Luft46's Blog

Usually I buy around one or two magazines a month, this month it was three, two of which are unusal for me.

Military Illustrated Modeller is Brett Greens and Marcus Nicholls  effort that deals alternately each month with Aviation and Armour Subjects. Its now up to Issue Twenty and this is the first that I have purchased, generally I have struggled to find even one article of interest in each edition. This issue was a winner  with two articles on the Biber being a build and a diorama article, with the bonus being sixteen photos that were new to me . Many of the other articles except the Euro Militaire photos were of minor interest to me and I suspect it may be another twenty issues before my next purchase. Unusually this magazine is perfect bound with thicker than average paper and cover. I am not a great fan of either editor but having eighteen pages on the Biber was always going to suck me in.

Speaking of Marcus I picked up a copy of Tamiya Model Magazine mostly for the review of the Meng Kayaba kit. This magazine is one of the last generalist titles out there with the demise of Military in Scale which got quite schizophrenic in how it was treating Aviation subjects with adding this then splitting it off to a seperate magazine then reincorporating it again. The only other major generalist magazine is of course  Fine Scale Modeller which is a mere shadow of its former glory and so much more dumbed down. I picked up a copy of that in Thailand when there last month as it was the only modelling magazine available.
With Tamiya magazine you can always guarrantee a car or motor bike at the front to start the fun which I usually skip over. Seven pages were devoted to the Meng review and this seems quite thorough. The new releases section while not big does cover a reasonable range and the final item of interest was Spencer Pollard the former editor of Military in Scale joining this magazine. Reading the back section I noticed that Brett Green would be doing a build of the Simca 5 by Tamiya in Model Military International, funnily enough the same kit done by Marcus Nicholls in the Tamiya Magazine, Tamiya sem to be getting their moneys worth from this publishing group or is that me being cynical. Also Spencer gets an interview in that same magazine, cross promoting in the Great Channel Nine tradition.

Scale Military Modeller International rounds out the collection. This is by far my favourite magazine for non aircraft modelling, whilst Gary Hatcher is the News editor he hasnt been allowed to mess around too much with the contents and screw it up. SAMI is also a magazine that has gone downhill recently. Whilst no great fan of Richard Franks and his obsession with Hasegawa releases the more “commercial” model that SAMI uses has seen the virtual demise of short reviews and the few given are shall we say sanitised in their wording, I used to know what to expect after reading a SAMI review, now I dont bother.
What is pleasing is how much content in the marketplace is shown under various areas and that the reviews are not too self serving.

Just a last word, you will notice the pocketmags.com logo in the bottom left of this cover, this is an app that allows (allegedly) you to be able to purchase the magazine on your tablet device. Having been in existence over a year it still is very flaky,  have tried it both on an iPad and a Samsung Galaxy and it works on neither, for a clue just check the apps ratings and comments, unfortunately both the publishers and pocket mags are in fervent denial of its present lack of usefulness, I really hope this changes in the future if only to be able to read what I have already paid for.