Silent Hunter

I'm thinking of getting into building model planes.

What would you recommend I start with? What scale? I want something reasonably simple, modern and preferably Russian or American.

HistoricalDavid

For second I really got the wrong idea from the thread title. I was gonna ask for an example shoot. :p

RustyBattleship

1:48 scale allows you to cover mistakes more easily though the kits are more expensive.

1:72 scale perhaps offers more types of aircraft than any other scale but some of the parts are a tad clumsy in between old fingers. Best to add several types of tweezers and maybe medical forceps to your model building tools.

1:87 scale is HO scale in the model train world. But aircraft are available in that scale and I have added a C-47 to my HO collection.

1:96 scale is very rare to come by but would be nice for ship modelers that are in that scale.

I recommend you stay away from biplanes to start off with. Too many skinny parts that don't want to stay in alignment.

If you are limited in display space, stick to fighters. Bombers are real nice but cast a big shadow from the ceiling light.

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smilingassassin

Depends what you are going for. If you want detail go with bigger scales but if you simply want to collect models for display smaller scales are best.

I use 1/72 scale simply because I also use that scale for armour, its nice to have a size referance for an aircraft to say a tank. It gives you a sence of how big the aircraft was, particularily with bombers.

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Shuttlecat

I'd say start off with 1/72. It's easy to find first off, but mostly if you want to get any bigger this is really a good jumping off point. After you've done a few of course.