The Kit That Brought You Back

[Sebastian Haff]

It seems that, as modelers, our stories are fairly similar. We built as kids then moved on to girls, cars, college, whatever. Then we settled down and somewhere along the line we rediscovered our hobby.

For me, the rediscovery happened when my brother gave me a 1/72 Monogram B-52 as a birthday present when I was about 23(I'm 38 now). It sat around for a while, then one day I saw a hobby shop and bought some glue and paint, and even one of those $20 Testers "airbrushes". I set up shop on the dinette set in my one bedroom apartment and had at it. I had forgotten how much I loved it, and we all know where it goes from here.

I know there are those among us who never stopped, but for those of you with a similar story, I'm wondering which kit brought you back? About how old were you?

Thanks, and happy modeling!

[toadwbg]

I have had exact same experience, in fact I'm the same age as you are!

I got re-hooked on modeling when i settled down married and started to (try to) have kids around 2000. Gave me a great quiet indoors hobby that kept me home ( I'm an outdoors kind of guy) and didn't cost too much ( again compared to the outdoors stuff).

I'm not sue it was one kit so much that got me rolling, but I did always have an eye for the Tomcat and always dreamed about doing the 1/48 Hasegawa Tomcat. ( I grew up battling the Monogram Tomcat lOL)! So, after a few small builds to cut my teeth I dove head first into that Hasegawa Tomcat and a load of aftermarket- had a blast. I've been doing it ever since.

Other fuels for the hobby were 9-11 and the internet. This site and others like it are a goldmine for the modeling community.

[huntermountain]

It's my second comeback to building models. My first comeback was cut short when I decided to spend more time with my new girlfriend,currently my wife of 12 years. I did buy a Revell F-14A in 32nd scale at that time, and seeing that kit in the attic under a layer of dust brought me back this time around. I still haven't built it, because I keep buying kits I want to build first, but still...

Edited April 29, 2012 by huntermountain

[john53]

It was all Hasegawa's fault! 1/72 F/A 18C. The box art alone hooked me!---John

Edited April 29, 2012 by john53

[ChippyWho]

Not so much a kit, more the (late) arrival of cable in the family home. 200+ channels and "Shoot...there's NOTHING worth watching!"

Wait a min, what's this 'Discovery Wings' (R.I.P.!)...? Suddenly, the brightly-plumed things that so impressed me as a kid in the 60s were giving me goose-bumps once again.

Already plunging headlong into the pipe and slippers phase of life, and getting way too old to chuck my Scott jump bike around with any decency, I realised that scale modelling was The Way Forward.

Academy F-86F and T-33A were acquired swiftly, and built -NOT swiftly, but reasonably well. The Sabre, in particular, is a superb kit. If they had not been so nice to build, I'd probably have stopped there.

But noooo....

Edited April 29, 2012 by ChippyWho

[Jay Chladek]

For me, I never really left the hobby even through high school or college (probably because I never found a girl to date as I was more the geek of the group). Now I have gone into different aspects of the hobby or detours as it were. Throughout my late childhood from age 11 to 14, I built more model rockets than plastic kits. But I ended up coming back to it.

Now more recently, I tended to be more into science fiction models than aircraft. And adding details with bouts of AMS made the hobby not fun. So, it took James May's 1/1 Airfix Spitfire project to get me to buy a 1970s vintage Airfix Spitfire and spend the better part of a week getting reacquainted with what makes the hobby "fun" as it used no aftermarket parts or decals. It was just me, the Spitfire (which costed about 10 bucks), construction technique, some paint, my airbrush and masking techniques to bang a model out that might not necessarily be a contest winner, but it was a nice refreshing change from resin, photoetch and pouring through mountains of research material to ensure the accuracy of a model to within a gnat's wing of perfection.

[mlicari]

For me it was the 1/48 Hasegawa HS-129B-3 in 2003. I saw it in a hobby shop and just had to have it (how can one resist a 75mm gun on an airplane?) even though I hadn't built a model in more than a decade at the time.

