Some of my earliest childhood memories have to do with radio control. In fact, there is a picture of me at age 3 running one of my Dad's boats. I basically grew up surrounded with cool RC vehicles thanks to my father, James and two older brothers Jim and Dave. We owned two Heathkit Spectre nitro on-road cars that we ran at a parking lot near our home. I'll never forget how we had to start the engines. We would take a bicycle, turn it upside down and rest it on its handlebars so we can crank the pedals by hand and then when the tire on the bike was humming we would touch the tire from the RC car onto the bike tire and the engine would fire--at least most of the time. Nitro and electric boats were also big in our house and we had a few nitro-powered hydros and monohulls, a scratch built tugboat that my father still has today and a couple of Chris Crafts' one runabout and one cabin cruiser. When we were not running the boats and cars, airplanes were the thing--just too many to list. By the time I was 11, I bought my very first hobby grade RC car--a Tamiya Super Champ. That was the first kit I ever built and my first introduction to that unique smell of Tamiya blue liquid thread lock; I love that smell. From then on my focus became mostly cars and trucks, and I continued to add them to my RC garage.