Howdy, all!
Last time out, I made a comment that my hobby of scale modeling led to my career/vocation paths. To refresh your memory, they were (in no particular order) history, aviation, research, writing, and hanging out at the hobby shop.
This is one of those "about me for myself" pieces I talked about last time, but I thought this one might be fun to share.
When my father brought home a Revell 1/32 scale Wildcat model kit, I don't think he realized the vast worlds he was opening up to me.
I was an early reader. I've been told that I could read before I was four years old. As I got older, I loved to read. I would read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. When we started building that model, I was only concerned about the three-dimensional puzzle in the box. However, one night, as I waited for Dad to come to the table for our modeling session, I started to read the side of the box. Then I noticed that the instruction sheet contained more than just how to get the parts together—the front page had a capsule history of the airplane and its exploits during WWII. Before I read it, I just thought the little pudgy airplane looked neat, but as I read about how it was the Navy’s front line fighter airplane in the early days of the war, and how it was flying against faster, more maneuverable enemy airplanes, my interest grew. I looked for books in the school library about the war, and learned about the Battles of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, Wake Island, and the Solomons. Each new discovery led me to learn more. I’d find one nugget that would lead me to three more.
That’s research, kids. I do a lot of research to this day—most of what I do uses what are known as secondary sources, so it is technically “Research Lite” (Less Filling! Tastes Great!), although I did start to use primary sources when we were up to our necks in the Fire Support Base RIPCORD project a year or so ago. What’s the difference? Primary sources are from either official accounts from the units involved or from the guys who were actually there and participated. SITREPS, diaries, After Action reports, first hand witnesses—those are all primary source materials. Secondary sources are what you find on the shelves at the local Barnes and Noble—books written about events where the author may (or may not) have used primary sources. (As “true” researchers know, you take all secondary sources with a grain of salt…)
As I researched things, I’d write about them. I wrote a lot of book reports, sure, but sometimes I’d write just for myself. They were more a collection of notes, but every now and then I would collect those thoughts into an article for the local modeling club newsletter. I laid off writing for a while, but with the COVID shutdown I’ve managed to get a little of my groove back, and have once again been pumping out modeling articles, and they’re now being published in the national organizations’ magazines.
The more models I built, the more I wanted to build. Unfortunately, like most things, it takes money to acquire and build models. By the time I hit high school, I was at the age where I started to take my modeling more seriously. A long-time modeler and author, Roscoe Creed, made mention of it when he “wondered where all the cracks went?” in one of his books a book that I still refer to from time to time.
I wanted to get rid of the seam lines. I wanted to make it look like the pictures of the actual item. As I learned of such things, I began using putty, decal setting solutions, these new-fangled super glues, and an airbrush. Like the kits themselves, that stuff isn’t free. More experience led me to discover the then-emerging world of the aftermarket—decals were the first thing I think most modelers encounter from the aftermarket, but later things like photoetched brass details, white metal and resin parts, vac-form kits, and other additions and conversions also became part of my repertoire.
Of course, by doing so, I was honing my skills as a craftsman and, dare I say, artist. I was learning how to solve problems. I developed a sense of spatial relationships--how stuff goes together. It goes without saying that I developed a good eye for small details.
After I graduated from college, I started to visit the local shop more frequently. I became a regular, and eventually I was asked if I wanted to do some fill-in work. Before long, I was a regular part-time employee, and would remain so until I moved out of state. During a layoff period about 10 years later, I got a job at the local hobby shop here. I was only there for a few months, but when my next full-time employer picked up and left, I went to work for the shop again.
What helped me get the job, I think, is that I was familiar with all the stuff one needed to complete a model. I was also interested in going the extra mile when I built my models, and I knew what that took, so I could guide others when they came looking for hobby stuff. Many see retail sales as a drag, but I saw it as a chance to get paid while playing with toys. Hence, my days hanging out at the hobby shop...
Now, how about the aviation thing…
I have no idea what first got me hooked on airplanes. Perhaps it was the Wildcat model. More likely, it was reading of the exploits of the men who flew them in the war; the Wildcat model was merely the first step on the path. For many years, I wasn’t interested in a book if (A) it was not related to aviation; or (B) the word “fiction” was not preceded by “non”. I have to believe it was that—the more I read, the more I learned, and the more I wanted to be part of that world. Interestingly, I never really wanted to be a pilot. I can’t say why, I just never saw that as where I would be. More on that shortly…
In my day, teachers were almost always matronly ladies in their late 30’s to early 50’s. However, my fourth grade teacher was an exception. I guess she was in her late 20’s--I seem to recall she had only recently received her teaching credentials at that time. She was a pretty, petite, energetic lady, blonde with a deep tan, and was always smiling. Her name was Miss Gerstle (Nancy, if I recall correctly). Her last name rhymes with the chocolate company’s name, and we often called her “Miss Nestlé-Gerstle”. From the little bit I managed to gather on her by listening to her, she lived with a few roommates and they all worked on the weekends as flight attendants (we called them “stewardesses” back in the day) for Mackey Airlines, a small scheduled airline that flew from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas, in order to earn a little extra money.
