This may sound kind of flakey but i have sort of stumbled upon something that i find very intriguing, which i can see as an interestng way of adding more '1/18' scale models to any collection.
You'll note i have 1/18 scale in quotation marks. This mostly pertains to aircraft but can be applied to anything. I have progressively been coming to the conclusion that i will have to add off scale models to my collection, if i want to continue to have decent variety. Even when 21c, AT and BBI were in full force this was the case because so many subjects were never going to be covered by them. RC planes have been a big help but event they are limited. Very large aircraft, i'm talking B-1's and B-52's etc are never going to be made near to 1/18 scale, in any commercial RC form, if for no other reason than the package size would need to be so big that they would not be commercially viable.
Realizing this, i still wanted to be able to get these larger types of planes into my collection; but the only choice was to go well under scale to do it. This all came to a head a few weeks ago when a nice RC B-2 bomber was released. It has a 63 inch wingspan, a nice size but only about 1/32 scale. After much deliberation i decided i'd probably go for it but the fact it was so underscale was not sitting well with me. I really, really like things being to scale and have been pretty stubborn about this over the years.
What to do? I was toying (no pun intended) with many different ideas, including taking forced perspective photos of my underscale planes to at least make them appear 1/18, to do flats instead (which are photocopies of high quality pictures enlarged to 1/18 scale) etc but i didn't really like these solutions.
Then one day recently i took my glasses off to rub my eyes and for some reason looked through them while they were far away from me. Low and behold the object i was looking at appeared huge and sharply in focus. I'd seen this effect before of course but its potential had never dawned on me.
So i went and dug out an old 1/32 model airplane i had...it's all bashed up but served the purpose. I moved my glasses back and forth in front of my eyes until the model appeared to be about twice its size. I then compared this image it to actual 1/18 planes in the room and it looked just as good as any of them.
So, to make a long story a bit longer, i think what i'm going to do is to go ahead now and get this B-2 and maybe other well off scale aircraft models that i desire. I can enjoy them on their own and now, if i want to view them in '1/18' scale, simply look at them through my glasses held several inches in front of my eyes and they will magically transform to 1/18 scale.
As i said, i know this sounds flakey but i find it to be quite powerful and a resourceful, for lack of a better word, way to add greater variety to my collection while preserving, at least to a degree, the scale purity of it.
Now i'm considering getting 1/24 mosquitos, hurricanes, harriers and even thinking about a 1/32 ju-88. These never really interested me before but now that i can so quickly view them in 1/18 scale, literally at a glance, i find them much more appealing.
I can even see applications for this to tanks (thinking 1/24 t-34 and su-100) star wars stuff (imperial shuttle, at-at bmf) and other neat stuff like a 1/35 schnellboot or Dora railway gun.
And no, i am neither drunk nor on crack as i write this.
