By way of introduction, my name's Steve and I'm a divorced, 43 year-old freelance translator from the UK who's lived in Germany for the past 20 years.

Like (I suspect) many people here, my introduction to modelling came at an early age via Airfix aircraft kits. In my case it was actually a 1/72 scale Sabre jet from the now-defunct FROG company, but let's not split hairs! The point is that from then on I was well and truly bitten by the modelling bug.

I started to branch out into figures and AFVs in the late 1970s (Tamiya were the undisputed "kings" then), but then for various reasons I did scarcely any modelling at all from the mid-80s through to around 1997 (kits were bought but only a single solitary 1/35 scale Tamiya Patton tank, plus maybe half a dozen figures, were completed in about 12 years!).

Then around 1997 I got back into the hobby once more, though there have still been occasional periods lasting anything from several weeks to several months when I've not had the time to pick up a paintbrush / airbrush. Time constraints are also the reason why tend to I confine myself to building kits more or less "from the box" rather than get bogged down in heavy-duty major conversions, scratch-building and the like.

In the late '90s I also started attending Euromilitaire in Folkestone (my main modelling interest still being in figures and AFVs), and I still enjoy my trips to Euromil. It has to be said though that I find the experience both disheartening and inspiring at the same time: Disheartening because although I now consider myself a reasonably competent modeller and the contents of my display cabinet draw admiring comments from visitors, when I see some of the amazing work on display there - and indeed that produced by some of the guys right here - I find myself asking "why do I bother"?! But inspiring because it spurs me on to further improve my skills and helps maintain my interest in the hobby.

So far I've only really scratched the surface of what's to be found here, but I plan to stick around. It seems to be a real "Aladdin's cave".

See you around, I hope!

Steve

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the Kitmaker Network.

Rudi