Special Award from ARC Readership

On Friday July 26, 2002 I received a very special award.  This award is particularly special to me,  because it comes from a group of modellers I admire very much.....The ARC Readership.   ARC is a very odd and special thing for me.  I feel as though I am merely
the guardian of a very special meeting place on the Internet that we all own.  I've never considered ARC to be anymore my own than any of the regulars that visit the discussion board or contribute their articles to ARC.  For many people) including myself).....ARC is a Modelling Club where we exchange ideas and techniques, inspire each other and come for inspiration and above all....help the newer modellers improve their skills and techniques to the level they want to achieve.  We all have different opinions of what the hobby means to each of us and I've always strived to try to keep ARC from becoming too serious and stuffy and thus scaring off the newer members of the hobby.

 
 

To receive such recognition from the ARC Family goes a long way to giving me the inspiration to continue working on ARC day in and day out.  ARC takes about 6 hours per day on average to make content and keep up with the archiving.  Most days I'll grab a bit of time here to do an article and tend to e-mails....spend time with my kids.....do another article and tend to e-mails.....tend to other things in life that need tending to.....work on another article and tend to e-mails....take the kids outside for some fun at the park or in our backyard.  Come back inside....feed the kids and do yet another article and tend to e-mails.  Finally late at night after I put my kids to bed, I'll go through the content that's been slowly building all day and figure out what needs to be done to complete the rest of the content for the next days update.  Then I'll work in the late evening and late into the night getting the following days content all ready.  To prepare the ARC home page can itself take 30 to 40 minutes....longer if it's late and I'm half asleep.  Doing all the thumbnail images for ARC and all the extra Hyperlinks this involves takes much time.  Sure it would be easier not to do all those small images....but then ARC would not be a site I could be satisfied with.....those small thumbnail images mean alot to me, because they help the ARC readership see what they are clicking on before they click on a particular article. 

ARC is currently spread across 14 smaller websites....all interlinked to create one massive website.  The advertising on ARC isn't fully able to cover the monthly server costs, but with things like the Two Bobs Aviation Graphics ARC Decal sheet that they recently released to help ARC, this brings ARC up to a more or less break even point.  On good months there's enough money left over to buy a modest new kit, but I prefer to put any extra money into the ARC Bank account to cover the months when ARC is running closer to the line or not quite covering it's costs.  ARC is very much a labour of love I feel truly honoured to be able to do each day.

 

The letters and postcards that came with the Award....including a bit of money as well.

Special thanks to Al "Modeler Al", Mitthias Rabiller, Paul Bradley, Justin Davenport, Sinuhe Hahn, Rich Harvey, Abe Lynn, Sebastian Manfre, Ken Middleton, Len Thomson, Mike Winn for the above letters and postcards.  And finally special thanks to Kelly Quirk for organizing this award.  I'd also like to give special thanks to all the other ARC regulars that sent Kelly to help cover the cost of this very special award.  I am humbled to receive this award and to be able to work on ARC each day to help thousands of people around the world find more enjoyment from our shared hobby.

This was truly a very special event for me to receive such recognition for my efforts on ARC. 

Thank-you one and all!!!

Steve Bamford