December 2024 Update - Where We're At and Where We're Going

[Brad Cancian]

Hello everyone! I thought it was about time I gave everyone an update on where we're at and some musings on where we're headed.

Apologies on the length of this one - perhaps grab a coffee or a stiff drink to see you through, wot!



Where have I been...?

Up front, I do apologise that I have been somewhat quiet of late. Some may know that I've been quite heavily distracted in the last 4-5 months, mainly due to His Majesty's Royal Australian Flying Corps (otherwise known as the Royal Australian Air Force) sending me on another inter-state posting, this time to sunny Queensland here in Australia. Having served in the RAAF for almost 26 years now, and moving around every 3-4 years, these moves are ?old hat?, but they do mean packing up my life into a shipping container, travelling to the new destination (in this case 2,100km, or about 1,300 miles, by road - twice), and getting everything re-established.

Complicating things also is that we had to do quite a bit of work to get our old house ready for sale (which is now done), and at the same time building the house we have now moved in to, and on a large plot of land that needs plenty of work (including significant earthworks). So, though we have now moved in to the new house, there still remains lots to do which will continue to keep me distracted (or "gainfully employed", as my wife says).

Some time soon I hope to have the "man cave" and modelling bench up and running again (that will be one of my many Christmas projects around the property). Hopefully normal operations will resume in the new year, and I can start getting the smell of glue and paint back into the nostrils again (with only one build completed this year, I certainly have "the itch"!).



Enough about me!

Where are we at as we approach the end of 2024?

Firstly, I thank you all for continuing to participate positively and constructively in the last few months (and indeed throughout the last 9 months or so of my tenure as administrator). I also thank Lance and Zac for continuing to keep things running smoothly while I've been distracted. We have a wonderful membership here, who are all very supportive of each other. I know that this is not the case with other forums, so again, thank you!

We have obviously had a significant change this year with the passing of Dave Wilson, our previous owner and administrator, in March. I have had the absolute privilege of being able to take the reins from Dave, who set us up very well to continue providing this great forum to our membership. I still have some very big shoes to fill, and I have very much appreciated your patience as I worked through how everything functions.

On that note, thanks also to those who participated in the Dave Wilson memorial group build, which ran from April to end of October. We had a great turn out, with 25 models completed. Well done! I am sure that your efforts were greatly appreciated (Dave would have been proud).

We have also continued to receive excellent support from the likes of Special Hobby, KP, Eduard, and new ?home grown? manufacturer Aero Rarities. Thank you again to those wonderful companies for your ongoing support.

Membership through the year has continued to hold steady. Not expanding significantly, but holding steady. We have an excellent group of regulars at the mess bar with a Gin and French in hand, keeping things lively! Thanks to you all, chaps!

Donations have also been steady; we have had enough in the coffers to continue to pay our bills and have a little left over, so my sincerest thanks to those that have been consistently donating. Without your support, we couldn't continue to offer the forum as we do.



So, where to from here for 2025?

I would like to see us be the premier WW1 modelling forum on the web, whilst providing a supportive and encouraging environment for all. That is my simple aim for our little slice of the internet.

First cab off the rank ? I understand that there's no obvious place for discussion on the forum itself, and for comments, inputs, and feedback. I have accordingly renamed the ?Forum Comments and Feedback? forum to ?Forum Inputs, Discussion and Fixes?; this is where I intend on eliciting your inputs on specific topics (a number of which I will touch on below). Stand by for more posts there shortly!

Second, is a little bit of clean up. A little while back I surveyed the group regarding the utility of the vendor sections of the forum. I am still yet to do the clean up on these parts of the forum; I will look to get to this early in the new year, as well as some other general tidying. We have lots of boards, not all of which are utilised, or which have a low turn out, so I do think we can trim things up a bit. I welcome any suggestions or thoughts on how we could do this so that it most benefits our members.

Third, I want to run more regular group builds, most likely around two per year. These generate good participation amongst our membership. I would also like to start offering prizes to help encourage participation. The prizes would come from the samples that we receive from our sponsors. I would also like to consider something like a ?forum member of the year?, or ?model of the month? type award, to recognise not only skills but community mindedness of our members. Again, I welcome thoughts here on themes, and so on.

Fourth, I would like to see our membership continue to expand. There are plenty of very skilled WW1 modellers that I see on places like facebook; I intend to actively start ?scouting? and inviting those folks to our forum. The more modelling talent we can bring to the site, the more we can all benefit.

