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Your first aircraft model ?


Nachtwulf

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14 hours ago, AngstROM said:

My guess is a lot of us would have (at least) TWO qualifying answers to this! One from when we were kids with pocket money, and one from when we returned to the important stuff in later life after the usual distractions. OK, I know some of us managed to stay in the ring throughout, but hey...!

With that in mind:

You're probably correct in thinking that, but in my case, it wasn't so much leaving the hobby because of marriage, children etc., but because I'd strayed off into another side of the hobby, namely model railways. I've already said what I believe was my first aircraft build, way back when Pontius was a pilot, but after years of trains, I went to the IAT at Greenham Common in the mid 70's. There was a line up of various marks of Spitfire and I wanted to build them all, and the only way to do that at that time was cross kitting. So my first build on returning to aircraft modelling was a combination of several Airfix Mk.1's, V's and lX's, and Frogs XlV. It's amazing how many different models could be produced that way. Happy days.

 

John.

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I remember my Dad building a Spitfire for me...i think it was a mark nine....johnney johnsons i think.Airfix silver plastic. I also remember him helping to make the airfix wellington,didnt have any black paint so ended up duck egg blue underneath.....its an idea i guess but i wasnt impressed.

I do remember using copious amounts of M13 on my warship collection^_^

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The first ones I remember I built with a lot of assistance from my father....a Revell (?) 1/72 Fokker DVII and a NA Vigilante. The Fokker got red Humbrol paint, the Vigilante stayed in grey plastic. 

My first solo flights were with Matchbox kits....the Spitfire and Hellcat. 

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  • 10 months later...

 The interest in planes had always been there, and friends and family indulged me with model kits accordingly. For what seemed the longest time, Dad had the pleasure of putting them together and I assisted. Then, when I was seven (1970!), I went solo for the first time and built the Airfix DH88 Comet Racer. No paint - it was already red - and not too many gluey fingerprints on it. I didn't even break the undercarriage.

The model is long gone now; collapsing shelves tend to be inimicable to most models.

I really ought to get in some practice with resin kits so one day I might attempt the SBS Model offering, which by all accounts is a thing of beauty.

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I would have been four of five years old (so '70/'71) and my uncle bought me an Airfix BAC 111 and a Revell 1/72 P-51D. I made and painted them myself with some help from my dad. I have vague memories of yellow and black paint being used in vast quantities.

I don't remember being especially interested in aircraft before then, so this was probably my "ground zero" in regards my love of things that fly. I do know that after that point, I could never have enough model kits!

 

Cheers,

Mark.

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Hmmm... wasn't there already such a thread somewhere here? I seem to recall that I have posted something very similar already - but I cannot find it using the search function. Though this does not mean alot - lately I checked for a thread regarding motorcycle driving, which seems to be gone too.

 

So: My first kit dates back around 40 years I am affraid... I got it in primary school and no matter how hard you hit me I can not say for sure which it was. There was (and still is) a small newsagent shop which sold Matchbox and some Revell kits - and the very first Star Wars Kenner figures. I know my first one was Leia (they just had her and Luke to choose from, somehow I found Leia more interesting :wink:).

 

As said not quite sure which was my very first kit but I recall a red single seater prop from WWII and if I had to bet I would go for a Buffalo - still it is quite possible that I build other kits before this. I know for sure that I also had an A-20 and something that puzzles me: I am sure it was a Liberator but I doubt that Matchbox ever had anything Liberatorlike except the Privateer. So I wonder if it was Revell (???), Airfix or something else. However my father had to build this...

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My father bought me my first model, an Airfix Hurricane IV RP, in about 1963.  I was painting it only yesterday.  Not a (justifiable) comment of my speed of completion but an indication that it is still in use as a paint mule.  Archeological evidence suggests it has survived subsequent conversion into a Sea Hurricane (spare transfers from Frog kit) and Hurricane IIc (spare cannons from scrapped Frog kit).

 

I would have been about 6 and the Hurricane followed on from the Spitfire and Lancaster my father had built for me (rather well, though the gloss Airfix green used on the Spitfire, while striking, might raise eyebrows nowadays).  Of course I had to paint it just like Dad, which resulted in black paint all over the canopy, thereby setting an early course for models that never end up as good as I planned them to be.  Before initiation into the cult of Airfix, I had been mad about steam engines.  There wasn't much future in that in Cornwall in 1963-4 - but I'm not sure my mother forgave him for letting the genie out of the bottle.

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I built my first somewhere in the early 1980s. It was a Monogram 1/72 snap together F-4E Phantom.

 

I had it opened and the parts off the sprues and assembled within 15 minutes of coming home from the shop.

 

I "flew" it around the house for a week or so; making jet noises, using the coffee table as an aircraft carrier, dive bombing the dog and ditching at sea in the kitchen sink multiple times.

 

After a week of that, I thought painting it might be a cool idea and those decal things that came in the box looked pretty cool too.

 

it hung from my bedroom ceiling for a number of years after I painted it up.

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I too remember a similar thread.....

 

mine was a 1/48 Fujimi Alouette III with Malaysian markings. My dad built most of it....all around green.....the first kit I built myself was a matchbox fw 109 with green and blue plastic.....looking to get one again.....after that it’s all a blur....can’t remember what next.....loads of Hasegawa 1/72 kits...I know

 

rgds

 

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My first one was the original Airfix Folland Gnat some time in the late 1960s .  In those days it was in a plastic bag , had 4FTS markings rather than Red Arrows & came with underwing slipper tanks & rockets .  I made the most appalling mess of it , but something must have appealed because I've been modeling throughout the entire period since .