I had so much fun that I went out to Hobby Lobby a few weeks later and bought 20 more kits (back when they had a decent selection and still ran their 50%-off sales). INSTANT STASH! :)

[TaiidanTomcat]

1/72 DML Fencer.

[Old Man]

The Encore boxing of the old IMC Polikarpov I-15bis. This was he first kit I bought with any real intention of building as an old man. I was at the hobby shop with my daughter, who was getting stuff for a school project, and wandered about the kit section in a fit of nostalgia. They had a few odd things there, and that was one. I thought I would have given my eye-teeth for a model of this when I was young, and bought it. When I got home and opening it, I figured I would only botch it if I piled straight in, and put it aside, but I bought a few more kits and started buying kits now and then, finally started in building. I only recently dug out the old Encore Polikarpov and finally built it early this year, and it is now on display at the shop where I bought it....

[Litvyak]

1/48 Academy MiG-21...PFM I think it was, three years ago.

[fulcrum1]

This website.

[VMFA314Knights]

Built a few kits in my teens and twenties, then married and started a family... typical hobby pause until a friend bought me a Monogram F/A-18A which I figured I should build as he kept asking if I had finished it yet.

Finally built it up as a VMFA-314 Black Knights Lybian Raider and that started me up again. A couple of years later I ran into another friend who passed on a few Luftwaffe kits (Hasegawa 109's) and that sealed it. I was back at buying an building... okay a bit more buying than building but I still think I can catch up eventually.

Curse you Hasegawa 109 (says my wife) :P But it keeps me out of trouble and it really isn't that expensive a hobby if I can resist buying more than I can ever build :D

It's a great hobby and I have 150+ kits built & on display to prove it. Maybe I can get the rest built when I retire... which is one reason I'm saving the bombers 'til later (that and the fact that I'll need to take over one of the kids rooms to display them all.)

Cheers,

David

[Big Daddy]

For me, it was a couple of kits that brought me back to modelling at the age of 62, both of them Christmas gifts from my wife and sister-in-law.

The first was from my wife about 6 years ago, after I saw our local Lancaster bomber be brought down off its pedestal in Jackson Park and rolled into a local hangar to be restored. The kit languished on the shelf until this spring when I officially retired (after being downsized) and I met a friend of my dad's, Sam, who was an RCAF rear gunner in Lanc LM178 in WWII and was shot down in the summer of 1944. His story fired me up to, first, get off my butt and build an historical reproduction of his a/c using the Hasegawa kit my wife gave me, and second, to volunteer for the local Lancaster group and help with the reconstruction of FM212. The kit is 99% done and I am having a great time working on the full-scale version as well.

The other kit was a 1/32nd Kinetic F-86 Sabre, a gift from my sister-in-law, the Christmas after their father died. Larry was a Sabre jockey based in Germany in the 50's with RCAF 434 Sqn. This build will be done in his memory and based on a Sword he actually flew on several occasions and in which he performed a textbook dead-stick landing when he flamed out.

i

So, 50 years after my last build when I was 12, I am back. Thanks for listening.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Big Daddy

[Doughboy]

I got back into it after I broke up with my ex-girlfriend. Insteed of doing the usual AMMO troop thing of getting hammered I decided to go to the local hobby store and picked up a 1:32 Has P-51D then another then a Revell 1:48 F/A-18E. Then it snowballed. That was 5 years ago.

[Scooby]

Arri/Otaki Corsair.

[CorsairMan]

It was the Tamiya Corsair - actually, I did in front of everyone here on ARC (build pages are still there)

[chuck540z3]

A little over 4 years ago I re-built the 1/32 Revell F-15E (1982). The kit was really for a F-15B, just about every decal silvered and, overall, it's terrible!-but it did bring me back to modeling and for that I'm very grateful. If anybody wants a giggle at my expense, here it is! Oh man, this is BAD! :D

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Gal7/6501-6600/gal6529-F-15-Sawyer/00.shtm

Edited April 30, 2012 by chuck540z3

[Bigasshammm]

Same old song and dance built as a kid into my teens. Stopped. Married with kids. Still had a few kits laying around and also my wife bought me a hasegawa Mitsubishi EVO WRC car one year for my birthday. I dabbled with it a little bit but it was beyond my capability at the time. Then as I was building an airplane I can't remember I was using this amazing new tool for modeler's. THE INTERNET! Stumbled across this forum and was blown away. Have been hooked ever since again.

