I am an mechanical engineer by trade, working in the automotive manufacturing sector for a company known globally. This modelling hobby is one of my more stress-free creative outlets, which rewards my love of building and crafting, as well as my curiosity to learn the history and background that can be told about each model subject.
I built my first kits around age 10 with dad’s supervision and guidance. Over the following years I built numerous quick and dirty builds of all shapes and scales, but mostly worked with cars and flying things from Revell (and/or) Monogram, or anything else that could bought at the local craft or big box stores. I have many models still from this time period, but very little to show in the way of rapid technique improvement. I brush painted everything without knowing the difference in paint types or brushes. Rarely ever were shiny things shiny enough or the right amount of matte, and there was Testor’s glue seeping out of most seams.
Despite the disparities of the dark ages, I had a bit of an enlightenment in technique after about 6 years in the trade. I also built my first Tamiya kit about this time and man was that a world apart from what I was used to! After a few good years with remarkable (for me) improvement and some decent (if not completely) built models, I turned focus to more important things in life and all was packed away.
However in the fall of 2017, I visited USS Wisconsin in VA. In the gift shop I decided to pick up an affordable little Trumpeter kit of the ship to remember the occasion. This instantly stoked the coals into a full fledge hobby again! I love building subjects (that feeling when things just fit together), but just as much I love learning the history of the build too! I finished the Wisky with GMM PE (a first for me), and couldn’t help but keep building and stashing more rapidly! I built multiple ships, doing rigging and improving my PE comfort level before turning back to one of my big passions, that is winged things.
At that time I upgraded to an airbrush and exclusively acrylics. To this date in recent history I’ve nearly completed five planes each of which I am mostly satisfied with.
To limit my new kit spending I’ve kept to my choices to quarter scale for planes and 1:700 for ships, full hull display. Despite this, the wishlist & stash are growing faster than I can build.
Slowly but surely, I will get around to posting more recent builds, as time allows.
