Hello everybody
My name is Valery, I am a French 50 yo male living near Paris.
I apologise in advance for any mistake I may do in my English. Don't hesitate to tell if I write incorrectly.
My interest in real and model ships go back to my childhood, with a failed attempt in building a wooden kit of a cabin cruiser.
A more serious attempt was with a good looking Joustra Toy representing a French patrol boat. It was originally equipped with a wired remote control in 1981,
I wanted to go wireless. In 1984, My mother took me for an Easter vacation trip to London and Bristol.
Strolling in London, we went past a large Toy shop, which was named Hamley's if my memory serves me right. I put all my means to pressure my mum into purchasing an R/C set I can't remember how I could convince her but fact is we left the shop with a 6 ch Sanwa 35Mhz Conquest R/C set, a 380 3:1 geared motor , a 7.2V Nicad battery and a resistance based speed controller. I remember this experience as a key contributor to make my trip to the UK an enjoyable memory (although not that much for my mum I guess) .
All this new equipment was tinkered into the hull of my toy. I even managed to use a third channel to make the front gun rotate.
While it was a great improvement in my eyes, the model was grossly overweight and very low on the water.
It was so low that, the following summer, it went under a rowboat driven by a friend on a pond.
I could barely grab it before it sank for good, but water ingress had damaged the electronics and put a halt on ship modelling for some years.
My second memory with the UK is from 1998, during a 6 month internship in a large company based in Hemel Hempstead.
I used every free time I had to get to RC ship model gathering and to visit ship museums or preserved ships. Even though I did not have grey ships, the SWA kindly accepted my membership.
During these free times, I came to know a very kind swede who came to the UK with the intent on buying a steam tug and bringing it back to sweden for preservation in working order.
He initially set his views on the Sea Alarm preserved dry in Cardiff, but when he called, it was already in the beginning stage of demolition. He wanted to buy it nevertheless but he was given the cold shoulder.
He then reverted to the St canute in the then recently closed Exter maritime museum . I could meet him for a week-end and I took a small part in putting back his new acquisition into working order.
I could write a novel of what happened to him later on, but I will refrain to hog any more space. In short, the Ex St Canute is now the Stockvik and is lovingly preserved in Sweden.
Being more a handyman than a real modeller, there are only few (and far between) models I built myself. I generally purchase second hand models and repair them.
Concentrating on 1/50 and 1/48 scale boats, many of my models are made from british kits (Model Slipway, Caldercraft, deans Marine). To be honest, my current ship model collection is rather made of wrecks awaiting restoration than really nice ships.
A few of my models may be seen on this page
https://mycparis.fr/crbst_46.htmlA good quarter of my models were bought in the UK, when pre-2020 times made things easier.
For those who may have an Interest, among other models I bought is a 1/48 scale Garnock in bad conditions. I made a restoration of it (I believe we use "It for a tug, right? )
i guess this should be done in a separate thread, shouldn't it ?
Take care everybody
Valery