Ive gotten better and I think the habit of modeling can be very soothing and relaxing at times. Good release from the stress of my kids and work and bills.

Happy to say I finished the EVO a few months ago and am damn happy with it.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Bigasshammm

[Les / Creative Edge Photo]

Back in summer 2000 as a stress reliever I dug out my boxed up modelling gear and bought an ARII 1/48 scale P-51D. I made the City Of Vancouver Sqd. RCAF P-51.

The ARII kit is a decent one and the P-51D still sits nicely in my collection.

[AX 365]

Shortly after we got married, as we were in Toys 'R' Us, looking for Christmas gifts for nieces and nephews, we walked by the model aisle and I told my wife I used to build models when I was younger. Christmas 1989, she bought me Revell's 1/32 P-47 Razorback (Bonnie) and Spitfire Mk1 ( Al Deere's KL-B ). I still have them. They look terrible compared to what I'm capable of building these days but they serve as a great reminder of the simple gesture my wife made to get me back into the hobby. Had it not been for her, I probably wouldn't be building today. What a great lady!

Edited April 30, 2012 by AX 365

[The Loggie]

Yes, my departure occurred when I turned 14 (or 15?) and had to work hard in school. Then went to Uni, then discovered girls (hey, was studying Biology & needed help with my homework) then cars (you need a car to get a girl to help you with your homework).

At 24, I joined the Army. I was in my first posting location (Hobart, TAS) and I was exploring the town. I passed a newsagent who had a display in model-kits. And there was the model that brought me back - the Esci 72-scale Sherman Calliope tank. I bought it, paint and glue (in a square bottle - tubes don't exist any more) brushes. Across the road (at the train shop) I got a tiny drill bit to drill-out the cannon. On the way home, I bought come turpentine.

I, and the rest, was history. Now I have a modelling Wife, two modelling children, and a (collective?) stash numbering around 1,000 kits + lots in-progress +lots completed.

And loving it.

George, out.................

[Charlie Cheetah]

I was 22 when I was pulled back into the fray. My fiance at the time and I were browsing through aclearance sale that a local craft and hobby distributor was having when I cam around a corner and discoverd a few racks of shelf worn model kit boxes. Amongst them was a Tamiya 1/24 Ferrari Testarossa tagged at $9.99. Thats all it took, before I knew it, i was seeking out more kits at one of the 3 hobby shops we had in the city at the time and started my collection.

ps: I have re purchased that Testarossa kit, to build again with the benefit af an extra 22+ years of modeling experience.

[bikerider]

Similar story for me.

Built lots as a geeky teenager, than stopped while I went to University. Got bored with model trains and a move to a new house at the same time meant re-starting the trains, but only after a lot of work on the house. Other priorities take that away, but I do like building things and since I work for indirectly for the Canadian Military I decided to build a Hornet, so I bought a model of a F-18, some Leading Edge decals and finished a CF-18. Found a HAS f-14 kit for cheap, than an f-4e, and so on, and so on.... Now I have built a stash - how did that happen? I think I have a stack of 10 kits ready to go.

[Phantom ordie]

The 1/72 Hasagawa Phantom with VF-31 markings,I was in that squadreon 4 years.

[JasonW]

Actually the kit that brought me back was a tank, the DML T-80 kit. Saw it in a shop in Junction City, KS and bought it along with a DML BMP-2 kit. Built (after much cursing) it when I was the NCOIC of unit AFVID training for the armor company I was assigned to at the time. I started building 1/35 armor models to use as training props. It was mildly successful actually. :)