When I was a teenager, I used to build model aeroplanes. I spent all my pocket money on kits full of unpainted, unassembled plastic. I wasn’t very good at that hobby, but at least I can appreciate the work of those who’ve really mastered the art of scale modelling.
The following photos were taken at the 13th Bolyai Scale Model Builder Cup in Budapest, where highly skilled model-builders competed in 36 different categories. The two things I kept noticing: the model-builders’ affection for history and technology, and a huge focus on wars, both real and fictional.
Check out my favourites below.
Do you build scale models? Please show your latest work in the comments!
A weary R2 droid from the Star Wars universe
Warhammer 40k Blood Drinker Space Marine
Hobos outside an abandoned chapel
Tu-70 under construction
A badly damaged Soviet T-55 tank
A Hungarian Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 fighter jet
#86-0314 AK U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon from the 18th Aggressor Squadron
HMS Tiger battlecruiser (1918/1919)
The derelict spaceship on LV-426, from Alien
Apollo 13 Lunar Module (LM) Aquarius
Anna Louise P-47D ‘Razorback’ – flown by Lt. A.H. Rainbow (1944), and a Tupolev Tu-160, a Russian supersonic strategic bomber
Scenes from World War II are extremely popular among diorama builders
North American T-2 Buckeye, the U.S. Navy’s intermediate training aircraft
Supermarine Spitfire’s Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine
Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe/Sturmvogel
Douglas F4D Skyray, the U.S. Navy’s supersonic fighter
U.S. Navy Ling-Temco-Vought A-7E Corsair II
This is how a scale model is born
U998 U-Boot German submarine surfacing
Close attention to details
Fantasy category: Wuzz Air! fighter under attack
‘Snake-Eye’ — Super Armoured Fighting Suit (SAFS) Space type II, from the Maschinen Krieger universe
Mass Effect heroes
Assassin Creed main character
Captain Hungary
What if? category: a Japanese twin Nakajima WWII jet fighter
Another U.S. Navy fighter: F9F-2 Panther
… and another one: McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
An Air Force Reaper drone
A German Panavia Tornado
The Shenyang J-8 81192, the Chinese interceptor that collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3 aircraft in 2001 (the Hainan Island incident)
Junkers Ju 88 German bomber from WWII (with a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in the foreground)
A Vietnam war scene
The jury
A beautifully crafted wooden ship model
A Hungarian MiG-29
A Caproni-Begamaschi Ca.310 Libeccio twin-engine reconnaissance aircraft
Latécoère 28-5 ‘La Frégate’ French civil transport and postal hydroplane, which set 16 international records in 1930-31.
Conflicts from the past few decades
North American P-51 Mustang
Curtiss P-40 Warhawk
Train station somewhere in Nazi Germany
And finally: a hippie soldier
Photos: Attila Nagy/Gizmodo