The Friday Diatribe - February 2026 - A Sentimental Journey

[Stokesy44]

1977 was an epoch-making year. Star Wars came out and I started building models. The two were not connected although both would become addictions in one way or another.

Early days - a lack of patience and finger prints in the paintwork.

I believe the first model I ever built was a 1/72 RAF Jet Provost by Airfix. I think it was a joint decision by my Father and I to think about hobbies that might interest me. I remember the red and white paint scheme as it was a trainer. I was pretty much hooked right away. Airfix was where it was at. I have memories of making their old Buccaneer, the Lanc, the B17, several airliners and ships such as the WW2 Ark Royal and HMS Belfast. I ruined one of the airliners by starting the decals before the paint dried. I was SO keen to get on with things. Throughout my childhood I gained a well-earned reputation for breaking things as soon as they were given to me. This morphed into how I made kits. Some would argue it is a problem that extends even to this day.

But these were not just unassembled toys. I marvelled at what was being created in my hands, the thrill of holding up an aircraft and imagining it pulling up or banking tightly in a dogfight. Putting the main guns on a battleship and imagining them firing a broadside. That has never changed.

As mentioned, Airfix was the manufacturer I remember, and Matchbox too, with the little clear window section on the kit box so you could glimpse the wonders of the plastic inside. The Holy Grail of the kits coming out of Airfix were what was known as ‘The Super Kits’. The 1/24 aircraft kits that included the Spitfire, Hurricane, Me 109, P51 Mustang, JU87 Stuka and greatest of all, the Harrier Jump Jet! These were epic, mythical creations. Calling them model kits didn’t describe them well enough. They were objects of fantasy, dreams of what might be if the stars aligned and one of these wonders of the modelling world winged its way to my address, paint and glue not included of course. I remember seeing a completed 1/24 Spitfire at the house of my parents’ friends. It was a thing of wonder, the sheer size, the engine, the retractable undercarriage. It was as though the real thing had just been reduced in size a little and passed on to us mere mortals.

The 1980s – it was time to grow up a little

As the decade looked to turn and I approached double figures in age, it was still Airfix and Matchbox that ruled the shelves. Aircraft and ships, builds I remember were the Airfix 1/72 Air Sea Rescue Boat, the Matchbox 1/72 Wellington bomber and more Airfix ship building in 1/600 scale. There was a third manufacturer I noticed by then with a foreign sounding name, some said Japanese but those kits always seemed to be tanks so I had zero interest in them (this theme will be revisited later). Tools and supplies were Humbrol enamel paints and styrene cement glue in little metal squeezy tubes that turned to silly string with the smallest exposure to the atmosphere.

My father set the tone as my interest began to grow up a little. He loved sports, military history and politics. I never really picked up the politics stuff but from a very early age I loved football and cricket and was soon learning about the second world war. Not that I was being taught the major events that shaped our modern world, I was just finding it interesting because he found it interesting. Living in Kent, I was smack in the middle of Battle of Britain country and my interest soon became targeted on that glorious summer of 1940 when England stood alone and a mere handful of dashing public school types, saved not only our island home, but also the entire world in general by giving Harry Hun a jolly good biffing and sending him home with tail firmly between legs (subject to slight revision over time).

If I remember correctly, my interest really started to ramp up with a trip to the RAF Museum in Hendon, London. It’s a fantastic Museum and is little changed today. There’s more interactive visual stuff on display than there was back then but the primary interest lies with the aircraft in the 3 main halls, one of which is a separate hall, just for the battle in 1940. Seeing real aircraft and reading all the information in the displays, I was drinking in the history. The thing that most affected me was a display in one of the building’s far corners. There was a plinth showing the remains of a crashed Hawker Hurricane, just the forward section from the smashed engine back to the main spar and the remains of the cockpit. On the walls around the wreck are plaques detailing the names of all the pilots in Fighter Command who died in the fighting, there is even a set of two brothers, side by side in death as they had been in life. There is music playing on a never ending loop, the same piece over and over. I found out what it was years later when I heard the same piece played at The Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. Its ‘Nimrod’ from Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

Also, around this time I was given a history book titled ‘Eagle Day the Battle of Britain’ by Richard Collier. It drew me into the events of 1940 and its never really let me go. It was a stunning book, the version I received was the larger format illustrated version which had a huge number of photographs all through it. I still have it today and doubt I will ever part with it. My fascination with the battle has stayed with me and I would still consider it to be the single historical event I am most interested in.

I started to get a little pocket money and I began to buy models myself as opposed to receiving them as presents or treats. This bought the local toy shops into play. Not much in the way of selection but always something I could justify buying if I had enough money. We were not rich but neither were we poor so the costs of the hobby were manageable.

