It was my dad. He sat down with me when I was 5 and we built a snap-tite B-25. Totally hooked after that (or at least I thought) built mostly aircraft for a long time and then go ahold of Tamiya's ancient Panther A. Found tracked things and then I was TOTALLY hooked.

When I was about 10 (around 1970)I visited my cousins in North Springfield, Va.and the kid next door asked if I would like to see his tanks. He and his dad had built all of the Tamiya German tanks available at the time, the Tiger, Jagdtiger, and others. I was hooked on armor. Then Shep Paine came out with the Monogram Diorama sheets and I have building ever since! I had built one model, an airplane kit, several years before with my dad but it was too time consuming for him and I was too young. Well It's been about 50 years now and I'm still going strong. I really have a soft spot in my heart for those old Tamiya and Monogram kits.

My father was a military policeman. In those days family of Dutch profesional soldiers were entiteld to visit the military medical services as well. As a 9 year old kid I visited a medic in the baracs who had a convoy of Airfix half tracks, jeeps and a centurion tank on his desk. I fell in love with them immediately, forgot the pain of my severe wound as my dad promised me my own Airfix model. The visit to the toy shop next day was since than followed by uncountable times more. It started with Airfix, thereafter Monogram, than Tamiya and now we're burried by a wide variation which makes choices more difficult than at the beginning.

3-4 years back, my laptop broke and I had to send it off for repairs. During that time I got bored and found an old crappy 1/48 kit lying around (I bought it a few years prior in the hopes of starting it, but never got around to it) and well...now I'm here.

Sometimes I'll be honest, it feels quite weird to be one of the only people under 30 in this hobby.

I don't know what got me started, but I know that models were my favorite thing when I was little. I honestly wish I could remember what started me building them, but I must have been 6 or 7 when I started. Perhaps my fondest memory with respect to modeling was when I had to be about 8 years old. It was Christmas Eve, and I recall being quite wound up, not unusual for a little one. My folks said something like "Why don't we give him one of his gifts", and I remember that it was the 1/32 Revell Apollo Command/Service Module, with clear parts. I was so "over the moon" (pun intended) with the model that I ran to my room and immediately began to put it together. I also recall my folks saying something like, "We should have waited and given him one of the other presents" because I was SO happy and excited with that spaceship model. I suppose it says something that I can't recall a single other present that year.

By the way....I have the reissue of that same kit in my hoard of models right now!

I also remember, at about the same age, being at my grandmothers house, out in the middle of nowhere in a tiny town in far north Wisconsin, and putting together what I think was a model of some fantasy space ship, and even recall having to attach some sort of sting to make the landing gear work.

It's odd that I never had any friends who were into models, and to this day, only met one coworker in my entire life who liked models. I don't know if that's unusual or not, to have never really encountered another model aficionado. Are we that rare?

Modelling is a family addiction. My late dad (born 1931) build evrything Wehrmacht, mostly 1/72 scale. His generation build flying models from wood, mostly glider planes. I (born 1969) held the first Tamiya TigerI kit Christmas 1973. My younger brother went int 1/700 scale waterline ships. It was exciting to build Airfix 1/24 scale Ju-87 Stuka and other large scale kits. In the 1970s we had frequent FTX of US Army in my home county. Still remember when I got my first MCI ration cans, nobody at home knew what these cans contained, but it tasted good.
At these noumerous FTX I borrowed dads camera and did the first steps in photography. As soon as I got my driving licence I went into zhe next town where a garrison of German Bundesgrenzschutz was. There was a detachement US Army based for patrolling the inner-German border. One of the happiest moments was when I was allowed to photograph some M1 A1 from 2-64 AR. Had some more encounters with Abrams tanks, was spotting them during Danger Crossing river crossing exercise on the River Main. The soldiers gave us some MRE pounches and advised us to heat them on the exhaust grilles of the tank. O.K. tasted a little bit like fuel, but was a cool experience.

Don't worry, I'm also a member of the under-30 club...

Had model trains (S Gauge/American Flyer) since almost before I could talk. Since having 3 boys of my own they got me into scale armor. They are now grown and gone but I still have the bug!

When I was four years old, on Christmas morning, I remember getting my dad out of bed really early and he built me an Airfix Concorde and QE2. That started my interest in building models.

However, I loved Thunderbirds and, in the early 70's, it was always on TV in the school holidays and the quality of modelmaking on that series just fired my imagination. From there I went through the entire Airfix & Matchbox range building anything & everything.

What got me started on armour though was my late Uncle George. When I was about 8 years old he told me about how he came across a Tiger tank in North Africa. He said that he could have done more damage by hurling bad language at it rather than the guns they had. Whether it was a Tiger or not I never found out as he sadly died before I knew the difference between a Tiger, Panzer III and Panzer IV.
But I do remember rushing to buy a Tamiya Tiger from Carters in Bradford and that set me off on a lifelong hobby of armour modelling.

I built my first kit when I was 6. It was a Johan 63 Chevy Nova. I still have it. My Dad wanted me to learn how to read directions and use my hands. I grew up with him telling me about WW2. Later I became a tanker and wanted to build a model of the M60A1 that I was on. Went to a hobby shop in Colorado Springs, picked up the Tamiya Kit and I was bitten. Love building armor. I have branched out as I build and fly Giant scale Warbirds also.But armor is my first love

I started in the late 50s on ww2 planes. Linburg , Aurora. Revell, kits . built them until I discovered girls lol. when I was in Vietnam I built a f4 my sister sent me .After VN i got married had kids and no time. after my kids were grown I started on armour . I was a part of a m113 crew so my first model was a m113. im still at it !

When I visited Charleston as a child, I saw painted, pewter figurines. Two years, after that my grandfather bought me a 1:72 C-130. How I ended up building armor, I don't know.