In General, What is Everyone Doing?

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As already underlined, it is a fair question, and the fact that several of us felt the need to reply, means that we are aware that the bulk of us "hardcore" enthusiasts are by now an older generation and that the newer ones are often completely unaware of what we are speaking of, let alone understand and share our passion.

Like many of those writing and/or debating here, I started as a boy of the mid-'50s' growing up in the post-WW2 culture, more and more passionate on aviation and of those men who fought in the air like old knights, then followed the passion for modelism and (as happened probably to many of us old modelers) started to look for more reference and data to realize personal choices as individual aircraft of some ace and so on...

Some of us began to realize that what had been written since and fed us was more than faulty and imprecise, so the research for data and info brought some of us to primary sources, wheter those being archives or veterans or both. For some, that was the turning point that lead to the choice of researching and - with some luck - being able to publish the results of the researches, in articles or/and books.

What is important, though, is to remain subtly but persistently unsatisfied and looking for more, which in research is the fuel to most achievements, if these could be considered as such...

Oh, one last thing: why the Germans and the Luftwaffe? Well, this delves somehow in psicology, but I was eased by the fact that my home country was a German ally in WW2 (much to German's dismay, I should add!), so researching about that was almost unavoidable. I however think that the allure of the "dark side" has a lot to it and the Germans certainly were masters of "bad ass design", which had a lot of fascination for the young boys in the '60s and '70s.

Sorry to have been maybe a bit too lenghty, but the topic I guess deserved that.