As the 1980s got going I was just old enough to take advantage of a revolutionary concept. The discovery of something called a ‘Model Shop’ not a toy shop, an entire premises devoted to models. Revolution indeed.
The possibility of model retailers had been teased to me by trips to museums as places like the RAF Museum had a shop with A LOT of model kits, far more than the little sections in the toy shops I previously mentioned. Then 2 things happened, a friend of my parents advised them of a model shop down in Rochester (40 minutes in the car) and a friend of mine who also made models spoke to me about a shop called Beatties in Lewisham (again, about 40 minutes away). I can still remember the thrill of going to these places for the first time. And these were not little shops. Beatties was a serious size and it was lined floor to ceiling with kits of all kinds. Not just model kits but RC cars, train sets and masses of supplies

And that’s how the 80s went. Making kits at home on the dining table or round my friend’s house and begging our parents to drive us to one of the model shops. During that time I achieved what I thought was the Zenith of the hobby when one of the famed Airfix Super Kits arrived for me one birthday. It was the Mk 1 Hawker Hurricane, in Battle of Britain markings too!! Fully detailed cockpit, engine, undercarriage bay and machine guns. Heaven. I can still remember the thrill of holding up the fuselage with the completed engine and cockpit installed, looking like the real thing on a production line.

10 years is a long time but not much changed in the first half of the decade. We moved house in 86 so that put an end to the build sessions with my friend but we carried on with the hobby independently. He went to university in 88 and I started work in the city in 89. We are still in touch.

A year after we moved my Father died of cancer. He died in July of 87. In May of 87 I handed in my 5th year History Project at school, the subject? The Battle of Britain. I got the highest marks in the year. I sat my exams that summer but I didn’t get my O Level results until after he had died. I got one A, four Bs and 5 Cs. The A was in History and it was never in doubt. Even all these years later I miss him. I remember all the good things but I miss all the things we never got to do. I never got to discuss history with him as an adult, to enjoy a beer with him while discussing the cricket. We would have seen Saving Private Ryan at the cinema together and talked weekly on the phone after each Band of Brothers episode was aired on BBC2. And a hundred other things.
I console myself with the truth that in the 17 years I had with him, I had it really good.

1990 to 2009 – ticking over but not really making any strides

I discovered another Beatties shop less than 10 minutes from my office in Holborn and many a lunch break or after work was spent perusing the shelves for my next kit and any resupply missions. I remember when Tamiya brought out their 1/32 F-15 E Strike Eagle, I can still picture exactly where it was on the shelves in that shop.
During all this time my process never really changed, I became aware of more manufacturers, most notably Tamiya (alluded to earlier) but while my skills improved (I hope) I did not change how I did things. Same type of glue, same enamel paints, better blades and cutting tools. Weathering consisted of a little dry brushing for interior spaces and an enamel wash for exterior surfaces. Gun smoke and engine exhaust stains were achieved by dabbing paint onto a tissue and wiping in the relevant direction.

My fascination with history significantly increased. I read a lot more and much more about the human experience. Planes were still cool but it was the event and the people that now fascinated me when I was looking at a particular subject. Then in 1997 I got my own place and the hobby had to take a break because I didn’t have the room. I moved again in 2002 but only built kits intermittently.

One thing I did do during this time was build my first tank. And I have no recollection as to why!! For some reason I bought a 1/35 Tamiya Tiger, one of their early releases. I knew NOTHING about AFVs so I had no idea how accurate it was or how to apply any sort of weathering. It went together easily enough. One of the options was for a desert example so I painted it in plain desert yellow and finished it with the decals. Then I went back to aircraft and thought no more about it.

My job became more and more demanding and I didn’t have the energy or the interest, if I’m honest, to apply myself to the bench at weekends. That might have been the end of it. I could easily have consigned the hobby to something I had previously done but did no longer. I very rarely felt any desire to build anything. Life issues wrung me out and really killed my creativity particularly with regard to the hobby. And if things had gone a different way I may never have bought or built another kit.

2009-2014 – embers & sparks – and a thank you to Mr Tamiya

In 2009 Tamiya bought out their new tool 1/32 Spitfire IX, a real new Super Kit, 30 years after Airfix did it. I had a laptop by then and I started researching reviews of the kit. It was mind boggling. Incredible engineering, an engine that was attached exactly like the real thing, engine cowlings made of ultra-thin plastic so the engine could be made the correct size for the scale. Reviewers went wild, it was possibly the best injection moulded model kit ever. And so I bought it. And did a really piss-poor job of it. But I was back at the bench and Tamiya was going to keep me there.

I had barely finished the Spitfire when Tamiya released their 1/32 Mustang and they did the unbelievable. They bettered the Spitfire release. They did exactly what they did with the Spitfire in terms of features but everything was taken up a notch. I built 2 Mustangs and had a great time on both. I liked them so much they were the only completed kits I took with me when I moved home.

2014 – present day – take the blinkers off, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

It’s a story of another new tool release which caused the hobby equivalent of The Big Bang for me. We’ve come full circle. Anyone fancy a new tool Airfix 1/24 Super Kit? Airfix had gone to the wall in the previous years but had been resurrected and were now turning out new tool kits and back catalogue stuff on a very busy schedule. Someone must have pressed the ‘Go Big or Go Home’ button because they released a 1/24 Hawker Typhoon with all the old Super Kit goodies, fully detailed engine, cockpit, cannons, even some stressed skin ‘canning’. It looked an absolute beauty and I immediately ordered it.

