I'm new to this forum, new to R/C and new to ship modeling, unless you count the plastic kits i built, took to the river, and blew up with gasoline and fireworks when I was a kid. However, I do tend to be ambitious (and somewhat obsessive) and should do all right at acquiring the necessary modeling skills; I studied Art and I'm currently a secondary Art teacher. I'm not as well equipped for the technical side of radio control modeling, but I did manage to survive a year and a half of engineering school before bailing out, so I will (eventually) figure out how to make things do what I want them to.
What attracted me to modeling was simple: I live in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand that's peppered with placid little lakes. As I was sitting in a lakeside restaurant, I saw, swimming like 'nessie,' a monitor lizard (closely resembling Komodo dragons, and they grow almost as large, although this one was no giant). Magnificent creature, but taking a cue from my cat, I started daydreaming about creeping up on him at periscope depth and firing a spread of torpedos at the Beast from 2,000 Centimeters... and so I got it in my head I need a tricked-out RC submarine.
Then I started researching RC subs and decided that, due to the technical complexity and wife-unfriendly budget involved in building a static-diving RC sub, I might need to start with a surface runner. This meant a not-submarine. I couldn't live with the indignity of being seen in public with a non-diving sub, and didn't fancy my chances of evading the monitor lizards if I couldn't dive. Also, scratch-building an I-Boat or World War One U-Boat is not an ideal first project. So I wanted a kit, something... expendable. Then it hit me... expendable? PT BOATS!
Then I saw a thread on the Italeri 1/35 PT boat here and decided to sign up. That will almost certainly be my first RC boat. I haven't bought the kit yet, but I've started researching. I'll probably go with an early-war boat based on the 109 kit.
Things will move slow, at first, as there's a lot of research on both the real boat and RC modeling to do, but eventually I'll be out on that lake. I may not dare torpedo that monitor, but I can depth-charge a few fish.
I'll start with a large plastic kit, and eventually I want to scratch-build. Longer term I'd like to one day have a sub or two, and probably at some point a 1/72 destroyer tricked out to do destroyer-like things. I may tinker with some tiny RC boats, too, like a Pibber.
PS if anyone lives in Thailand, or even if you're just passing through, I'd like to hear from you.