I built a lot of models as a child, my first was the ancient Aurora "yellow" Zero. When I reached middle-school age it was mostly model cars that held my attention. I loved hot rods and racing cars of all kinds. I remember building Funny Car chassis from scratch using pickup sticks and creating working hinges for the lifting bodies. I was into detailing the engines and scratching together cockpit tubs. Then, something happened. Yep, I got my driver's license at 14 and before too long, model cars had lost their luster and it was the real hot rods that I was interested in.
Around the late 80s, being a long-time history fan and someone fascinated by military aircraft, I began considering that I could compare different planes respective size and features by building scale model planes. I choose 1/48 because there seemed to be a lot of choices and I liked the physical size at that scale. The first build was Monogram's A-10. I bought my Paasche Model H airbrush for that and it's the only AB I've ever really used. I thought my A-10 looked pretty fair. Until I bought my first copy of FSM. It was the Jan. '89 issue I believe. At any rate, it featured the great Bob Steinbrun's Monogram F-80 converted to YP-80 status. OMG, I couldn't believe the quality of the work on that model and several others as well. At that point, my A-10 didn't seem so impressive anymore and I took up the gauntlet so to speak. I took a five year hiatus along the way and I'm still the slowest builder around, but I still do love the hobby and I do have a fair sized stash to "mock" me, lol. Hey, I can retire in three years and maybe I can work that stash down to a reasonable size then!
Gary