It was then that I decided to sit down before I fell down. This was a BIG kit and to do it well required me to step up. Stepping up meant a lot of things but chief among them was getting an airbrush and learning how to use it. I did not have the skills to brush paint a really good finish on an aircraft and all the stuff I was seeing on the internet was being done with an airbrush. But it wasn’t just spraying the colours, if I wanted to attempt realism, I would need to learn effects. Air brushing was about layers and I didn’t have a clue. It was time to hit the internet.

The first question I had to answer was did I have the space for a proper setup, somewhere to build and paint / spray. The answer was a resounding yes so then I turned to the internet and got searching. I needed to know what to buy, how to work it, store it and clean it. I also needed to know what to put into it and I did not have a clue. I found a channel on You Tube where a guy was doing a series of lessons. Basically, it was airbrushing for dummies and I was a perfect fit for obvious reasons. However, the thought of starting my airbrushing career on a kit the size of the Tiffy scared seven buckets of sand out of me. Apparently, I needed a test subject, or if we’re being cruel, a paint mule. Enter stage left, an Airfix 1/48 Me 109. Amazon provided a cheap air brush and compressor, I watched the training videos, built the 109, did some very agricultural pre-shading with some Tamiya black and Vallejo thinner and then loaded some light blue for the underside. At this point I had not discovered primers so I started on the base colour.

It was like magic, the way the paint impacted the pre-shade, reducing it after each pass, I remember laughing because I couldn’t believe it worked. It was at this point the hobby effectively restarted for me. Only this time, I wanted to build stuff AND I had access to the WWW thingy where all the info was! My understanding of what was out there was about to get a whole lot bigger. It was ‘more’ of everything. More manufacturers, more tools, more info on new kits, new techniques. I didn’t know what the term ‘After Market’ meant until I started seeing all the extras being advertised with the kits they were linked to. I found out about local model shows, went along and goggled at the kits on show and was amazed by all the vendors and the stuff they were selling.

And I bought stuff. For the first time in my life I had kits that were waiting to be built. Once I had found manufacturers I liked I watched for their new releases in the hope that it would be something I liked whilst also going after kits they had already released, albeit recently. I broadened the subjects I was interested in, many of these new manufacturers were dominated by AFVs, aircraft were a distant second. With all the information out there I couldn’t help but learn the history of AFVs, not just how to build them. I fell in love with building brutes of armour and began to learn the context in which they had been used.
Specific to WW2 I became fascinated by armour, its use and limitations, the myths and stories. I learned about the lineage of German tanks, the impact of the Russian T34, the alleged limitations of allied tanks and how armour was used in ground campaigns. I loved the tempo of an AFV build. How you built the beast until it was ready to paint then you painted it. Not the stop start process of an aircraft build. I loved the challenge of weathering a tank specific to its theatre of use. I read about processes, some disagreeing with each other, how to build up layer by layer, to use or not to use a gloss coat, how to paint field applied white wash, how to distress paint finishes. And then I would still make a mess of it or it wouldn’t look like I had expected it to. But that was part of the fun. It became similar to how I felt when building an aircraft, I would look at the tank when the weathering brought it alive, how weight seemed to be added when the tank looked dirty and metallic.

Learning to use an airbrush reignited my interest in the hobby and it came at such a time that I was receptive to catching up on all the new stuff I had not previously been aware of. I do most of my shopping online now, shops like Beatties are long gone but some family run shops remain and these are places of pilgrimage when I get the time.

Present day

I have a new airbrush now but the compressor still works. My stash is split evenly between aircraft and AFVs at present. I also have a number of unread history books so you could say I am behind schedule in both hobbies.

And the videos I watched when I wanted to learn about airbrushing? They were by a chap called Paul Bretland and the channel was called ISM or International Scale Modeller.

[aur0ra145]

Excellent write up! I too have a somewhat similar journey. I'll echo that Paul's videos on airbrushing really helped me get back into the hobby and took away the great mystery of airbrushing.

It seems the hobby really has exploded over the last several years. Even my friends are beginning to ask how to get started up in the hobby. Hopefully, we'll see more modelers start to attend shows. The Gunpla community is absolutely skyrocketing around me, which is cool to see. Lots of cool Gundam and SciFi builds over the last couple of years at the local shows.

Now if someone would just make a TIE Bomber and TIE Phantom polystyrene kit...

[Stokesy44]

Excellent write up! I too have a somewhat similar journey. I'll echo that Paul's videos on airbrushing really helped me get back into the hobby and took away the great mystery of airbrushing.

It seems the hobby really has exploded over the last several years. Even my friends are beginning to ask how to get started up in the hobby. Hopefully, we'll see more modelers start to attend shows. The Gunpla community is absolutely skyrocketing around me, which is cool to see. Lots of cool Gundam and SciFi builds over the last couple of years at the local shows.

Now if someone would just make a TIE Bomber and TIE Phantom polystyrene kit...

Thanks mate. Your wish may be coming true re the TIE Bomber. Check out the below video, from 1.35 in.