Sunday night

Since the weekend has been miserable here with the tail end of a tropical cyclone sweaping over the country, I've been inside for a couple of days. while I've mostly been reading theres still been a bit of modeling done.

The HS-129's finally got their trip across the painting bench. Not overly common but thats never stopped a wargamer modeling them (or anything else uncommon). The model is just the standard version but I had to do one of the ones with a PAK-40, which must have been an "interesting" experience firing it from an underpowered aircraft (its the lead one but not overly visible set against a black background)

 I also finished the base for my second P47 unit. 

This completes my current needs for WW2 air support. It feels odd, given that my selected period is 1944-45 that I have as many stands for the germans as I do for everyone else.

 I've also been looking at my DBA armies in terms of how I'm going to store them. Its an interesting mental exercise as you have to think in trems of how they will store, how you transport them (car, backpack etc), where they will be packed together or individually. I've started out by lining them up and also calculating how many linear cm each army takes up. After that its a bit of a juggling act with depths and heights etc. I've come up with a couple of options, including one while typing this.

My current plan is to come up with a standard size which makes life far eaiser cutting the bits out prior to assembly.

Friday night

 A request from a friend during the week inspires this post, and apparently I owe him for making my dice look good last weekend (and he really outdid himself).

During the week I've had the 1:600 aircraft painting bench out. Among the pile I picked out the F4 Phantoms. Once described as proof that with large enough engines you could fly a brick, The F4 served untill the late 1990's with the US and some are still operational over 60 years after the prototype flew.

Surprisingly few NATO nations used the F4, prefering something cheaper like the F5 so I was somewhat limited in options for the paintschemes. So what did we get? (and sorry its so dark,I'm seldom home in daylight in winter)

Left to right we have the Luftwaffe splinter camoflage, At the back the Euro one (also called the lizard scheme), the front is the South East Asia scheme worn in Vietnam and then in US based F4 units untill the late 1980's (and hence a possiblity in Europe) which is also my favorite. Finaly on the right is the RAF verson.

Its been quuite fun painting a varity of schemes on the same aircraft. Not overly easy on aircraft from the 1980's.

Update: heres a couple of slightly better photo's.

Luftwaffe and RAF

USAF

The Luftwaffe done

 A change from Napoleonics this weekend as I got the soldering iron out and based the SH German air support. First up, the FW190's. Again 4 on a base which is easier when the models are so small.

Cannon armed Stukas, only 2 to a stand this time round.

So why not mix the 2. And if 4 is good, surely 5 is better. Rudel makes an appearence with his backup band.

Finally I had a crack at mounting the basic Stuka's in some imitation of a dive bombing attack formation.

I'm not sure about this but given the limits of the base size it will have to do.

I also had a near first when I dropped an FW-190 under the modeling table. Its the first time I've thought that I have lost a model in quite a long time and it took a hard 10 minute search to find it.

Friday night

 I'm going to start doing a friday-ish night update ofwhat I've been working on for the week. So without further ado let the slideshow begin.

Carrying on with the air support replacement project I've been painting Germans this week.

FW190's. I never realised they were so small.

A collection of Stukas

A wargaming cliche

The last photo comes from a story in "Stuka Pilot". Rudel writes that when his wing was re-equiped with FW190's they continued to fly cannon armed Stukas as well, though frequenty he was the only one flying them.

I have to sit down this weekend and do some soldering.

I aso finished up one of the P47 stands.

Makes a bit more sense now

I like the look though I'm not sure a large radial engine would toss out so much smoke. Now a delicate little P51......

The Imperial guard grenadiers got a flock and some flags.

I was having an e-mail chat with Mr Page this afternoon (slow Friday at work where I had several things to do, but not the kit or time to do them at the end of the week). He commeneted that next years project was rebasing his MSH stuff on 2mm laser cut MDF. For a moment I thought "wow that would be nice", then the pratical side of the brain pointed out just how many stands that might be. Initially the count was "lots" but then I wondered just how many stands it was. A quick guess was 1500 for both SH and MSH. 

After tea tonight I went into the room and had a quick approximate tally up and came up with a number of 2000 stands. And I was about to add that here when I remembered I had missed a box entirely.

2700.......