How did we all get started in WHIF'ing?

[kitnut617]

My whiffing started sometime around when I was 10-14 years old (60's), first it was just changing the paint work, like my metalic purple Airfix Gloster Meteor.  Serious kitbashing started after that, back then I had a large collection of Airfix tanks, vehicles and figures and for some reason I liked half-tracks, I made about half a dozen using the front halfs of the 25 p'der Quad Tractor and attaching them to the Sturmgeschutz GIII 75mm German Assault Gun.  Neat armoured half-tracks those were ---  

[Brian da Basher]

I've been building what-ifs since I was a boy over 30 years ago. I had a neighbor who had a daughter, but no sons and built models, so he used to give away his finished builds, half-starts and sometimes complete kits. Sometimes the finished models broke and I'd use the pieces to make something completely different.

After building whiffs for so long, it's a real challenge for me to build anything OOB.

Brian da Basher

[jcf]

I find it hard to stomach the JMN's who poo-poo the whifs. When you think of it, model car guys are ALL ABOUT "custom" rods and think nothing of making "whiffs" and kit-bashing, chopping, channeling, and wacky paint jobs.  What's with aircraft/armor/ship guys that get their underwear in a bundle over self-created aircraft/armor/ship models???

Hi Craig,
I think its because 'whiffery' is a threat to how they rationalize their model building, the old
self-conscious and usually defensive, "I'm not playing with toys, I'm replicating history" line.

Whiffery is all about fun, so therefore whiffers are just playing with toys and not taking modeling seriously,
which in turn reflects badly (in their minds) on the serious historical modelers. 

Whiffery requires no such rationalizations, or rationality. 

Jon

[Sauragnmon]

we're not playing with toys, we're creating our own custom-engineered examples of alternative design concepts.  They're just limiting their mind's work and being closed-minded and narrow-perspectived about the whole subject.

Shoulda seen the big ramble I went on over at ARC on a Huey thread about the different schools of thought in relation from modeling as a junction between art and science.  Really deep thinking going on.

[McColm]

I think Whiffing started in the Intelligence Cells around the world. Aircrews would go out and take photos and come back. The film would be developed and the question "what's that?" would be asked. A scratched built scaled model of paper clips, old newspapers and scraps of wood or anything lying around was used.
Over a period of time, technology moved on and the detailing of the models got better.

I got into Whiffing when my Squadron Leader asked for a scale model of the Bear F, that's before the kit model came out.

[Howard of Effingham]

it just happened i think!

[IanH]

Boredom I think...
That, and Mike McEvoy...

[Supertom]

I unconsciously whiffed for a while when I was in the army, painting those Warhammer 40K figures (I specialized in Dark Angels).  I also had those wind-up Zoids as a kid that I would mix-and-match those weapons sets, and there was also the bit about using whatever paints were available since I couldn't afford to get every color out there back then.  Couple of years later in college, I got together with Mark Fordham (where is he nowadays anyway) and William "Joe" Waddell and started this site, which promptly got us tarred and feathered by some more prominent members from one of the Big Three sites.  I still build RW models but I will admit that the most fun are still to be found in the Whatifs, especially if you put a convincing one on the model table and several guys stand around it and argue that they could have sworn they saw that in a reference book somewhere.

That said the vast majority of us who are the most active posters were with us when we first started. 

[Spey_Phantom]

for me, it all started 4 years ago.

my sister found me a revell 1/72 Hawker Tempest, but unfortunatly there were no decals in it.
so just for fun, i slapped on some Belgian Decals ans i liked it, and ever since i found this site, i cannot stop whiffing, as compared to real world modeling, the possibilities are boundles, and its more fun 

[kitnut617]

I unconsciously whiffed for a while when I was in the army, painting those Warhammer 40K figures (I specialized in Dark Angels).  I also had those wind-up Zoids as a kid that I would mix-and-match those weapons sets, and there was also the bit about using whatever paints were available since I couldn't afford to get every color out there back then.  Couple of years later in college, I got together with Mark Fordham (where is he nowadays anyway) and William "Joe" Waddell and started this site, which promptly got us tarred and feathered by some more prominent members from one of the Big Three sites.  I still build RW models but I will admit that the most fun are still to be found in the Whatifs, especially if you put a convincing one on the model table and several guys stand around it and argue that they could have sworn they saw that in a reference book somewhere.

