Group build idea.

So thinking about the Hawker Weather Build in May and how much fun it was, I'm thinking that it'd be fun to do another one and I might even get something useful done on this project again. A bit of thinking and rejecting kits and subjects, I came to a conclusion. What's the one kit that everyone has or can get? What's that one kit that everyone has built in the past? What's the one kit that everyone seems to hate?

The Airfix Sherman.

So here's the general idea: July will be "Pimp my Sherman" month. Everyone grab an Airfix Sherman and build it however they wish. Any nation, any era, any amount of modding, scratch building parts and greebling you can manage without using a part from another kit except for crew figures and stowage.

To make it interesting it's going to be a competition. At the end of July I will collect all entries, post a blog with links to the final pictures and collect votes by email. The prize will be the winner's choice of the new Airfix Cromwell or the re-released Chi-Ha medium tank posted to wherever the hell you happen to be. Obviously I will be disqualified from winning, but I'm going to build a damn tank anyway and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

If this sounds interesting then post below.

In other news, the Typhoon has finally been located and it's almost in the state I left it. Sadly there appear to be lots of small dots of yellow wall paint on it and a few scratches, so it's going to need some TLC before I can finish it off.

Kampfgruppe Gräbner assembled.

Not a lot to say here, the pictures mostly speak for themselves. They mostly fit into the frame of the post so no need to click (unless you *really* want to...).

Airfix Sd.Kfz. 222:






Nice little kit, comes with two identical SMG wielders and an officer type as well as a highly useful Kübelwagen to transport an OP team or officer around.

Fujimi Sd.Kfz. 250.


Only got one picture of this before the batteries died. I found this kit incredibly frustrating. Things refused to line up correctly and occasional details, like the driver's viewport just seemed to be seperate to up the part count. Furthermore, I now need to get an MG42 to replace the gun that came with it, as it was the wrong variant. On the plus side, I now have a slightly mismoulded BMW bike to use for something, and a model of Rommel to use for something (after the spectacular hole in his chest is filled...).


Finally, Hauptsturmführer Gräbner himself.






A simple conversion made by sticking the kneeling officer from Revell's German Infantry set into the commander's cupola of the Revell Humber Mk II. Looks pretty good to me, well happy with the result. You can see the glue residue on the front where I decided I didn't like the look of the spare wheel (and really, what're the chances of capturing a Humber II with all the spares?) and there's a few small gaps here and there. There's also the controvery over exactly what kind of Humber he used, but I decided this one made more sense from a gaming perspective, giving him a bit of personal firepower to add to the unit rather than just a simple leadership bonus.

Forgot to photograph the five infantrymen who hitch a ride in the Sd.Kfz. 250 and I still haven't got my hands on a Sd.Kfz.232 8-Rad which is the last vehicle needed. It's a really BIG recon Batallion... or I just got carried away with all the cool stuff he used (which is far more likely). This also marks the first named model for a historical participant.

Bonus image, only noticed this when processing the photos for posting. Perhaps some form of advance German spyplane? Click for original context.

First day of good sun.

Today was the first day I had some spare time AND the sun to take pictures in with my dodgy camera. It didn't last long before deciding the battery was dying but I managed to get through a bit of backlog before it died.

Anyway, here's my latest build: A Revell Panzer III Ausf L for the Fallschirmjäger Ersatz und Ausbildungs Regiment 'Hermann Göring' which was operating in the region of Son on September 17th and pressed into combat. The equipment was mostly old Panzer III and IVs with some eStuG D and Es and I plan to include one of each in the unit. Anyway, on to the pictures. Click for larger as usual:






As you can see, the tracks are multipart plastic rather than a stretched vinyl like on Airfix or other Revell kits. It was a headache to do and took the build time from an hour or so to two full evenings of work. They didn't line up particularly well either, although looking at other people's efforts I suspect that's my fault rather than a flaw in the kit.