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I was four or five, when, back in '71 or '72-ish a friend at kindergarten turned up with a little diecast Spitfire one day. Well! I went home that afternoon lamenting how unfair the universe was and so on... At the end of the week my amazingly tolerant parents surprised me, not by giving me up for adoption but with a 1/72 FROG Spitfire XIV & V-1 combo set.

I was enthalled and entranced by the artwork. Until the box was opened. Discovering to my dismay that there wasn't a diecast set in the box but all these odd bits and pieces. Useless! Absurd! Instead of committing infanticide, my father calmly sat down that evening and put it all together, no painting, just decals on the cool grey plastic.

I was enthralled and entranced again and this time it stuck! (Actually to this day I find the shape of a Griffon Spit to be the most appealing of all aircraft. That monster nose and all those blades. Phwooar... Ahem. Anyhow.) Yes, my dad made that one (two with he buzz bomb) so  I guess it only counts insofar as it had me hooked...

The next kit and the first one I actually made followed only a week or so later. The ancient Airfix Mosquito FB.VI in all its greenish, low-altitude rocket-firing box-art glory. Still no paints (we were in rental accomodation at the time, perhaps hat had something to do with it) but that didn't stop me. No. I recall there was a four pack of texta colour permanent markers to hand... Black, bright red, emerald green and navy blue. Yikes. Red & green camo deliineated by black lines and a blue underside. What a technicolour horror. Funnily enough I can distictly remember building and 'decorating' it but not much subsequently. I suspect the poor thing had a short, chromatic and meteoric career in the playground...

Nowadays I know better. Or do I??? Ahem-hem...

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My first model a was christmas present from my Grandparents in the 1980s...the RMS titanic, I think it was a Revell Kit...unsure of the scale but it wasn't small, perhaps 1/350. It was in the closet for some months before I found the courage to build it.

 

The second model (same Christmas) was from my parents and was the first kit I assembled, an Academy 1/72 MiG 21. This I remember clearly...the balance horns on the horizontal stabilizers were extremely sharp. Whilst applying pressure on the sprue tree when attempting to cut parts from it, my hand slipped and one of the balance horns sliced up the inside of my thumb like a scalpel. I don't remember it hurting much but my god there was a lot of blood, I had to wash the sprues afterwards and my mother unsympathetically complained about mess I made of the carpet. The scar was visible up to my late twenties.

Edited by AeroNautique
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First aircraft model would have been a matchbox hurricane mkiic. Painted it black as a nightfighter.  My first model was a airfix/rosebud? 0-3-0 tank engine. My dad helped me and it was in my grandparents hoyse for years. 

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My first ever model was an AMT snap tight X-Wing. Great little model. 

 

My first plane was the Monogram 1/48 Spitfire Mk IX. I was hooked. 

 

My first jet was the 1/48 Dogfights Double boxing of the F-86 and Mig-15. I built the Mig first.

 

My first Japanese kit was a 1/72 Hasagawa Lightning. I didn't understand scales yet and was angry about how small it was.

 

My first European kit was the 1/72 Airfix P-40.  I bought it for $2 and felt like I was ripped off.  Awful kit.  Swore off the brand until I bought the fantastic 1/48 Lighting years later. 

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First kit I built on my own was the Airfix P38 Lightning bought me as a birthday present by a friend when I was eight (1962). Not the neatest model I ever made, but I was hooked and have building ever since with some gaps when I was at uni and discovered things more fun than kits. Been building seriously since 1977 when I first met Neil Robinson, so it is really all his fault I am now an addict

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Mine was a Hurricane of some kind when I was in primary school, I don't remember the exacts, but it was in the old Airfix grey boxes, and had options for a Polish-flown version.

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Mine was an Airfix Mig15 it was one of those bag kits they used to do.  I must have been around 5-6 my mum worked in a toy shop back then, she helped me make it, I was hooked spent pretty much until I was 16 modelling.   By about 12 I discovered Tamiya although I had to save my pocket money and then later use my paper round (remember them) money, from 16 - 20 I had an on off relationship with modelling, until last year a 30 odd year gap!  

 

Which appears to be what many have done. 

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Aurora P-40 "Flying Tiger". It taught me that glues that will adhere styrene should be used sparingly on the clear parts! Followed by several other Aurora "Famous Fighters" - Me-109, FW-190, "Jap Zero", and Spitfire come to mind, plus the Sopwith Camel, and the Avro Canada CF-100 and CF-105. The Stedmans 5 and 10 in Huntsville (Ontario) always had a pretty good stock of model aircraft kits!

 

John

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My first was back around 1970 as a leftover from the goody bags at my brother’s birthday party. It was an Airfix Hurricane IV with rockets and came in a bag (series 1?).  I was completely hooked for the next few years and must have built most of the Airfix range around that time. Mostly WW2 related. Aircraft/tanks/ships. Didn’t seem to matter what. Looking back I begin to wonder if I was hooked on the glue and thinners!!!!

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Early '60's, out with my Dad in Woolies. 

 

He asked me to pick out a model kit, all Airfix of course, two bob each for the bagged kits. 

 

I didn't really know one aircraft from another then and picked a Westland Lysander.

 

My mum helped me build it, she was a dab hand!

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