In my case I can't remember how old I was when I started building the plastic model planes but it was in the early 50s when they had hundreds of kits to choose from. For me it was bipes, I had build every bipe plane that had a kit, just loved them. Then one day I saw some of the older guys flying there control line planes and I was hooked on that. Back then every boy got a Fire Baby for there first real plane. Also the first ARF, the local hardware store carried all the replacement parts. I was 8 years old then and it was 1956. One of the big boys crashed his plane and gave it to me so I rebuilt it, now I was a builder and started building kit planes. About 1960 we had moved to Calif. and I was introduced to Free Flight in San Fernando Valley so I was still flying control line and free flight. The dam basin also had an area for radio control so I watched that, mostly to see the planes crashing, they did that a lot back in those days. On and off all my life I was building and flying something, most the time it was control line, RC cost way too much. Sometime in the early 90s I got into radio so I had something to do when my favorite nephew would come to visit for a few weeks in the summer. He would go home but I stuck with RC.
Building was nothing new for me so the planes weren't hard for me at all, it was the flying that took a while to learn. Then I was taught set up by a pattern pilot so things got a lot more advanced over the years.
The electronics are starting to change a lot but for the most part not a lot of things have changed in normal modeling. It's a hobby you can get into today, drop out then jump back into a decade later and pick right back up after you read up on the new gear. We were just talking about this at the field a week or two ago. Some of the guys I fly with started a decade or two before I did and feel the same way. It's a hobby for both young and old!!!!!!!!![8D]