It has been some time since I joined this League of Extraordinary People (April 2016 to be exact), but I have never properly introduced myself.
I live in Assen in north of the Netherlands with my wife and we have six children. All of them have left the nest and three of them live abroad (Switzerland, Nigeria and Chile).
I grew up in IJmuiden, a fishing town at the Northsea coast and my first interest was for ships and boats, mainly 17th and 18th century shipwright and American riverboats (the paddle wheelers of the Mississippi and its tributaries). Long story short, I now have shelves full material of these boats and I grew a particular interest in the low pressure horizontal steam engines that propelled them.
In my teens I built my share of WWII stuff, mainly Airfix and Tamiya and my last attempt at building an aircraft was the Airfix kit of the Handley Page O/400. After working on it for several weeks, it eventually ended up in the trash bin. The wings kept sagging because I couldn’t get the rigging right. I have always taken a special interest in the aircraft that were used in a war for the first time. The development of aviation in general and that of war planes in particular. I even did a paper in high school, titled “The significance of military aircraft in the Great War”.
So, when I came across this site, my interest was rekindled. The home page full of Des’s build logs and hints, tips and tutorials won me over.
Now you may think I have lots of models of aircraft, tanks, cars and boats. Well, I have to disappoint you there. I have none. In the course of my life, I have moved 12 times from town to town, and none of the models I had none survived. Besides that, once I grow an interest in something, I MUST know everything about it and I MUST have everything related to it. So I tend to get stuck in reading and exploring.
And that is exactly the reason why the build of the Handley Page V/1500 is coming along at snail’s pace. It’s my first scratch build ever, it is HUGE and I thought it was smart to start with a relatively simple part: the tail. As it turned out it is very complex. The rigging is a nightmare to sort out, even with the plans and the few photographs that I have.
And although there isn’t much activity on my build log, there is a lot going on behind the scenes.
So, please be patient.
Willem