The last image shows the internal view of the modified turret. I'm rather proud of this little mod really. I've got a thing for being able to elevate and depress the gun barrels on tanks, so I spent a few minutes working out how to modify this tank. Unlike the Cromwells and Achilles SPG kits from HäT this was not a quick mod, and required quite a bit of brace and counter-weight building. The end result is a gun which can move up and down, wiggle from side to side (unintentional...) and, best of all, bounces realistically when pushed across a rough table surface.

I really didn't enjoy building this one. 100+ parts for a 1:72 kit is excessive. Now that it's finished I like the end result, but I'm glad I don't need to build another one (or four....).

For your information

I've noticed that the Combat Tanks magazine has only been released south of the Equator recently, and having found this just now I think it might be of some use to those of you down there. Pass it on and make sure you know what's available to you, I know I'll be checking back regularly to see what's going to be on the stands next week.

Last of the summer photos (except it's only spring).

This is the last of the units I got photographed during the brief sunny afternoon last week, a single view of one of two HäT Armourfast Cromwells I have built as half of the 2nd Battalion Welsh Guards Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion.

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I need to get one more Cromwell and a Challenger to finish this platoon off, and then some more British Infantry to ride the tanks as 1st Battalion and finish up the Welsh Brigade.

Dingos ate my {blank}

The light was starting to fade when I was taking these, so they aren't of the best quality. At one point the flash decided to start working again suddenly, resulting in a rather impressive washed-out look to a side view. This will be joining the earlier Damlier MK II as part of the Household Guards Regiment Reconnaissance platoon. The kit is the Dingo that comes as part of the Revell "Monty's Caravan" double-pack kit, a rather nice little model.









You'll notice that the right headlight is a different shade and shape to the left. The original decided to go shooting off into the ether underneath the diningroom table and I replaced it by sculpting a new one from greenstuff. It looks alright when not at super-huge-photo size.

One more unit got photographed in the recent sun, I'll post it tomorrow.

Truckin' (sort of).

I'm still working and chugging along at a reasonable speed, mostly building vehicles but also painting infantry. Unfortunately my camera is so bad that images are extremely blurry unless I can get direct and bright sunlight. Given the time of year, that almost never happens. Anyway, onto the models. These represent the vehicles attached to the various Pioneer companies spread through the three divisions of XXX Corps, I've decided that they will all be represented by a single platoon of 20 men with two jeeps and a halftrack with trailers for simplicity's sake. All the kits are airfix, with various minor modifications. The pictures:

Halftrack:






This is the standard Airfix kit, trailer and all, with a roof put on the driver's cabin. The (I am told) innaccurate mine-racks have been added and are used to hold jerrycans and a few other bits from the Jeep kit and some PIAT ammunition from the Revell British Infantry box. I didn't bother putting the cupola on and instead mounted the .50cal on a bit of wooden cocktail sausage stick stuck into a hole drilled in the bottom of the passenger compartment. Simple modifications, looks fairly cool, and gives a bit more of a "combat engineer" vibe to the standard kit. Very happy with this.

The Jeep:







This Jeep and another identical except for the layout of materials in the trailer are both Airfix kits build as standard without the roof or the .30cal machinegun mount except for the driver's heads, which have been replaced with spare PIAT crew heads from the Revell kit. The Airfix Jeep driver is ridiculously small compared to every other kit and I didn't think of replacing them with the Halftrack drivers I haven't used until they were glued into place, so I just changed the heads to make it look a bit less silly. Hopefully no-one will notice the spindly arms.

More to come in the next few days, I got some more stuff photographed in the sun this afternoon.

Still plugging away.

It's been a while since I've posted and that's because I haven't got much to show for it. The camera I'm using seems to have gone senile and refuses to take pictures that aren't blurry. To at least keep this blog *sort of* moving along, I'll just have to post some bad pictures.

Here's my attempt at the Hasegawa Daimler MKII kit.




This kit was a beauty to put togethere, the sole problem being the part numbers on the drive shafts under the chassis were mislabeled and so I had to find a solution for that. Probably not going to be a problem for anyone not planning to flip the car over, but I'm weird about doing silly detail like this. I'm looking forward to getting the next one for the Platoon that will represent the House Cavaly in XXX Corps.

