New AFOL from Hawaii.

[wolfspring]

If you'd of said AFOL to me a week ago I'd of asked WTF?  I found this site trying to find some information on a Lego set that the pieces changed on the remake and the instructions are different and the only ones I could find.  After reading this site off and on the last few weeks I realized I needed to join up and have some fun.

So I'm 42, married for 19 years with 3 daughters two teens and an 8yo.  I've been collecting Legos since before I could remember and the first set I remember building out of the box was the Black Falcon Catapult - 6030.  Ironically I just built that for the first time in over 20 years this week.  After that I was hooked on Castle and Pirate Legos.  I have tons of them I will post pictures when I can of my collection that I've started building again the last two weeks.  I have a lot of the older stuff from 86-90 with a lot of the rare stuff, that I didn't know was rare, like black sword, black helm feathers, round shields, but I also have a lot of broken pieces :( .  We've also collected some over the years as well as a few lately.  My 8 year old wanted to do a stop motion movie and it reunited my love of legos working with her on building my old sets, I have the Black Seas Barracuda only missing the Monkey, which is the pride of my collection.  I'm a techie and an outdoorsman both, I know rare, but I love doing all things outside as well as filming them editing it and working with computers.  I'm big into GoPros and want to use them to do my stop motion.  My job is in the Army I'm a Satellite Communications Operator and I'm Airborne, though I don't jump out of planes anymore, I've been deployed a few times and have been in for 22 years.  I look forward to rekindling my love of Legos and contributing one day to the greater good of others that do as well and really look forward to passing this love to my Children.

 

[icm]

Hi, nice to meet you.  I had an uncle whose Air Force career, I'm told, had something to do with satellite tracking, but he wasn't very close to my mom and dad so I really don't know what he did.  There's another uncle whose Air Force career, I'm told, has something to do with teaching courses somehow related to satellites on base somewhere in Mississippi, but I don't know him either.  I'm a grad student studying astrodynamics and space navigation, but that's not likely to lead to an Air Force career in satcom.  Do you mind saying a little bit more about your career path - what you do every day, what kinds of math and software you use regularly, how you came to be a satellite communications operator?  It sounds fascinating.  PS - the Lego collection looks pretty good too.  That Black Seas Barracuda is still the best Lego pirate ship ever made, and I want one too!

[dr_spock]

Welcome to Eurobricks, wolfspring.  GoPro are fun to add to LEGO trains for an engineer's view around the layout.

[wolfspring]

Thank you ICM and dr_spock.  

Everyday right now I do operations orders, I tell people what to do.  When I was running the systems I'm a tactical guy we take small systems into the field set them up find the satellite(bird) and connect then provide phones and internet to our users.  I'm high enough ranking now that I do admin work and miss the technical work, but I've been a drill SGT and an instructor, I've also been a Ski Instructor for a couple weeks twice teaching Soldiers how to Ski and ski patrol operations. don't do a lot of real math just basic addition and subtraction.  I have to understand what frequency I'm using and the transmit and receive translation and translating from RF to SHF and different bands, and of course Azimuth.  I do networking as well and have to have some minor binary skill, but not much at all, to do subnetting but not often, in fact outside of teaching or when someone made a mistake giving us our network addresses I've never done it.  Funny story how I picked this career.  I was in the Army recruiters office a young 19 year old McDonald's Assistant manager telling him he needed something good to pull me away from my $9.50(USD) an hour job in 1997 he started talking computers and communications as my test scores were pretty high.  I said I've got a felony and the Air Force turned me down he said the Army won't.  He mentioned Switchboard and Network Operator which is a phone guy and I'd use computers and have phone access to call home everywhere I would go, I though heck yeah thats a lot of money when I get out.  He told me the training was in Georgia, I said NO WAY, my mom, whom I didn't live with, as I lived in Utah with my dad at the time, lives there and I've not seen her since I was 10, what's the longest job training you have there and that's the only reason I picked it, it was 11 months of training.  I got lucky with my Black Seas Barracuda, my little sister, I'm 11 years older, had them from the time I joined the Army in 97 till 2010 when my dad gave them back to me and she added a few lego sets to my collection in the early 2000s.  I also had half my legos stolen during a move, I had two footlockers full of legos and they stole one, most of them were the newer Legos from my kids and some random stuff that they had borrowed from mine, I believe my monkeys, I had 5, were all in that box, the Army did reimburse me for all that was stolen, I claimed the footlocker for $500 and a total of $4000 for all the stolen stuff.

dr_spock,  I already hate you... Now I need to buy a train... :P  That is a brilliant idea.  I was just going to use it for taking pictures for stop motion because it's small easy to set up and you can either voice control or use a remote or phone to take the picture, using your phone you can see what you're looking at easily and make sure it's right.

[Cylo]

Welcome to Eurobricks!

[leafan]

Welcome to Eurobricks, wolfspring!

Your collection is fantastic and I'm very jealous, being a fan of Castle and Pirates myself.

I encourage you to check out @Marghal's Youtube channel. He does reviews of Castle and eventually Pirate sets.

[wolfspring]

Thank you Reaper and leafan.  I got lucky with my collection, my dad held on to it for years while I jumped around with the military and after I had kids he was quick to say you need to come get "your" legos so that your kids can have them, even though my sister had added to them and lived near home.  It makes one happy to take something they've put so many hours into and being able to pass that on and watch others put so many hours into.