So Why Start A Newsletter?
Basically, I like writing. Probably more than doing videos, but as our chosen hobby is so well suited for that medium, I believe videos can be more helpful. (At least that’s what I tell myself.) Yet I still miss my blogging days when all I did was write. And yes, those were long, drawn out rambles too. Some were straightforward accountings of what I did on any particular model. Many were tied to stories from my life in some way or another, both humorous and serious. A few were attempts at creative story telling. (Attempts…)
Through it all, I enjoyed the writing process. Over the years, between this website and my old Agape Models site I’ve easily posted 2000+ entries.
So this newsletter is essentially a way for me to periodically write whatever comes to my mind, mostly related to the hobby, but maybe a few times not entirely. We’ll see. Whatever it is that I do write, I can guarantee you it will contain words! Some might even be coherent, but I make no promises.
And don’t worry… it’s free. It will be posted on the site for all to see, and if you subscribe to my site, you’ll be notified when it is released.
What Is Mayschinen Krieger?
As I’ve been posting old Patreon videos, I arrived at the point that an old Ma. K Wave 1/20 SAFS build series was in line to be posted. As it is a 12 part series, I decided to break it up with three videos a week for four weeks. On top of that, I have two new videos ready to go, one a review of Lincoln Wright’s latest book, and the other a single episode build of the Ma. K Kröte. And I’d already started another Ma. K build for a new video that covered the Wave 1/20 AFS Mk. II. When I looked at the calendar, I realized that with a little shifting, all those Ma. K videos would fit in May.
The “Mayschinen” name is not really original. I’d seen on Jamie Haggo’s channel he was doing “Arma April”, and so I riffed on that and thought “Maschinen Krieger May”. And then my lonely little neuron fired off and I crammed it all into Mayschinen Krieger. I rigorously market tested the name on my go-to test audience (my wife) and she said “that’s nice sweetie”, so it must be pretty clever.
Thus May will have a lot of Ma. K. All Ma. K in fact. So if you like Ma. K, I hope you enjoy it. If not, I’ll see you in June! 🤪🤣
Kits In Progress
I have several kits that I am actively working on.
Wave 1/20th Ma. K AFS MK. II
This will be the last of the Mayschinen videos, scheduled for May 31st. It’s a fun kit, and a very simple and straightforward design. Wave will (or already has) released a dual boxing Mk. I/Mk. II set, and I was wanting to build it. But with the whole May focus, I decided to pull my old Mk. II boxing off the shelf that I already had and get to work on it. As far as I know it’s all the same plastic. And speaking of the dual boxing set, if you want it, I’d recommend ordering it sooner than later. Wave doesn’t produce a ton of kits, and they sell out fast. And this one being 2-in-1 makes it a decent deal. (Ignoring the shipping cost..) I generally order mine from Hobbylink Japan, but you can get it from other sources as well. (Lincoln Wright carries them on his site.)
Eduard 1/48 P-39
This one is slowly progressing. I love P-39s, and I had one of the Eduard Dual Combos in the stash, so I decided to build one. It will most likely be broken up across two (maybe three) videos. One will cover the cockpit, and the other(s) the painting and weathering. It will be a desert bird, and those were always fairly beat up. Look for it late summer most likely.
I have not built the Arma Hobby P-39, which is a newer kit. For one, I wasn’t real impressed with how it built up after watching a few videos. Not that the Eduard kit is perfect by any stretch. But I’ve already built four of them, so I know what it will be like.
The main reason I haven’t tackled the Arma P-39 kit is that it costs about 61% more than the Eduard P-39 Weekend Edition. And I didn’t see anything that convinced me that Arma’s kit was 61% better. If the Eduard kit was not good, maybe. But it ain’t bad at all. And I have two in the stash. Maybe one day I will build the Arma kit. It just won’t be this day.
Wave 1/20 Ma. K Seapig
I actually have this one fairly far along, but I was distracted by the P-39 and AFS. I have two videos ready, but I still need to do the paint and weathering. This will likely be a summer/fall appearance. It’s basically just a space-based SAFS with all sorts of lumps, bumps, and even a satellite dish to catch all the shows. My main attraction to this kit is I think the name “Seapig” is funny! (But it is a cool kit.)
Another reason I like this kit is that when I switched to scifi back in 2017, and I “discovered” Lincoln Wright, it was his Seapig that I saw first. And while I had no idea who he was at the time, or what a Seapig was, it just really had a look that grabbed me. (The Seapig, not Linc… 🤣) I’ve been waiting patiently for Wave to re-release this one. As soon as I saw it on HLJ, I pre-ordered it. And while it has sat on the shelf for a while, I’m having a lot of fun with it now that it is being built.
New Stuff
I’ve tried to go for a “zero expenditure” model when it comes to acquiring new stuff. However, a few things popped up on my radar that made me invoke my “buy one/sell two” rule.
Eduard’s 1/48 P-40E
I love P-40s, almost as much as Spitfires. For years though, I was never entirely happy with the kits that were available. All had some form of annoyance. The AMT/AMTech kits had some serious fit issues, and I found quite a few warped parts. The old Otaki and Mauve kits were not bad, but were hard to find. Trumpeter and Bronco’s kits weren’t actually bad overall, but their cockpits were so shallow it was comical. Hasegawa’s kit was pretty nice, but the use of inserts (that never quite fit) made it a bit of a chore. When Airfix came out with their P-40B, I was quite happy with that. But I always wanted a really nice P-40E.
