Bob Steinbrunn's article on cockpit detailing–my original copy is so shop worn and dog eared that when a club member was giving away his collection of early issues, I snagged his nearly new copy.
Compared to the competition, FSM gave me something that the other guys wouldn't, couldn't, or didn't–advanced projects, complete with either in-progress photos or drawings that helped explain what the builder did. It really helps to see what the author did when he says he "used 5-minute epoxy to reinforce the area" rather than just read the words.
The articles covered the subject from beginning to end, more or less. What finally got me to end my subscription was the simplification of the projects, or the "let's condense a large project down to a Top-10 bulleted list" mentality of the late 1990's and early 2000's. That, along with the semi annual "How to apply decals" and "How to use and airbrush" articles, soured me on the magazine. I had been a continuous subscriber since the introduction of the magazine (I actually found the cancelled check from my initial subscription when we cleaned up Mom's condo!), and believe me, it was hard to ignore the renewal cards. But I did, and every time I pick up a new issue on the newsstand and flip through it, I am reminded that nothing has really changed.
Before the naysayers start to pile on with the claims that "You've just improved your craft, FSM is as good as it ever was!", I'd like to say hogwash. Not true. If that were true, why did the short-lived Aerospace Modeler Magazine hit me the same way that that the first FSM issues hit me? The projects were complete, they were fully explained, and in some cases matched those early days of FSM.
Alas, I fear the day of the print magazine has changed drastically. I was hoping for good things with AMM, and a few months ago I saw a rumbling that something might be in the air (no pun intended). But these days, niche magazines certainly must walk a razor's edge between profit and loss. I would imagine that breaking even is the goal for some of the smaller publications. One can see why FSM, with the might of Kalmbach Publishing behind them, still soldiers on while the others tend to fall by the wayside…
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With the holidays approaching, my mind tends to also wander back to those days when I would go to the hobby shop with Dad. We were looking for one thing–grass mat for the train platform. Once we had that, we could set the trains up under the Christmas tree. I haven't set up a train under a Christmas tree since my short affair with N gauge in 1990 or 1991, but I do remember the Lionel set under the tree as a kid. One of the other things that I now have in my garage is the 1972-era Lionel set Mom and Dad bought us when we first moved to Florida. That train set was rode hard and put up wet many times, yet it still runs. I offered to let my brother take the Lionel set since I had the Scott Paper HO gauge trains our Grandmother got for us (and the other grandkids, too) one year. My brother let me have both sets. If I can find a way to one day get them both up and running, I plan on doing so. I've always wanted to actually construct a full-blown HO layout anyway. All I need is another room on the house…
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Speaking of model railroading, one other Christmas time attraction in South Florida used to the the National Enquirer's shindig. They'd get one of those huge (very tall–like in the neighborhood of 100 feet tall) spruce trees, light it up, set it up next to their National Headquarters, and charge admission to see it. Along with the huge tree, there was this HO gauge layout housed in several large tents. It was the product (if I recall correctly) of several railroad clubs, and it took maybe an hour to walk through the whole thing. When you have relatives visiting, you have to find some interesting things to go see–this was one of them.
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I'll be back soon with more holiday memories. Until then, be good to one another. I bid you Peace.