Good day everyone. Introducing myself.
My earliest memories of making (and crashing) models was when I was about 10 years old, during the war. Balsa, Durofix, tissue and dope (remember banana oiil?) and rubber bands stuff then. Since then I've made (and continued to crash) a multitude of various aircraft, freeflight, control line, r/c power and gliders/sailplanes. That was when I wasn't making an equally varied 'fleet' of model boats from sail to pulse jet powered model of the 'Bluebird' - At least boats don't fall out of the sky! Current interests are tugboats, an RTTL (2747), sailboats and a series of static model outrigger dugouts and 'dhows'. I have also made a lot of little girls happy with various dolls houses, made a number of scale topographic contour models for mining companies, the local University campus and the canyons off Sodwana in north Natal where Trimix divers found coelacanths some 12 years ago, made some full-size boats and canoes, and generally got the T-shirt for a number of activities
Oh, and when I do find spare time (which is not very often) I pursue my family genealogy and collect stamps depicting ethnic boats and ships (remember those pretty lick and stick thingies one used to apply to envelopes in which there were pages of laboriously handwritten notes on real paper) and airmail stickers.
Retired from my job as senior (and only) technician at a fish research institute almost 20 years ago (where I kept a host of scientists happy, was the only certified boat skipper for many years, ended my SCUBA diving days, travelled around quite a bit on expeditions, spent many visits to the Comoro Islands conducting research into the coelacanth and indigenous outrigger dugout canoes, was photographer and x-ray technician and general dogsbody - and hope to keep the 'grim reaper' away long enough for me to complete the long list of things still to do - and that includes quite a few model boats.
And that is/was me.
Robin
OOps! That should read RTTL 2757 - that's the one at Hendon
