Dan, as usual you hit the nail on the head. I've been in this hobby since about '95 or so, my first tank was a King Tiger bought off a dusty shelf in the back of a 'junque' store, literally. It was NIB with the original dual clutch single motor drive system. When Tamiya came out with the first 'full function' tank, the Tiger 1, I immediately bought one (I've still go it complete with the original on-off switch hole in the floor of the lower hull). Then I bought another to make my original King a 'full function' system. And a Sherman. And....well, you get the idea.

I have seen many vendors come and go, some good, some excellent, some we really don't want to discuss any more. I set up etoarmour in the fall of '03 and started carrying Schumo parts right off the bat. At that time their entire line would literally fit in a shoe box in multiples with room left over. Over time we have both grown a bit and we have both added vendors to our stockist lists. Other vendors have persevered through good times and bad and the breadth of parts and systems is something we could only dream of even 5 years ago.

The innovations by both tankers and vendors has been nothing short of amazing over the last 13 years. Daryl I simply refer to as our resident genius and that's the understatement of the year if not the decade. Toss in that the young man (well, way younger than I am) is also salt of the earth and you have a win-win situation. Taigen and Asiatam are also doing a masterful job of expanding our hobby. Aftermarket electronics have grown exponentially in the last few years. All in all, regardless of the current economic times our hobby is set to grow rapidly, and if I can get my local machine shop to stop paying attention to their main client for a few minutes there will be some interesting new systems coming from ETO.

All in all, you men and women have developed an excellent hobby and an excellent reputation for helping newcomers to our hobby. Everyone here is always willing to help everyone. It doesn't get any better than that and you all should be proud of yourselves.