My name is Roland Turner and I would describe myself as a reasonably competent modeller who builds primarily for my own pleasure. I don't believe that any of my models would stand a great chance of being a class winner at Scale Modelworld, but that is not why I build them.
I am an active member of the International Plastic Modellers Society and regularly attend the meetings of the Birmingham branch and maintain the IPMS Birmingham website. The branch frequently attends model shows around the UK displaying members' models including some of mine.
Within IPMS there are a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and I am a member of several - The French Air Force SIG, SIG Italia, Bomber Command SIG and the Hawker Hurricane SIG and often contribute models to their displays at model shows.
I have been building models for the best part of half a centrury, ever since my parents gave me an Airfix Lancaster for Christmas when I was eight years old.
That Lancaster was the first model that I built and painted all by myself, I had been given kits before that but they been built for me by my father or my mother (Mum made a better job of it than Dad - but you could never tell him that). Having had success with the Lanc. I was bitten by the modelling bug and every week saw a new addition to the collection, usually a World War II plane from Airfix's 'Two shilling (10 pence in today's money) range' using my pocket money. When I wanted a bigger kit, a Halifax of B17 for example, I resorted to doing odd jobs in the garden for my father (weeding a row of onions or pricking out a tray of seedlings at 6 pence a go) to raise the princely sum of seven shillings and six pence (37.5 pence).
Of course relatives soon realised that giving me a kit for my birthday or Christmas was an easy choice, my god-mother frequently coming up trumps, not always an aeroplane but usually something interesting, for example the Revell SS United States one year.
The other relative who took a keen interest in my models was an uncle who at that time was still a serving officer in the Royal Air Force, an ex fighter pilot, during WWII he had flown Hurricanes in Burma and Spitfires in India. After the war, following a brief period in civvy street, he had rejoined the RAF and flown Meteor F.8s until deteriorating eye sight forced him the retrain as an air traffic controller. Whenever he visited us he would spend some time with me looking at my models, talking about the different types of aircraft and usually when he was leaving would give me enough money to buy my next big project. That sort of encouragement cannot be undervalued, for a youngser to have adult like him take an interest in what you doing rather than just dismissing your activities as child's play or messing about with toys, boosts your confidence and sense of self worth no end.
Over the years I continued modelling sometimes diversifying into other subjects such as tanks and warships but alway coming back to aircraft. I read modelling magazines and well remember the conversion articles in Airfix Magazine written by Alan Hall, in fact I still have many of those magazines - like most modellers I tend to squirrel thing away "Just in case I might need them in the future". This inevitably lead to me try to build to a higher standard, the knock on effect being that models took longer to finish - gone were the days when a kit would be bought, constructed, painted and decals applied within the space of 48 hours. As a consequence a stock of unstarted kits began to build up (Does this sound familiar?) and different models were started before the previous one was finished resulting in multiple projects on the go at any one time and a decreasing number completed.
Inevitably, as I progressed into my teenage years my interest in modelling receded as other interests came along, not least the opposite sex, for whom sticking together little plastic aeroplanes made no sense whatsoever. In fact most teenage lads at that time would have considered building models to be "Seriously uncool", we are talking about the mid to late nineteen sixties afterall.
As I grew to maturity I cared less about what other people thought about my hobby, usually I found that those who derided others' activities actually did very little themselves, being content to consume the dross served up by television and other 'mass media'.
In the ensuing years my interest in modelling has waxed and waned depending on my circumstances and what other stimuli there have been in my life, but I have never completly deserted the hobby. Even when I have been building no models at all I would still regularly buy magazines such as Scale Aircraft Modelling, and rarely walked past a model shop without at least stopping to see what was new in stock, sometimes going in and buying a kit to add to the ever growing hoard.
These days it is probably true to say that I do more talking and writing about modelling than actually building, but then thats what I enjoy doing and what else is a hobby about?
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