Extract from ABC News
Steve Keddie remembers the first time he flew in an aeroplane — the moment that sparked a lifelong passion for aviation.
He was a five-year-old boy travelling with his father from Tasmania to Melbourne on an American, four-engined airliner called a DC-4.
They were the days when a young boy could get a special tour into the cockpit to say hello to the pilots.
"My dad was interested in aviation as well and loved aeroplanes, so whenever we were going from a country town to the big smoke, if there was an airport, he would drive by it on the off chance he would see something coming in to land or take off," Mr Keddie said.
"In his office he had a plastic model of a Tiger Moth and every time we moved, it got a little bit more broken — but it was his prized possession."
His father imparted his love aviation and model planes onto him and started buying model aeroplane kits they would build together.
"It was something we had in common and we didn't always see eye to eye, but we'd sit down and make them," he said.
Making planes from scratch
Decades later, when Steve Keddie retired from full-time work and had built enough model planes from pre-made kits, he started making them from scratch.
He would source plans, photocopy and enlarge them, trace shapes around balsa wood to cut with a razor, and trawl photos on the internet to study every detail, down to the colours of its livery.
"I thought I'd make some planes I couldn't get as kits and the first was a Hawker Hurricane (a British single-seat fighter aircraft)," he said.
"I had plans for a smaller version that I photocopied up to the size I wanted.
"Every plane I now make, I'm starting from scratch and they all have their own intricacies."
Giving models away
Each plane takes him around seven months to make and often the glue used needs hours to set.
For Mr Keddie, the pleasure has always been in the construction of his models.
He used to give them away to friends or church fetes, rather than keeping them at home.
Now, he has the enormous Historical Aviation Restoration Society (HARS) museum at Shellharbour, south of Wollongong, to house his creations.
As a volunteer at the museum, he can browse the wide collection of aircraft to find inspiration for his next project.
"The hardest model I've built was the Grumman Tracker (an anti-submarine warfare aircraft), because it was relatively small and I built it with the folding wings," Mr Keddie said.
"The hardest part was masking up for the painting because you're masking up these tiny little areas.
"I'm not after any fame fortune or legacy — it's being able to make it, do the best job I can and hopefully it looks realistic."
No comments:
Post a Comment