As a model builder since the 1950's, I have always been intrigued by WW1 aircraft; their fragile nature, the vivid colors and the first men who ventured into the sky to take their dispute to another level. In 1960, military service, marriage and children took me out of the hobby until 1980, at which time I started working on my present collection. I chose 1/72nd scale due to space considerations and the number of available kits on the market. In 2000 I joined an online group of dedicated WW1 modelers builders and my skills and knowledge grew in leaps and bounds. About this same time my wife learned HTML and pushed and shoved me into the 21st century with my very own web site.

Somewhere around 1965, I watched a young man drill an antenna with a #80 drill bit and put a piece of nylon through it. All of my rigging up to that time was black sewing thread wrapped around the strut. Armed with an idea, I started drilling holes at the base of my struts and used nylon thread for the rigging. I will share with you this simplified rigging method, named by a very good friend, DURAS. This rigging system has fared well over the past 30 years and the rigging has not sagged in all of the ensuing years.

As of October 2010, the collection stands at 200 but most of my older kits are not on the site. I have reached my goal to have 209 kits completed before the end of 2010, with all of my kits on the site, mainly to show my progress as a builder since 1980.

I would like to thank an untold number of modelers for their help over the past 10 years. And my thanks to my wife, affectionately known as Tech Support, for all of her help and encouragement over the years.

Model Count as of January 2012: 211