Posted on 05/30/2006 9:20:53 PM PDT by pickrell
You make me long for the old days. Thank You!!!!
I started building models when I was 7 and haven't stopped. I have Way Too Many models built and unbuilt downstairs in the basement and I have a wife who believes that a man that builds a good scale model is sexy.
Life is good.
And you're absolutely right: model building set me right up for a career in the Marines!
bump for after the coffee kicks in
Build the darn thing and then post pictures so we can see how it came out.
By the way, I had the same experience with a gas-powered Fokker D VII: first test flight - after a 6-month building session - with the engine at a rich setting and the propeller barely rotating, I carefully glided it over tall grass to check trims. The vibration rotated the needle valve to "full lean" and it went screaming upward, soaring up and over on its back into a huge loop.
Too huge. Needed about 3 more feet to make it back to horizontal and it was one glorious and completely destroyed Hun ship.
I'm still at it and have learned the glories of today's computerized radio control.
I was an inveterate model builder. I agonized over the clear plastic canopies, which I NEVER had the coordination to glue on without smearing in some way.
I could NEVER wait for the paint to dry. I always got fingerprints on it.
I NEVER was able to get propellors to spin freely.
I used to groan and scream in frustration as I tried with all my might, but my enemy, the tube of glue, always won in the end.
And I loved every minute of it.
I agree that this is part of the feminization of boys that this kind of activity is discouraged in many ways, much to the detriment of their imaginations.
When I got out of the Navy (Jet Mechanic) I decided to build my Piece de Resistance, a 1/32 scale F-14 Tomcat.
I have never finished it. But someday I will. Here is a picture of what I have so far:
Now, there's a wayback machine. I built our first color TV in '66-a Heathkit GR-53A. Verry educational.
Hoo Doggie. That ones a beaut! Does the little airplane come with it?
Unfortunately, that's probably part of "the plan..."
After that I was hooked. My folks always knew what to get me, and it didn't matter if it was a car, airplane, ship, or spacecraft. I was equally pleased with any of them. By the time I was 12 years old I had built over 100 models including matching scale models of all three primary space boosters, the Atlas, Titan II, and the Saturn V rocket the last was in 1968 just prior to the Apollo 8 moon orbital mission.
When I started Junior High School I got into electronics. I built a three channel color organ from scratch (you remember those funky devices that caused different color lights to flash in concert with different frequencies of sound. It wasn't long after that I discovered Heathkit, and built everything from test equipment (I still have my M-1 Handitester, and OP-1 Professional Oscilloscope) to Ham Radios and TVs.
The summer before I entered High School I injured my left knee really bad and was layed up most of the season. Our neighbor across the street was throwing out a really nice console Color TV/Stereo/Phonograph units in the furniture grade cabinet, that he just couldn't get to work. He knew that I was into electronics and asked me if I wanted to tinker with it.
So being the guy I was (and still am) I took it and went to the corner electronics store and bought a schematic for it. I used my Heathkit test equipment and fixed it. It was the only color TV my family owned until I graduated from college, and it worked flawlessly, until my younger brother threw a baseball through the picture tube.
High School was also my "Hot Rod" phase. My two best friends (my girlfriend and her brother) and I built a street legal 392 Chrysler Hemi powered 1967 Old's Cutlass that turned honest low 11 second quarter mile times at Orange County international raceway.
After college I joined the Navy and continued to "fix" things. After I left the Navy I built a 31 foot fiberglass hulled sailboat, and sailed it from Hampton Roads Virginia around the Caribbean until I sold it due to money problems.
Today I still tinker. I have a few older vehicles that keep me busy. I build my own farm implements, and repair/upgrade computers for friends.
It is still fun. If I had turned my penchant into a business I'd probably be rich right now, but probably wouldn't be as satisfied. I just enjoy tinkering.
You're very welcome, ma'am. Yes, the past is a foreign country and they do things differently there; alas, no trains available - except the "Memory Express."
Very Good!
When I was 8 I started building WWII models, then I would heat a needle and poke holes in the tail and both wings. I would use fishing line to place the plane in a flying pose and hang it from the ceiling in my room.
IIRC (almost 30 years later) I had a Spitfire trying to evade a Me-109, a Stuka in a dive, a C47, a silver P-51 with yellow cowl, a P-47 in a turn, a zero being attacked by a Wildcat, an F-4 with landing gear out as if on approach, and some Russian attack aircraft, but I forget which one.
Oh, I forgot one of my favorites, a B-26
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea with Richard Basehart. Thanks for the quick little trip in the Wayback Machine...
Brilliant ... I was quite an anvid model-builder back when ... got started with a Boeing 747 ... built more ships than planes ... still do one occasionally. Currently building an RB-57 ... as time permits. At work, I'm an engineer.
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