Rólam

Plastic, Metal, Wood, Cars, Aircraft, Watercraft, Dioramas, Radio Control, Robots, Ham Radio and Guitars

Sometime in 1972 when I was 6 years old I bought my first plastic scale model at a BX store on an Air Force Base. My father, a retired Vet meant my mother went to the commissary to buy groceries my 4 siblings and myself regularly. The BX was next door and held shelves of aircraft, tanks, muscle cars and figures to build and paint. I don’t remember what my first model was other than it was a car. I built and painted it on a card table my mom set up next to the water heater in the basement with plenty of drop cloths around me. I moved to build aircraft soon as it seemed to garner my father's attention more. I had quite the collection of aircraft hanging by fishing line in my bedroom by the time I hit my teens. It was an eclectic collection, biplanes fighting Russian MIGS, WW2 planes taking on blimps and Apollo missions.

What happens when one of your friends gets a BB gun for Christmas? You light your models on fire and shoot at them in the backyard. Teenagers have the attention span of a hummingbird and models just didn’t give the thrill anymore. We moved on to Cox Control line planes, bicycles and the occasional cute girl. We were fortunate to have a couple hobby shops in our neighborhood we could easily ride our bikes to. Modeling never really left though as we moved on to carving boats out of balsa chunks and mounting electric motors complete with props cut from soda pop cans that we could run the backyard pool.

I went on to spend 20+ years in the Bicycle industry then I went onto 10+ years in the Hobby industry managing a hobby shop and then working for a vendor/importer on the wholesale end of the hobby industry. I got back into hobbies first with RC cars and racing, then RC aircraft, and the plastic started to call me back. I learned a lot from customers in the way of skills, was introduced to many tools and techniques. I went back to aircraft and learned about weathering. I was fortunate to have some employees that were excellent at painting figures mostly for tabletop gaming and I bettered my skills with figures and faces.

I took some time off from scale modeling in the last decade although still checking out what was on the shelf. I spent my efforts on getting my Amateur radio licenses and delved into the world of Arduino and Raspberry PI which may appear in future model builds. In the last year, I returned to plastic, mainly cars, cars I have always wanted to build and have on my shelf although aircraft and other modeling is still on my to-do list. I am trying to use accumulated skills and trying to learn more and I hope to share what I know and share my builds. I don’t care much for clubs or contests I build for my own enjoyment and hopefully others.