About time for me to share my story of my humble modeling beginnings. To my knowledge the first kit I built, or was assisted in building by my brother, was some small scale battleship which i am rather sure was the IJN Yamato. I was 7 yrs old. No clue as to the make or even scale but it was a light greenish plastic and it was built scrictly unpainted. My first introduction to part fitting, instruction reading and of course glue. I had that model around for quite some time until it finally fell to the almighty BB gun.
My interest in modeling was certainly spurred by the fact that my father was a Navy pilot. He was a flight instructor out of Pensacola NAS during the war and flew in the reserve until he retired. The fun part of my fathers stories was that he flew every imaginable Navy aircraft available. The majority of his flight time though was in the PBY Catalina which he loved along with the F4U Corsair. My father maintained his private pilots license for many years and I flew countless hours with him in his Cessena, In addition my 2 oldest brothers were helicopter pilots. The oldest started in the Navy and served in Vietnam, of which he doesn't discuss much. After his service in the Navy he transffered to the Coast Guard where he retired. My second oldest was also in the Navy where he flew the H53 Sea Dragon in a Mine Interdiction Squadron. He retired after his stint of commanding his squadron. Thus my interest in aircraft was fostered. Strangely, I have yet to build either a PBY, a Corsair or a Hellcat. I kept this strange idea in my head that i wanted to hone my modeling skills quite well before building the aircraft that I truely wanted to. This reluctance ended up resulting in never having built any of my fathers aircraft prior to his death. This needless to say bothers me to this day. Along with not having sat down with him as we had planned and recording his exploits and submitting them to the National Archives.
This is also coupled with the fact that I always from an early age had a huge interest in history, mainly military history. Thus, i got my BS in History. This led to a career in wildland firefighting, go figure.
Anyhoo, i built models prolificly up until I went to college in 1980 and did not start actively building again until 4 yrs ago. Yet, during my hiatus I always kept up with the modeling world and continued buying kits and supplies. Well, that's kind of down and dirty. i look forward to further shares from you all and relish the reflection on my early modeling and having wonderful folks such yourselves to share it with.