I look back fondly on the era when we all couldn't wait to see the arrival of MR's December issue appear in our mailbox every year. But after two decades drifting that saw a steadily disappointed and declining readership I fear that this effort, initiated back in 2015-16, may prove to be too little coming too late. After nearly 15 years of very weak content MR has attempted to turn itself around and return to the sort of superior modeling material that kept it the hobby's premier publication decade after decade. Average readership for the past year dropped to 100,313 (it peaked at 224,000 twenty years back), a nearly 15,000 drop from 2016! At the same time, the year's final issue garnered a reported circulation figure that fell below 100,000 for the first time in perhaps 35 or 40 years! Similarly, during the past year the magazine's Video Plus arm's saw subscription numbers show only weak growth. Want to know more about model scales? Then you definitely want to check out Getting Started in Scale Modeling and Essential Skills for Scale Modelers.Model Railroader Magazine's circulation figures for 2017 are out in the January 2018 issue and indicate that MR took perhaps the most dramatic hit in readership numbers, percentage-wise, during 2017 as I've seen in quite some years. Oh! To answer the question at the top, HO is closer to 1/90 than 1/72 scale. And that is totally cool with us! (Not that you asked.) Or you may find that you like to model in a lot of different scales and a lot of different subjects. The reasons could be manifold, from range of interests to workspace and display restrictions to physical limitations due to eyesight or fine motor control. Some modelers concentrate on 1/72 scale aircraft, while others build only 1/35 scale armor. Where do you go from here? It’s up to you! The choice of modeling scale is entirely up to your preferences and may affect the sorts of models you tend to build. However, learn to walk before trying to sprint. Yes, some modelers use models of different scales to cleverly force perspective and create the illusion of distance in their scenes. If not, the figures will either look unnaturally small or gargantuan in comparison to the tank. That means, if you have a 1/35 scale tank, then the figures should also be 1/35 scale (54mm). One last bit of advice: If you plan to build multiple models that have a relationship to each other, perhaps in a diorama, you should keep the scale constant. Without belaboring the point and sifting through arcane reasons why, you’ll find that certain models are typically made in common scales: 1/35 scale for armor and military-related ground vehicles 1/72, 1/48, and 1/32 scales for aircraft 1/20, 1/24, and 1/25 scale for cars and trucks 1/9 and 1/12 scales for motorcycles. With the basics out of the way, you start to get into the wonderful world of model scales. A 1/35 scale howitzer is 35 times smaller than the full-size original it is based on. A 1/48 scale model is 48 times smaller than its 1/1 scale fellow. Obviously, the larger the denominator in the scale fraction, the smaller the model will be in relation to the real thing, and, therefore, the smaller the scale.
For example, let’s say you model a 1/10 scale replica of a car measuring 10 feet long at full size, the model will be 1 foot long. If you build a 1/10 scale model, 1 inch on the model would equal 10 inches on the full-size subject. That means 1 inch (or any measurement) on the replica equals 1 inch on the actual subject. If you build a full-size replica, as a group in Russia recently did of the Razor Crest spaceship from The Mandalorian, it is a 1/1 (1:1) scale model. Scale is how we describe the size of the model as a fraction or ratio compared to the full-size subject. When we build and finish a model, whether it’s a single-piece bust, seven-part figure, or a tank with 800 individual pieces, we are making a miniature replica of the full-size version (whether real or imagined). We field this question (or ones like it) pretty often, but just about as frequently, we are asked to help readers understand what scale means. “Which is closer to HO scale, 1/72 or 1/90?”