On the workbench, assembled, unpainted and unphotograped are:
4 Airfix M5 Half-tracks;
2 Airfix Universal Carriers;
1 Revell M7 Priest, "defrocked";
20 Revell British Infantry;
41 mixed Revell and Italeri US Pataroopers;
20-ish Italeri British Paratroopers;
24 German Grenadiers (my volunteer assistant caught swine flu....);

Still in boxes are the 6lber guns and crew that came with the Universal Carriers, two full boxes of Revell British Infantry, one more Universal Carrier and a few extra British and American Paratroopers.

This is partially because my camera is on it's way out, and partially because my airbrush was lent to a friend s he could make this and I haven't gotten around to retrieving it yet. Aside: For an idea of scale, I spent two hours helping him build that. All I did was the gun under the eagle on top.... it's *that* big.)

On a note related to the Daimler MKII, does anyone know anything about how good a kit this Daimler Dingo is? I need two and am having trouble finding any.

Minor update.

A semi-productive day today. I ran out of glue last night so I couldn't finish the second halftrack. This necessitated a trip to the shops and while there I picked up a third halftrack and some Revell German Infantry that a friend of mine has volunteered to paint for me as one of the Grenadier regiments of the 176th Infanterie Division.

Arriving home I finished off the second halftrack and started painting some of the Revell US Paratroopers I picked up a while back. These guys will represent the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division (cliched, I know... but they were there....). I finished one test model who came out rather well and got the rest of a twelve man squad half-finished. They look rough, but passable.

I started on the third halftrack but by now I am tired and cranky so I shall call it a night and finish it tomorrow evening. After messing around with two machine gun assemblies I think I'll just stick the last one on a post and remove the entire cupola thing. I justify this by the old "it'll look cool" defence. I'm not entirely sure if I'll bother with the trailers. They might be a useful addition to some part of the XXX Corps units somewhere, but they are rather bland looking.

Moving Swiftly Along

I picked up a couple of Airfix M3 Halftracks over the weekend for the Grenadier Guards Motor Batallion seen on the org chart here and made a start on the oldest of them (the local model shop has a rather spectacular variety of obvious batch lots on offer) just to see how they go together.

So far the kit seems passable, although like all airfix kits the first one seems to fight you to make you earn the understanding required to build it. There is now a rather large gap at the front of the bonnet that will need some careful putty work to fill.

One complaint - there is no roof on the driver's cabin as shown on the box. Pictures of actual vehicles seem to be hard to come by from overhead angles, so I'm going to trust the box and just bodge on some plastic-card to put some form of covering on there. It'll also save me having to paint what passes for internal detail in the cabin. It may be innaccurate, but I've made my decision and I stand by it.

Three more to go, then painting. Pictures will be delivered when the sun comes up and the putty has dried.

[EDIT] Pictures! They always show up the flaws.... click thumbnails for larger.












[Second Edit] As expected, the second kit is going together perfectly. It's a dramatically different shade of green plastic too.

First progress - 2nd Battalion Irish Guards Sherman Platoon

At 1435 hours on September 17th 1944 the Irish Guards under Joe Vandeleur led the way for XXX Corps as the spearhead of Garden. As an Irishman and in light of this it is only appropriate that the first unit completed be representative of this.

Based on an extremely helpful chart found here I worked out the unit marking for A Squadron of the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards Regiment.



The unit consists of three Airfix M4 A1 Sherman tanks and one Revell re-issue of the Matchbox Firefly variant Sherman. All unit markings and insignia are hand painted as I've never had the patience for transfer sheets and I wanted to practice my freehand. The tanks were spray undercoated black and then airbrushed with Games Workshop's Catachan Green. Details are GW paints again, with Badab Black used as a final wash to dirty them up a bit.

All in all, not a bad start to the project, even if they did take a long time. Hopefully I'll manage a more consistant work rate with the rest of the units.