Fifth, as a follow on from the above, I would like to foster learning and the sharing of tips, techniques, and skills growth amongst our membership. No one modeller is perfect, and we're all at different points of our modelling journey. I intend to encourage members to create posts on their favourite techniques, or have folks who are looking to solve a particular challenge, or increase their skills, to start new posts.

Sixth, I am thinking about some more general posts and musings on the industry, or particular topics of interest to our membership. Whether this is a monthly ?Moderator Musings? topic, or something similar, I am not sure. I welcome thoughts on what you might find interesting.

Lastly, and importantly, on the topic of sponsors and kit reviews, a few points:

-   I will look to continue our excellent relationship with Special Hobby and KP, as well as hopefully with our 'home grown' Aero Rarities. I'll also aim to try and grow our fledgling relationship with Eduard (this has been a tad challenging so far, as we are understandably a small player for one of the largest model companies in the market today, amongst many vying for samples).

-   I intend to keep us focussed primarily on WW1 aviation, which may mean that we see a drop in things like non-WW1 related kit reviews (though I still am very happy to continue to provide a place for non-WW1 subjects in our member boards). Though Special Hobby and KP are excellent sponsors and support us magnificently, they are not primarily WW1 focussed, so we may see peaks and troughs in terms of what we get for review from these companies.

-   One of the main challenges I (and Dave before) me found was getting more 1/32 scale sponsorship from manufacturers. 1/32 is the favoured scale of many on the forum, so I would like to showcase more 1/32 products. There are quite a few players (Copper State, Lukgraph, Aviattik, etc) who produce primarily in 1/32, but in all honesty, eliciting samples from these companies has been particularly difficult. This is no slight on those manufacturers; free samples cost those manufacturers money to produce and send out. With sites such as facebook affording free showcasing of those products, it makes it all the more difficult for us to elicit samples for review. My aim is to work on the ?value proposition? that our site offers to those manufacturers, and hopefully we may start to see some samples head our way for review. I can only try!

-   Ultimately, I would like to cultivate relationships with our manufacturers so that they are an active participant in our forum, so that our membership can gain direct access to those manufacturers and influence their future products.

-   Lastly, I am thinking about expanding the kit review section to allow member submission of reviews of older kits. There's a wealth of WW1 kits that have been released over the last 60-odd years, and accordingly, a wealth of subject matter to review. I need to think more about how I might make this work, but I have some ideas.

So, that's where we're at and some ideas on where I think we may want to head.

That all being said, this is a forum for you, the membership. If you do have ideas, PM me or post them here. I certainly welcome and encourage the inputs!

Thank you all again,



Brad Cancian
Owner and Adminstrator
forum.WW1aircraftmodels.com

[NigelR]

Thanks for this update Brad. First let me start by saying a very big thank you to you, Lance and Zac for all your hard work on this site, it is much appreciated.

As I am retired and probably have too much time on my hands, here's a few initial thoughts.

- Increasing membership and also casual traffic (lurkers) is a really good thing to do. To do this, I think we need to consider our unique selling point. For me, this is the quantity of WWI kit builds we have on the site. These show, with pictures, how to build a specific kit and what challenges you might encounter. Every time I start a WWI aircraft kit, the first thing I do is search on here to look for specific builds so I know what to watch out for. This is what differentiates us from YouTube and Facebook - you don't have to sit through a video or search through hundreds of different FB posts to see the steps in a build. And because it's a forum, you can engage with the modeller and ask questions, so you get much more of that community feel.

IMO we need to get the message out more widely that if anyone is going to build a WWI aircraft model there is likely to be a build of it on this site and this site should be the first place you look. That probably means we need to think about updating the home page, which hasn't changed much since Des's days.

- Relationship with kit manufacturers. I think we have to be realistic that there is very little commercial value in this site to WWI manufacturers, because members here are already likely to buy whatever they produce, and our community is relatively small. Manufacturers will get more commercial value by engaging with YouTubers and FB modellers who can reach a much bigger (and different) audience. Also, IMO kit reviews aren't very helpful because unless you build a kit, you don't really know what it's like.

Personally I would encourage manufacturers to share news here but I would not worry too much about trying to get them to provide review samples. Maybe getting them to donate the occasional prize or something like that (which leads to my next thought).....

- My final initial thought is that I am not in favour of competitions, model of the month, modeller of the year or whatever. I come here to be part of a community, not to be judged. We want to encourage modellers of all abilities and as soon as we start "judging" things, it's inevitable that certain modellers will win more than others. So for example, if you have a "prize" for a group build, allocate it randomly among all of those that took part instead of awarding it to the "best" model. That way you are encouraging participation, not elitism.


Hope that's all of some interest.....

