My first What If

[Hawkeye]

We had an oldest built kit in our collection theme last night at our club meeting which got me digging through the stash as well as the photos from the days of my youth. Way back in the day...back when I was a beginner I was even then inflicted with the Whiff Syndrome. Here is a rather blurry picture of what I believe to be my first scratchbuilt Wiffer...a HH-3 fuselage mated to some chopped down B-52 wings, engines feather into the wings themselves and a few other odd bits. The guys at the USAF HQ ARRS loved it!

[Spey_Phantom]

this here is the first what-iff i ever build and presented here,
a Belgian hawker typhoon 
i know the pics a little choppy, but i didnt have a good camera back then

[John Howling Mouse]

Beyond altering paint scheme/markings, the first structural What If I ever did was this little jobby of a kitbash from various AMT Star Trek kit parts.  It's supposed to be some sort of an unmanned drone interceptor.  I think.

My friend, Leonard, did an excellent job of superimposing it against a starfield background.

[cthulhu77]

Gosh...I've always modified kits. This is probably the first computer photographic evidence of it though:

[sequoiaranger]

I started making models in 1953 or so. "Gowland and Gowland" hadn't become Revell yet!!

Way back in the stone age of plastic modeling the range of kits was limited. So if you wanted a model of a plane that wasn't available, you had to "convert". This meant kit-bashing and lots of putty. In a sense, these "conversions" were "whiffs" as in "what if you could make a model that didn't exist on store shelves"? Pretty bold stuff for a 6th-grader. My first such whif was a 1/72 He-100 made from a Revell Ki-61 Hein (you know the one that had the side-hinging canopy [?] at first until someone tapped them on the shoulder and said, Ahem--it SLIDES, dude!). I don't have a picture of that.

My most courageous attempt at producing a not-in-stores model was making a P-51 B (can you believe that there was NOT a 1/72-scale model of this in the early '60's?) out of a Revell P-51 D (the CRUMMIEST version you will ever see!). I needed to use a P-40 for the rear fuselage. This was a BEAR to do (at the time) but the result was unique. Unfortunately, the original Mustang model is SO BAD that even this plane just looked ODD. But...it is the first "whif", in a sense, of which I still have a picture.

I had to move last year, and, regrettably, a HUGE collection of built up oldies was destroyed or given away. My early stuff were the casualties. I managed to take a few photos of the most cherished.


**Hey Nils, isn't that "Belgian hawker typhoon" really a Tempest???

[philp]

I have only completed 2 true whiffs so far.  this was my first.
Israeli S-92 1948


Although, most of what I built when I was younger could probably be considered whiffs.
There was one that a friend and I worked on using some old PYRO sailing ship and a Revell 48th scale B-25B.  We only had the hull of the ship left so mounted the stabilizer on top of that and the B-25 cockpit on that with the nose gun mounted in between firing backwards.  The bomb half's went on each side of the hull.  Pretty crazy looking but we thought it was cool.

[The Rat]

If you're ever digging through an old box of photos and you come across a clearer picture, we DEMAND a good shot of that beast! 

[Hawkeye]

If you're ever digging through an old box of photos and you come across a clearer picture, we DEMAND a good shot of that beast! 

We're looking at purchasing a transparency scanner, I have a great deal of old 35mm slides and negatives to convert which have more photos of my earlier modeling days.

[Bryan H.]

Here's my first whif, completed about a year ago.  It's a Republican Spanish (FARE) MiG-17.  I need to get some better photos...  







Bryan