I don’t know if she lined it up, but one day we took a field trip to Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and got to walk around some airplanes. I seem to recall a Mackey airplane, maybe a DC-6, and it sat next to an Eastern Airlines (IIRC) 727 which was powered up, and we could walk through it. We spent a few hours walking around the airplanes, asking questions, and talking with the pilots and “stews”. I loved it.
An interesting tidbit—when I graduated from college and landed my first “adult” job, I worked from that same ramp, by that time occupied by the National Jets/Florida Aircraft Leasing facilities. Small world, right?
I don’t know what happened to Miss Gerstle, but wherever she is, I hope she is still smiling brightly and doing well. She was a breath of fresh air for me…
Later, while going through the steps to earn my Aviation merit badge, somehow I got what we call today a “Discovery Flight”. We went to the airport bright and early, got the whole briefing, got to do the preflight on the airplane, then we went out for a flight over Ft. Lauderdale. Sitting in the pilot seat, I couldn’t see over the glareshield! I enjoyed the flight, but decided that while it looked like fun, I wasn't interested in being a pilot.
As I started high school, I was shunted into what we would call a STEM program—back in those days, it didn’t have a name, but it put me on a track that emphasized math and science. We only had to take two science and two math classes over four years, but I had four of each. Somewhere along the line, it was intimated that I should become an aeronautical engineer, but as I related a long time ago, that didn’t work out so well. But I never abandoned my interest, and eventually went back to school and earned two degrees from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University that said I had what it took to be a genuine wire stringer, smoke wrangler, electron herder, and spark chaser—I became an avionics technician.
For most of my 30+ years chasing sparks, I worked in the world of corporate aviation—Learjets were my bread and butter, along with Hawkers and Citations. From time to time, I also worked on General Aviation craft—the little Cessna and Piper “puddle jumpers” that you see at your local airport—and business class turboprops like the Beechcraft King Air and Cessna Conquest families.
It was a demanding career, to be sure. I worked in 100+ degree heat and 20 degree cold. I worked in the sun, the rain, and sometimes even snow. Many times, we worked from “can” to “can’t”—we did what we needed to do to keep ‘em flying. It was hot, dirty, demanding work at times—especially at my last stop, where I was also the airframe electrician. If something provided electrical power or had a wire or air data line leading to it, it was in my wheelhouse.
I was always acutely aware that if I failed in my job, people could be injured or killed in a most loud and grotesque manner. I accepted the challenge. Not everybody is cut out for such a critical job, and as I began to supervise others, that would be my first question to them. If they were cavalier or flip, I wouldn’t hire them. If you wanted to work with me, you had to not only be aware of the consequences of your actions, you had to accept that any little deviation, a nanosecond of inattention, and you could possibly kill someone…
Incidentally, I don’t really like to fly. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that 95% of the flying I have done in my lifetime has been done because I *had* to in the line of duty. Flying for me was almost a mandatory thing, and much like running on a treadmill—we made a lot of noise and expended a lot of effort to basically go nowhere--it quickly became work.
For most folks, flying is a way to get from what you know to an unexplored exotic location on the other side of the globe, some sort of personal adventure, and flying is merely a gateway to that adventure. It is quite different when you know how the sausage is made and have to do it every day.
When the folks I was working for picked up stakes and left in 2016, I stayed put. I decided that my days of crawling around on hard hangar floors or cramming myself into ever smaller spaces were behind me. Since I had done a lot of the documentation that aircraft modifications required, I decided to use my writing skills and my avionics knowledge to start down the path to being a Technical Writer. My mother, who taught Latin, always said that I had technical hands and a liberal arts brain, and this seemed to be the best of both worlds.
And that’s how scale modeling made me who I am today. A gift from my father awakened an interest in history, and also fed my reading and research habit. What I learned through my reading led to an interest in aviation, helped along by a teacher and a merit badge. The technical aspects of the hobby sharpened my problem solving skills, helped me develop good hand-eye coordination and spurred me to develop a keen eye for small details and a sense of craftsmanship and artistry. The marriage of all this led to where I am right now.
And it started with a model airplane.
Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and look after each other. As always, I Bid you Peace.
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