Thankfully, Eduard has released one. I ordered the “Overtrees” version… it’s just the parts. No instructions, decals, or any of the photoetch nonsense. Just plastic. I downloaded the instructions from Eduard’s site, and as for decals – well, I have about 100 sets in a notebook from my aircraft days. Just for P-40s. 🤦♂️
The plastic looks great. It remains to be seen if it will be a victim of Eduard’s overengineering. (Looking at you Tempest…) But the details are so very nice.
When will I start on it? I’m not sure really. Maybe this year, maybe next. I’d planned on only doing 2-3 airplanes this year. The Sea Hawk was one, the P-39 is another, so what is holding up the P-40E? That would be….
Trumpeter’s 1/48 Fairey Barracuda
This may not be the ugliest airplane of all time, but it is definitely top 10 in my mind. Yet it is so ugly it’s cool. And I absolutely love the Fleet Air Arm colors. As a bonus, they often got really, really weathered. So when I saw that Trumpeter was releasing this in 1/48 scale, I pre-ordered one back in January. And now that it has been released, this will be the next airplane after the P-39.
I’d built a resin 1/72 scale Planet Models Barracuda Mk. V a few years back, and loved that one. But I always wanted it in 1/48 scale. I sort of knew only Trumpeter or Special Hobby would tackle it, and I am so glad it was Trumpy and not Special Hobby. Will the details be accurate? Probably not. Will it fit nicely and look like the Barracuda? I’m pretty sure it will. Every Trumpeter kit I’ve built (and HobbyBoss as well) has been almost Tamiya fit. So I don’t think this one will have me down, down, down on my knees…
Plus when I do the video I’ll get to say “oooooh, Barracuda” like Heart sang in that classic song. That alone will be worth it. And I’m sure I won’t overdo that gag. Not at all.
Kaiyodo 1/35 Maschinen Krieger P.K.A. Kangaroo
I’d never even heard of this crazy looking thing. It’s like a Jerry with arms. And it is from Kaiyodo, whose kits I really like. They’re all plastic. No polycaps, no photoetch, no nonsense. So that one is on order from HLJ. Kaiyodo put two in the box, so I’ll either have the chance to build two, or… who knows? 🤔
Now, if you’re thinking “so you’re only building Ma.K and airplanes?”, well, no. Not really. But one of the things I promised myself after I gave up any thoughts of being a “YouTuber”, and also walked away from Patreon, was that I would only build what I wanted to build, at whatever pace I wanted, whenever I wanted.
And so while this one will be sooner rather than later (meaning “2025”), I’m not sure exactly when. But it is so cool looking. Well, cool in a ridiculous way. Kinda like the ooooh Barracuda.
Other Stuff
How many more old Patreon videos are you going to spam release?
I’ve been releasing old Patreon videos pretty much daily since the start of the new year. And of course we can’t forget the “release the entire 2022 years worth at once” fiasco. Some have been old vlogs from 2021-2024, while others have been various old “exclusive” build series projects.
Despite the brisk release pace, I still have about 150 videos that could get released. I have to check through all of them, as some are so out of context it wouldn’t be helpful to release them. And others just make me think “what were you thinking Jon?!?!” I am going to slow down the pace a bit, going to 2-3 days a week starting in May.
As far as the “exclusive” stuff, I still have the 40K Basilisk and Ma. K Fledermaus to go after the SAFS in May.
I hope to be through all the old stuff by the end of the year, and then it will be a much more sedate pace of releasing a new video every 2-3 weeks.
Closing Arguments
It’s been interesting rekindling my airplane building efforts. As I worked on a few kits, I quickly saw how all the miniature and tabletop gaming detail painting helped me out a lot – far more than I would have ever imagined during my airplane years. And overall I’ve found that the stuff I did know before has been refined quite a bit. So it’s nice to see how the old skills have been sharpened, and quite a lot more have been added to the “bag of tricks”.
Something I had not counted on was that I find myself to be far less enthusiastic about airplanes than I thought I’d be. At first, I thought it would be like running into an old friend and having this warm, wonderful reunion. Yet as I’ve gone into it more, I realized it’s really been like running into that old friend, and realizing they way things were is just that – the way they were.
Now that doesn’t mean I won’t build aircraft… far from it. I do want to build them. But it’s made me see how much I’ve enjoyed the “breathing room” that scifi provides that aircraft, at least the historical ones, just don’t.
I was reminded of this immediately when I finished the Sea Hawk. Fairly quickly I received emails and comments that let me know I was “back in the pilot’s seat”, so to speak. “The color on the upper surfaces is wrong.” “Why did you build the Trumpeter kit? It’s shape is just wrong!” “The seat belts are the wrong color.” The list went on and on.
In my past, I would not have worried too much about all that. And I care even less today. Yet I actually felt a sense of sadness for those folks. Sitting in front of them is the result of a fellow modeler having fun, and all they can do is think of ways to (essentially) inflate their ego. Yes, I get that some offer things like that “sincerely”, though the longer I am on this journey, the more I doubt how sincere much of it is.
But to think that the sum total of their view of the hobby is “what can I find wrong?” is sad. I really do feel sorry for so many that the joy is in sorrow, or so it seems. It was something I thought of quite a bit years ago, but now having come back to it, the odor is quite strong.
Yet it’s convinced me even more that the notion of “if you’re not having fun you’re doing it wrong” is absolutely true.
I’ll build airplanes, and Warhammer, and Ma. K, and Star Wars, and Gunpla, and tanks, and who knows what else. The joy is in the journey, and I want to squeeze all out of it that I can. And I hope you do too.
Happy day to you friends,
Jon
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