My interest in model aircraft building and flying started when I was about 8 or 9 and the youngest in my streets gang. Our leader decided that we should each save our pennies until we had enough money to each buy a Keil Kraft Cadet glider kit; they were about two shillings I think. The race was then on to be the first back on the street with a completed model. I remember that mine displayed an interesting flight pattern that I have never been able to replicate. This let me through further KK rubber powered models and ultimately to a couple of control line jobs dragged around with, I think, a Merco engine of dubious reliability.

Progress was interrupted by various motorcycles, work, housing, family and other such impedimenta that stole 30 years from me until one day my son?s foolish expression of a passing interest in radio controlled model aircraft provided the perfect excuse for a 15 year return to balsa bashing and crashing; unfortunately this stately progress was rudely interrupted by a recession that rendered me penniless and homeless for a year or three.

Twenty five years further down life?s bumpy road I felt no longer able to resist a nagging urge to have another go. So here I am turning balsa into shavings and dust during the building of a D.B. Sports Scale SE5a 1/4 scale that I've brought a Laser 160V twin to drag around.

I realise that it's a stand-off and squint scale but it will get me back into the swing of things.