2 years!

It struck me yesterday that it was about this time of the year that I found the astromech.net website and got hooked on droid building.

I did some digging, and found that the actual date I joined was 31st January 2011.  That's 2 years ago tomorrow!

So I thought I should do a little post about it :)

It all started back in December 2010...

*wibbly wobbly flash back sequence*

It was my Birthday (12 December, remember presents this year or I'll find a better audience than you lot) and one of my gifts was an R2D2 alarm clock.  Just a fun little present, but it inspired me to look online for a remote control one I could play with in the lounge.  Amazon had nothing!  eBay had expensive imported ones that were tiny.  If these two places didn't sell them, surely what I wanted didn't exist!

So I went to Google, and tried there.  I managed to stumble onto some site where crazy dudes were building life size remote control ones!

13 Days later I sent payment for my styrene dome :)

After registering, I did a heck of a lot of research and reading.  This took pretty much the first year of building.  The styrene dome was left it in the box for a long time.  It wasn't until a year later that I ordered the styrene sheets and printed the plans that I actually started working on it.


I decided to go with a styrene build due to my limited budget, but mainly my limited skills.  However, over the course of the past year I've made good friends with engineers, builders and programmers.  All of them have been happy to help teach their skills and I've learnt a lot!

So much so that I'm now taking an online Robotics course, and I'm looking to start an A-Level in Mathematics for Mechanical Engineering :)  So while R2 hasn't had a positive affect on the bank balance yet, he may end up having a big influence on future career choices.  Early days though!