What's it all about?

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

New folks are joining the mass build and, not unaturally, they perhaps don't know the history or what its all about.

This thread is intended a quick reference guide to get them started.

The Mass Build idea was born on Christmas Night 2010. A forum member - Stephen Grigg - was doing a one day build of an ARTF over Christmas Day, this was in itself something of a tradition, Stephen had done such one day builds on previous Christmas days and had blogged his progress during the day.

Anyway, that night a group of us were watching his build and following him to see if he would finish before midnight. I think, if memory serves me correctly, it was David Gilder who first raised the idea of doing a group building project. Other's, including myself, quickly got involved seeing the potential to do something interesting as a shared forum activity. But what to build, and what "rules" etc.

In discussion over the next few days we quickly established certain ground rules:

1. The Mass build would be about promoting building model aeroplanes - providing a way in which experienced and inexperienced builders could come together and build a common model.
2. The experienced would help and guide the less experienced - thus effectively the Mass Build would become a vehicle to spread building skills and provide a way into building for those new to it.
3. The subject would have to satisfy certain requirements; it must be fairly economical, easy to build whilst at the same time offering a true building experience, it must be able to be electric or ic powered. Finally the subject must be selected by a vote of those taking part.
4. There would be an agreed start date - so as to synchronise the build experience so we could share it by carrying it out in parallel.
5. The build itself would be a true shared experience. There would be a "Chat Thread" to discuss general issues and developments and each builder would be encouraged to formally "sign up" and run a build blog of their own. all this would mean that at the completion of the process there would be a legacy of many build blogs of the same model.
6. Whilst the model is common, builders are encouraged to display originallity by incorporating their own aspects. These could be as basic as a customised covering job or as complex as significant structural design changes.

It just so happed that 2011 would be the 50th anniversary of the foundation of RCM&E and a fly-in was planned for the summer. What better addition to such a fly-in than that all the Mass builders should bring along their completed models and fly them together. The first RCM&E fly-in took place at Greenacres in the Midlands in June 2011 and the Mass Builders were indeed there - enmass! As they were again in 2012 and plan to be in 2013!

The subject of the first Mass Build, which had 50 participants, was the Webbit. The second Mass Build attracted about 60 builders in 2012 and the theme was "Vintage Models". This year we have 70 taking part and the subject is Nigel Hawes Tucano. The start date is 1st Jan 2013 and the fly-in will be in mid to late June 2013 again at Greenacres - I hope to see you there with your Tucano!

BEB