WW2 Terrain making in action

Found this great picture on the web today, brilliantly realistic looking terrain making from the past. The caption with the photo below.

"Photo by Marjory Collins. A “camouflage class” at New York University, where men and women are preparing for jobs in the Army or in industry by making models from aerial photographs and work out camouflage schemes, 1943."

Still looking into making micro terrain for a 2mm set up based around Bob Corderys great Portable Wargaming rules. I'm hoping to make a completer wargame in a box, with all terrain, soldiers and rules contained within the box. Not sure what sort of box yet, I'm still looking for inspiration in the box area. I have some Irregular miniatures samples of their 2mm range which look ideal for the project. The above photograph perfectly illustrates the type of effect I want to aim for. Great inspiration/reference.

15mm Helicopters 3

More progress on the helicopter front, the middle picture shows the start of the Vietnam Loaches with the craft broken down into their component parts, I have rubbed down the fuselages on the right hand side with wet and dry paper ready to undercoat them with grey primer spray. I have also cut out the back doors ready to take a peter pig door gunner with an M60 machine gun. I drilled the door with a power drill and then used the rat tail files in the top picture to finish of the doors.

The bottom picture shows progress on the Israeli gun ships, the painting of the window supports was made a lot easier by using masking tape to mask of the strut areas. It worked quite well. They will deed a bit of tidying up with a brush, but on the hole it worked well.

I'm currently reading "Low level hell" the biography of an Aero scout pilot flying loaches in Vietnam. A great book, packed with incidents and events. Giving lots of inspiration for scenarios for gaming. TTFN Airhead.

15mm Helicopters 2

Good progress on the Israeli 500MD TOW armed gun ships, They are shown with new tail assemblies made from plastic card replacing the original ones. Also plastic card was used for the small radio aerials along the tail booms. The small stub exhausts are made from cut down sections of cotton bud sticks. Also shown in the top picture is a test Tow pod shown along side the Helos made from two cotton bud tubes with green stuff used to create the casing.

The bottom picture shows one of the main rotter blades in position, with dry brushed on yellow high visibility rotter tips. Quite pleased with how this has turned out so far.

Things I have found out so far from this project, Its very difficult to get the paint I'm using to give a good covering of the body work. Im using a Humbrol enamel paint and it has taken at least 3 coats so far to get a good flat coverage. It would also be much easier to paint the body work If I had taken the models apart first. So for my Vietnam Helicopters I have got some matt Grey enamel spray paint to give them a base coat first. And as they will be having internal detail and crews added they will be taken apart first.

15mm Helicopters

Final getting around to doing something with my 15mm Helicopter mountain, I spent some time looking for reference pictures on the web and found some nice plastic kit box art for inspiration. Also found a great line drawing of the 500MD/TOW Defender version which I intend to make for my Israelis. Looking at the line drawing you can see that the rotter blades that come with the model are hugely under scale, and the tail construction is different.

The next issue was to find some clear plastic to use for the rotter disc's which will replace the blades that come with the model. Cake was the answer, in the shape of a discount box of meringues from Morris's supermarket. The top of the box looked fine, but when cut out I thought it looked to flimsy. But one the discs were cut out. They were fine. I treated them in the same way as the propeller on the Zero project I produced. Using discs of sand paper to scuff the plastic. Next on the list is to make the pods for the TOW missiles and look at creating the new tail structures.

Sorry for the lack of posts around here, but real life is a tad frantic at the moment and hobby time is on the tight side. OMG I bought the Helicopters last December, how time flys.

A 10mm Roman addition

A quick and simple addition to my Roman 10mm selection of terrain items, a roughly 10mm scale model of the leaning tower of pisa. Saved from the rubbish bin as the daughter re-decorated her bedroom. I now the towers construction started in 1170, so its not really Roman by any stretch of the imagination, but hay it works for, it looks Roman to me. So that's fine by me. A quick black undercoat and paint job with a round base built up with filler and then flocked.

Back from the med

So back from sunny Kefalonia to rainy Shropshire, had a great two weeks staying in the west of the island. very relaxing. The only bits of military history related stuff that I spotted was the above gun and monument out side the cost guard post in Argostoli the capital of the island. Not sure who the chap was or what the gun is. Looks WW1 vintage to me, but thats just a blind guess. Also sore another monument on the way into the town which has two small mountain gun/howitzer type things either side of a white marble statue. No picture of that one I'm afraid.

During my relaxing time by the pool/beach I managed to read 5 paper backs, 1 Simon Scarrow "Eagles prophecy", 2 Voices from the battle of Britain/blitz, 3 "Zero History" William Gibson, 4 Conn Iggulden "Lords of the bow" 5 Christian Cameron "Killer of Men"

1) 8 out of 10 good story with some nice action. Ripping yarn. 4 more to go in the series.

2) 5 out of 10 Nothing new £1.75 from a charity shop so no complaints.

3) 9 out of 10 Been waiting for this one for a long time, well worth the wait. He invented the modern world

4) 8 out of 10 £1 from a charity shop, shows the dangers of buying historical fiction on a whim, I loved it, yes I now its historical accuracy is questionable, but I have always had a soft spot for the mongols. Must get the rest.

5) 8 out of 10 Ancient Greece and the Persians, what's not to love, a very few strange modern terms used. Will get the next one set during the battle of Marathon.

One thing that does bug me with Historical fiction is when the publisher changes the cover design of the books half way through the series, it just spoils the look of the book shelf.

I'm planning to finnish of some outstanding terrain projects before Christmas, will also be making a start on the Great Helicopter building project. TTFN

1/100 scale Zero in action

Taking the idea from the in-flight DFS glider, I adapted it for the Zero by super gluing the underside of the wing to the leaves in 2 positions, and securing it with a bulldog clip and leaving over night, to get a good strong bond. The key to the set up of the base is the two stones used on it to act as counter weights to the aircraft.

Off on summer campaign for a few weeks, so it will be quiet around here for a while, but as sum American chap said once "I shall return" All the best Airhead