[Dirigible-Al]

I personally like the idea of group builds even though I find them very difficult to be part of myself being such a slow builder. Despite this they good to follow. I am not against there being a winner of them though I am not sure about prizes given, my only issue being if I won a prize it would most probably be wasted on me as it would either be the wrong scale, something I wouldn't build or something that would join the huge stash. I think the freebies from manufacturers are better divvied out to volunteers who are prepared to build them immediately, that would benefit both Modeller and manufacturer. Modeller of the month is a good idea as it can be judged on models completed within that month but also other factors can be taken into consideration like the skill level of the modeller, it would be unfair to only award this to the likes of some people here who do masterpiece after masterpiece so consideration could be given to those who have improved, tackled difficult subjects or simply contributed a ton of stuff. I think Nigel had a good point in saying it is better to promote participation rather than elitism.
Alan.

[Brad Cancian]

Many thanks for your replies Nigel and Alan - you both make excellent points, especially in regards to group builds and review samples. This is why I love our little place on the internet

I'd certainly not deeply considered the 'elitism' aspect of awarding prizes to group builds, or something like a "MotM" - that is certainly not something that I want to be the focus, as I completely agree that participation and encouragement is the main aim. I just figured members might appreciate some goodies for their efforts. Good point also Alan on the fact that prizes might not be to someone's tastes. Definitely something for me to reconsider on how I might further develop or execute such ideas - thanks chaps

Good points also Nigel re manufacturers and samples, and value of in box reviews - your point on them having limited value for folks has given me something to think about. I'd love for us to be able to showcase build reviews, but there certainly is a time factor here - getting builds done is not always a speedy process, unless I can find more builders. Then I have things like international postage costs to factor in to get kits to those folks to build (being in Australia doesn't always help me), unless I can get manufacturers to ship direct to other reviewers. Perhaps I should also rethink the value to the membership of samples and reviews, and look to focus more on the manufacturer engagement piece. I see this engagement working well with the likes of Paul at Aero Rarities, and Edgar from CSM.

The home page is also an interesting point - it does indeed still reflect Des' legacy, and Dave left it that way. I am actually not sure how to modify said front page (and I don't think Dave knew how to either). In the absence of knowing how to play with this, I think I'll just have any links pointing direct to the forum page. I might try and figure the front page thing out again...

Lastly - I do indeed need to go on an 'information campaign' on the likes of Facebook, etc, to advertise our site some more. Leave that with me

Cheers again folks, and keep the great ideas coming!

BC 

[Richtrad]

Brad:

A very giant thank you to yourself, Lance and Zac.  You guys provide an amazing service for us Great War modellers.

For what it's worth, I am in complete agreement with everything Nigel said, and have some additional thoughts:

This site already is the premier WW1 modelling forum on the web.  The positive postings of the membership is a really great thing, and as you've mentioned, is not the case on some other sites.

I'd like to see the kit database (show us your ...) more prominently displayed. Sometimes my brain goes blank and I can't find it.

The vendor forums would be nice for announcements of new products, especially if vendors would be so kind as to maintain their sections.

A place for sharing techniques would be great. For instance, I use mostly acrylic paints due to the easier cleanup, and so use water color pencils to produce Fokker paint streaking, the E.V stained wing, Albatros birch fuselages and most propeller laminations, usually with various tinted washes applied afterwards, and I will never live long enough to properly roll a photo etch cooling jacket.

More group builds would be fine, but like Nigel, I'm not interested in "best ofs".

I'm in agreement that the site should just be for Great War models. I would welcome a section for other WWI equipment and/or dioramas.

Vendors really should be more invested in this site.  As an example, I suggested to Christian at Gothaforce to join in on this site, and he didn't seem interested. I found that confusing since he's not shy 

I'm not sure what value an older kit review section would have, unless the kit is still available, and kit reviews in general without a build to go along are of little value.

Anyway, Nigel said it better and more succinctly, and again Thank You Guys, Moderators, Admins and Builders who make this forum so freaking awesome.

Warren

[NigelR]

I think the freebies from manufacturers are better divvied out to volunteers who are prepared to build them immediately, that would benefit both Modeller and manufacturer.

I agree with this. Manufacturers want to see built kits. Also, an actual build shows the model warts and all in a factual manner that lets the reader make a judgement about whether they want to build it or not based on the skill level required.

Modeller of the month is a good idea as it can be judged on models completed within that month but also other factors can be taken into consideration like the skill level of the modeller, it would be unfair to only award this to the likes of some people here who do masterpiece after masterpiece so consideration could be given to those who have improved, tackled difficult subjects or simply contributed a ton of stuff.

