After 35 years as an architect and a further 15 doing perspective work in the building industry I am at last happily retired and able to pursue my hobby in model aeronautics.
I started learning to fly back in the early 70s and within a few years was one of 27 founder members of HMAC meeting at Balls Park secondary school. In the early years radio sets were unreliable and the situation only got worse when the CB pirates saw an end to our licensed use of the 27mhz band (£2.40 p.a. - club fees were £8.00 and insurance 72p per member!). When introduced to electric flight the challenge was to build structures light enough to carry the weight of the NiCd battery packs and get a model to fly using brushed motors with efficiencies of about 40% but when brushless motors and then Lithium polymer battery cells came in the same disciplines could be turned to reducing flying speeds to somewhere a lot closer to scale.
In the early years as a married man bringing up two daughters I had little money spare to devote to aeromodeling and when the financial constraints lifted I had learned many ways of reducing the costs which I determined to retain as it made my designs more attainable for the more cash-strapped enthusiasts among us. I had my first design published my MAP (Argos Publications) in the early 80s then a couple in RCM&E before moving to Traplet Publications who now offer 30 of my designs (or they will when the Short Stirling comes out in March and April this year!)
In my 73rd year I taught myself to use a CAD system which has been a great asset.
My main interest within the hobby is the producing of designs of lesser known civil and military types of between 1914 and 1970 using electric power (nowadays about 90% efficient) and while I aim to replicate them as accurately as possible I do so in a way that gives the 'real' scale modeler plenty of scope to add as much fine scale detail as they like and still be sure to have a model that flies in a well-behaved manner, at a speed much closer to scale than we have been accustomed to in past years, and that won't break the bank.
I am always interested in showing how complicated retract and flap systems can be produced cheaply and easily so as to make rarely modeled types achievable for as many model builders as possible. That is what brings the satisfaction.