Greetings all from the land down under. 
My name is Damian and I'm from Brisbane, Australia.
This seems like a good area to introduce myself with a little history of my C/L career.
 
I first flew C/L as a Jr back in 88, 89 and 90 and I was a confidently established aerobatics pilot. I had built most of my own planes, mostly kits with 3 or 4 scratch builds and loved to fly whenever I had 5 min.
I competed in local, state and national championships and managed to take out the 1990 Jr nationals in Tamworth NSW flying a Brian Burke custom built aerobatic model. He called it the mongrel. It was bits and pieces of his current designs and a few new bits thrown in. I flew a lot of Brians models with the Mako being the one I loved.
I had some great coaches around me Brian being one of them. He was very well known throughout the C/L industry in Australia and was the goto man for anything combat. I have since learned Brian has passed away in 2013. RIP big fella.

My parents bought me the Top Flight Gieseke Nobler kit for my 12th birthday and I went to work straight away. I completed the model in a little over 3 months. I powered it with an OS 40 (FSR? can't remember the letters) and was so eager to fly it I maidened it on a very very windy day. It flew beautifully straight off, requiring a little tip weight and the forward lead out to be moved back a whisker for a little more nose out but other than that I had my very own precision aerobatics model that I could stare at every night and run through the pattern in my head. That was a massive thing for me back then.

Several months later I had the opportunity to purchase another model that had been custom built and was flown by our clubs national and world champion Noel Corney.
It was a massive plane he called "Top Gun". From memory it had a 60inch span and was powered with an OS46FSR??? Again can't remember the letters.
For a kid the plane was very intimidating because it near ripped your arm off and after the clover was completed you were just happy to touch down and regain your nerves.

Good times but, no more competitions for not long after these wonderful days my parents split for what would be the 5th and final time.
That was my C/L career pretty well over. We moved, and moved and moved again. My planes and flight kit were sold and I was basically left with nothing. I was not given the opportunity to fly anymore as a youngster. 

Fast forward 24 years and I am currently in the process of scratch building my beloved Gieseke Nobler yet again.
I found some plans from Ultra hobbies (thank you Steve Moon) and started my build.

I have been flying R/C for the last 6yrs and my old C/L club, Aeromodelers of Logan City is established with my R/C club, LARCS (well for the time being they are).
Somedays in my shed building my nobler I feel like I'm back at 12yrs young.
I have been lurking round this site and others to jog my memory on a few things but slowly my nobler is taking shape.
The LHS that I used to get my equipment from has since closed down so finding local blokes that stock C/L gear is hard but the LHS I use for my R/C supplies has all the balsa and hardware required to complete most of the build. Bellcranks and leadouts etc I have purchased straight from Brodak.

Anyway, that's my story of how I became a C/L pilot and I hope to fly this nobler, and if the bug bites me, more C/L models that I will scratch build as this is my new passion. Thanks for reading.

Regards
Damian.

Thanks John.

Although I have been flying R/C and my hanger is full of R/C models I just couldn't go past building another C/L model and it had to be the Gieseke Nobler. I love that plane. There's something about it that caught me as a kid and the feeling has returned.

To be honest I think it's the building more so than the flying. I love building from scratch (although my first nobler was a kit) . ARF's have their place but scratch building definitely is a bug that is hard to get rid of. 

Don't get me wrong, R/C is great, I have some beautiful models that I have built but holding a transmitter is not the same as the handle, and the fact that our club has both R/C and C/L is very handy.

I've also managed to track down Noel Corney. He is a member on this forum. That man is an amazing pilot, builder and all round nice bloke. I can't wait to see him again and funnily enough he is a member of the same club. 

Great times had and more great times to come.
I love C/L. 


(Apologies to if my story comes across as a sob story. It's not meant to be.)

Regards
Damian.

Thanks for the welcome Bill.

This is where I'm up to with the nobler.
I'm waiting for my order to arrive from Brodak, control horns and belcrank etc. Takes a while when it's got to travel 14,000k's.

I'm sheeting the wings, tailplane and rudder with 1.5mm or 1/16. I intend to paint it similar to the original.   
I know it's going to be on the heavy side with sheeting but I'm having fun and a 46 will move her ok.
It's only taken a couple of weeks to get to this stage but I know the tedious task is ahead. Finishing.

O' yeah. Was gonna put a cockpit in as well. Still toying with the idea.