I would be wary of this approach because IMO it's patronising the "poorer" modeller. And it will risk annoying the "better" modeller. There are plenty of sites where people compete with each other, one of the things I think helps build the community spirit here is that we are not competing for "likes" or "prizes".  But maybe that's just me.......

[Brad Cancian]

Thanks Warren, and Nigel again - great feedback!

Warren - I certainly intend on trimming some of the boards up a bit; good feedback on the "show us your..." boards, I can look to make these more prominent.

Gathering more membership from manufacturers is a challenge, and a nut for me to crack. My mission objectives are clear - goggles on and chocks away for me to get on with that work. Hopefully it will bear fruit!

Good feedback also on the 'older kit' reviews. Would you consider there to be value in some of these if they came with a build review? Or limit only to kits still available commercially?

Extending on that theme, would there be interest in threads that do a cross-section of available kits of a particular subject to best inform the modeller on which kits they may want to consider? For example, a thread on comparing each available kit of, say, 1/72 Fokker Dr1s, to compare accuracy, buildability, pros and cons, etc? (In such an example, one could compare the Roden, Eduard, and Revell offerings, which are still freely available)? Keen on some thoughts here.

Also, I have started a thread on possible topics for the next group build theme, here - https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=14748.0
Please jump in and add your theme ideas there too!

Cheers,

Brad

[NigelR]

Warren - I certainly intend on trimming some of the boards up a bit; good feedback on the "show us your..." boards, I can look to make these more prominent.

I'm with Warren on this one - the "show us your xyz build" is really useful, although I have to admit I wasn't sure if I had to add my own builds to that (which I haven't done so far).

Extending on that theme, would there be interest in threads that do a cross-section of available kits of a particular subject to best inform the modeller on which kits they may want to consider? For example, a thread on comparing each available kit of, say, 1/72 Fokker Dr1s, to compare accuracy, buildability, pros and cons, etc? (In such an example, one could compare the Roden, Eduard, and Revell offerings, which are still freely available)? Keen on some thoughts here.

IMO that's too much work and could quickly get out of date. And it also requires someone to give an opinion. Much better would be a way to index the builds on the site so that they can be searched by scale and subject. If you could enter "1/72" and "DrI" then you would get the relevant builds on the site and you could make your own comparison.  The "show us your xyz build" board nearly does this, although it mixes scales.

It's hard to add such metadata to existing threads, but I think trying to use the resources we have by making them easier to search and access would be better than creating more content..... I'd be happy to help with any data entry tasks to support any such effort.

[macsporran]

Brad - "Lastly - I do indeed need to go on an 'information campaign' on the likes of Facebook, etc, to advertise our site some more. Leave that with me"

Hope you didn't mind me adding tuppence worth (Sam Spade) to your post on Ray's Windsock FB page, Brad. I think your post was spot-on.
Sandy

[smeekmeister]

Brad:


Vendors really should be more invested in this site.  As an example, I suggested to Christian at Gothaforce to join in on this site, and he didn't seem interested. I found that confusing since he's not shy 

Warren

Did I say that ?

[smeekmeister]

Brad:

A very giant thank you to yourself, Lance and Zac.  You guys provide an amazing service for us Great War modellers.

For what it's worth, I am in complete agreement with everything Nigel said, and have some additional thoughts:

This site already is the premier WW1 modelling forum on the web.  The positive postings of the membership is a really great thing, and as you've mentioned, is not the case on some other sites.

I'd like to see the kit database (show us your ...) more prominently displayed. Sometimes my brain goes blank and I can't find it.

The vendor forums would be nice for announcements of new products, especially if vendors would be so kind as to maintain their sections.

A place for sharing techniques would be great. For instance, I use mostly acrylic paints due to the easier cleanup, and so use water color pencils to produce Fokker paint streaking, the E.V stained wing, Albatros birch fuselages and most propeller laminations, usually with various tinted washes applied afterwards, and I will never live long enough to properly roll a photo etch cooling jacket.

More group builds would be fine, but like Nigel, I'm not interested in "best ofs".

I'm in agreement that the site should just be for Great War models. I would welcome a section for other WWI equipment and/or dioramas.

Vendors really should be more invested in this site.  As an example, I suggested to Christian at Gothaforce to join in on this site, and he didn't seem interested. I found that confusing since he's not shy 

I'm not sure what value an older kit review section would have, unless the kit is still available, and kit reviews in general without a build to go along are of little value.

Anyway, Nigel said it better and more succinctly, and again Thank You Guys, Moderators, Admins and Builders who make this forum so freaking awesome.

Warren

Did we ever say that ?