That said the vast majority of us who are the most active posters were with us when we first started.  

I think you nailed it Tom, how many of us would pull the tyres off one corgi toy and put it on another, or change roofs or doors, whiffing in that sense started much younger for me.  I remember when I got my first Scalextric set, there wasn't a very big choice of cars to have, I would buy and build all the Airfix 1/32 cars I could get, then gouge the innards out to fit the electric motors, wheels and contact braids in.  In the end I had about twenty different cars to race and the best ones were the Porche Carrera and Ford GT, I had big 3/4" wide rear wheels on those puppies which came from a Revell Chapparell slot car

[dy031101]

I became interested during my elementary school years. Taiwan just got out of an arms embargo thanks to Tiananmen Incident a few years prior, and people were hopeful about the military modernisation from both indigenous (built up during the arms embargo era of course) and foreign sources.  What if ROCAF could maintain the momentum and have AIDC working on a successor to the F-CK-1?  Who would have been the next partner in the cooperation?  I'm also fascinated with improvisation, like the idea of using IIR-guided missiles as poormen's FLIRs- it sure beats dropping flares when conducting night air-to-surface attacks (which used to be the method used by the ROCAF before the introduction of the Pathfinder-Sharpshooter pod pair for the F-16).

After I came to Canada a decade ago, the what-if started to include naval vessels.  One of the more interesting category being aircraft carriers...... the ideas I and several people I talk to have tend to have the aircraft carrier function rolled into existing categories of vessels already in use by the ROCN- hybrids between carriers and either replenishment ships, ro-ro troop and vehicle transports, or ships with well decks for launching amphibious vehicles- to fend off AShM-armed H-6 bombers that some Chinese internet dwellers (with no disrespect to other Chinese internet dwellers) just love to brag about sinking every merchant convoy sailing for Taiwan with.

I've actually been imagining the Kidd class destroyers incorporated into the ROCN ever since the ships were decommissioned from the USN...... well, that one came true in the end.

Readings on Japanese aviation battleships and Soviet aviation cruisers during my university years added a new focus to my what-if thinking- putting airplanes and heavy naval weapons together.  I mean, both the Japanese and Soviet ships looks cool!  Why stopping with WWII seaplanes and Yak-38s?  Why not PS-1 or militarized Be-200 flying boats?  Why not Harrier II Plus and...... F-35?  

And since I'm not that good at history or evaluating historical impact of something happening instead of something else, I just lump everything I deem as asthetically-pleasing into "parallel world" category...... and it's interesting to imagine a F-15 or Su-35 encountering and flying alongside, say, a CF-105 or a Mirage 4000 dressed in some really kickbutt camouflage scheme......

[jcf]

we're not playing with toys,

Speak for yourself. 

[Geoff]

I find it hard to stomach the JMN's who poo-poo the whifs. When you think of it, model car guys are ALL ABOUT "custom" rods and think nothing of making "whiffs" and kit-bashing, chopping, channeling, and wacky paint jobs.  What's with aircraft/armor/ship guys that get their underwear in a bundle over self-created aircraft/armor/ship models???

Hi Craig,
I think its because 'whiffery' is a threat to how they rationalize their model building, the old
self-conscious and usually defensive, "I'm not playing with toys, I'm replicating history" line.

Whiffery is all about fun, so therefore whiffers are just playing with toys and not taking modeling seriously,
which in turn reflects badly (in their minds) on the serious historical modelers. 

Whiffery requires no such rationalizations, or rationality. 

Jon

I think it was best summed up by someone on this site (?who) -

We create, JMN's replicate.

Or something very similar.