Hi everybody, I'm Steve (I'll explain "bruceuncle" in a minute) from a city called Goulburn in New South Wales, Australia. I was a member of this forum back in 2008, when I had just discovered card modelling. Started with some simple models from the Canon site (yes, I'd just got my first colour printer) and had also made a Fiddlers Green GeeBee. It looked so good (not that the Canon stuff wasn't fun) and it got me hooked on card 'planes. I was all ready to get into a Fokker E-III build but life (well work and a mortgage) got very much in the way 
. At that time we lived on the coast around 80km south of Sydney. I was an analyst programmer in my professional life, specialising in database architectures and interfaces. Freelancing at the time and working far too hard. A few years later, we moved inland to Goulburn, which is around 200km southwest of Sydney and around 700m above sea level. This gives us a quieter life (pop. 25,000 compared to 400,000) and a less humid climate. The coast is getting unbearable in summer now as the changes in climate have meant higher temperatures, higher humidity, and persistent thunderstorms in the summer So we now dodge the unbearable humidity at the cost of freezing cold winters (yes it does snow in Australia!) and frying hot summers. But that drop in humidity has made all the difference. And more and more people were pouring into the NSW coastal strip every year. Too crowded by far. And all those day-trippers from Sydney each weekend. Too much!
My forum name "bruceuncle" is courtesy of my niece and nephew in the UK. When they were growing up, they were mad keen Monty Python's Flying Circus fans. So when they learnt I had an Aussie girlfriend, and we were going to Australia to get married, they always called us Uncle Bruce and Aunty Sheila. So bruceuncle was a natural for a forum ID. This probably means nothing to anyone who wasn't a fan...
Anyway, years rolled by and just lately I came across some old prints of models I had not even started back in 2008 thru 2010. So here I am again and it looks like the Fokker E-III is up for a build after all.
I'm retired now so have a bit more time to get involved (in theory at least). Other interests over the years have been (and still are):
The set of card plane models that I downloaded back then came out of some threads on this forum. They were professional quality and have now disappeared completely from the web along with the site (as have so many others). The Fokker is one of these. So I will be posting these back into the community over the next few days in the Resources section. The moderators had to grant permission for this as there are some things to consider in this situation. Firstly, were they genuine free resources? Yes they were, so that's okay. The original publisher was very friendly to hobbyists and it seems likely that these were just poor sellers with a couple slightly flawed - but you'll find more info on that in the Resources posts. Secondly, the original site's URL is visible and these days leads to a domain taken over by a reseller complete with a malware trap with intrusion threats. And finally, archived build threads from this forum that I'll also be uploading, relating to a couple of the models, are also littered with links that are now either just broken or sometimes lead to hacked sites that have taken over the domains and pose severe security risks. Not a good scenario! These last two mean that all the related documents will be uploaded in PDF format with all the links disabled. But they will still appear as text. DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO COPY AND TRY TO FOLLOW ANY OF THESE! And similar warnings will be in all the uploads. Actually removing them all would be an horrendous task, so that's the best I can do. You have (and will be) warned!
That's me
. So 'bye for now and see you in the Resources section "real soon now".
. At that time we lived on the coast around 80km south of Sydney. I was an analyst programmer in my professional life, specialising in database architectures and interfaces. Freelancing at the time and working far too hard. A few years later, we moved inland to Goulburn, which is around 200km southwest of Sydney and around 700m above sea level. This gives us a quieter life (pop. 25,000 compared to 400,000) and a less humid climate. The coast is getting unbearable in summer now as the changes in climate have meant higher temperatures, higher humidity, and persistent thunderstorms in the summer So we now dodge the unbearable humidity at the cost of freezing cold winters (yes it does snow in Australia!) and frying hot summers. But that drop in humidity has made all the difference. And more and more people were pouring into the NSW coastal strip every year. Too crowded by far. And all those day-trippers from Sydney each weekend. Too much!My forum name "bruceuncle" is courtesy of my niece and nephew in the UK. When they were growing up, they were mad keen Monty Python's Flying Circus fans. So when they learnt I had an Aussie girlfriend, and we were going to Australia to get married, they always called us Uncle Bruce and Aunty Sheila. So bruceuncle was a natural for a forum ID. This probably means nothing to anyone who wasn't a fan...
Anyway, years rolled by and just lately I came across some old prints of models I had not even started back in 2008 thru 2010. So here I am again and it looks like the Fokker E-III is up for a build after all.
I'm retired now so have a bit more time to get involved (in theory at least). Other interests over the years have been (and still are):
- Lego Technics and Mindstorms - started way back in 1979 not long after Technics was introduced. Progressed through the Cybermaster, Scout, RCX, then a long break due to work again, and now the Robotics, Spike Prime and Powered Up hubs.
- Just about anything to do with computers. Lately, a lot of retro work on the Commodore Amiga and the AMOS language.
- I play Tenor Recorder in a small Ensemble with my wife and her piano teacher and some others.
- Very recently I've been making some of the UGears wooden models - which provides a little support for Ukraine as they're manufactured in Kyiv.
The set of card plane models that I downloaded back then came out of some threads on this forum. They were professional quality and have now disappeared completely from the web along with the site (as have so many others). The Fokker is one of these. So I will be posting these back into the community over the next few days in the Resources section. The moderators had to grant permission for this as there are some things to consider in this situation. Firstly, were they genuine free resources? Yes they were, so that's okay. The original publisher was very friendly to hobbyists and it seems likely that these were just poor sellers with a couple slightly flawed - but you'll find more info on that in the Resources posts. Secondly, the original site's URL is visible and these days leads to a domain taken over by a reseller complete with a malware trap with intrusion threats. And finally, archived build threads from this forum that I'll also be uploading, relating to a couple of the models, are also littered with links that are now either just broken or sometimes lead to hacked sites that have taken over the domains and pose severe security risks. Not a good scenario! These last two mean that all the related documents will be uploaded in PDF format with all the links disabled. But they will still appear as text. DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO COPY AND TRY TO FOLLOW ANY OF THESE! And similar warnings will be in all the uploads. Actually removing them all would be an horrendous task, so that's the best I can do. You have (and will be) warned!
That's me
. So 'bye for now and see you in the Resources section "real soon now".
)
