John

An entire generation grieves. J

I've been using Games Workshop Liquid Green Stuff recently and been quite impressed with it. John

Probably the best readily available resource on the Roland are the instruction booklets that can be downloaded from the Wingnut Wings website. Well worth checking out. John

Aye... J

Continuing with my own little shell-blasted fragment of the Western Front, the edges of the wooden base were masked off the working surface was scored with a craft knife to give it a bit of tooth. 4 of the resin craters were selected and superglued in position and the whole thing was given a primer coat of Humbrol 93 enamel, simply because I had it handy The bits between the craters were then given a few uneven coats of PVA glue to define the ground surface: To texture the ground I used a mixture of Woodland Scenics Ballast Fine Buff Crushed Rock, PVA glue and brown craft acrylic paint to create a textured paste that was liberally stippled on with a stiff paintbrush: The inadvisability of keeping the crushed rock in an old coffee tin has been pointed out to me by my nearest and dearest! Finally for now, the resin craters were given a couple of coats of craft acrylic to begin to tie them into the groundwork: More soon. John

Thanks Jure, I hadn't thought about FW190D props. John

I think the Hasegawa T-1 might have been the first one of their kits that I ever built. It'll be nice to see it updated.

I have a KP CS-199 in the stash from many moons ago and on looking it over the other day the prop is broken. I imagine the kit would probably benefit from a replacement anyway, and I'd be interested to know if there are any out there? TIA John

KP kits of this generation are good if a bit fiddly to put together. I can't say about the MIG-15UTI specifically but one area where I found many of them to be problematic was the fit of the canopy. The MiG-21 was one that definitely sticks in the mind because of that. John

I recall building one of these, probably in the early 80s and likely obtained from the Model Engineer in Stirling who seemed to be able to pick up a lot of interesting East European kits in those days. I don't remember anything particularly bad about construction but a lot of the kits from that era had a pretty brutal mould release agent on the surface of the plastic that really needed to be cleaned off before work starts. It often showed up as a brownish residue, particularly in corners and angles. An old toothbrush and washing up liquid did the trick. Just something to be aware of. John

Having thought about a base for my figure a bit more, I decided the little ceramic plaque was going to be a bit too small for what I wanted to do. I had a few MDF bases at work that had been bought for a project that didn't happen, so one of them has been pressed into service: It's about 6x4 inches. I also bought a pack of resin "craters" at Carronade 2017 yesterday: and I've been playing about with a couple of these on the base. The bottoms of the castings need sanded down a bit but there's potential here: John

Falkirk Wargames Club's annual show takes place this Saturday in Graeme High School, Callendar Road, Falkirk. Even if wargaming isn't really your thing there's a large number of traders selling all sorts of interesting stuff. This has become a big show over the last couple of years and it's well worth a visit if you're within striking distance. http://www.falkirkwargamesclub.org.uk/carronadehome.html John

This is a placeholder for a project I'm hoping to get round to soon. Back in 1971 the 9-year-old me was captivated by the appearance in Woolworths of an exciting new box: The image of the 2 aircraft roaring across their grass airfield in Northern France was exactly what we had seen just a few months before with the release of the Battle of Britain film, and of course in those days we all knew that BoB-era 109s were 2-tone green and light blue with the high demarcation and no mottle spoiling the purity. Revell thought so too: https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/6/6/2/258662-13150-54-pristine.jpg That Airfix box art has long been one of my favourites but apparently the company didn't think so, as within a remarkably short space of time they had replaced it with this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/59/85/e0/5985e06701418d6f5676496e32768570.jpg I'm sure they had their reasons but it seemed like a backwards step to me, then and since. I've never built the big Airfix kit but I have done quite a few 109Es in 1/48th, and I have a couple of Eduard overtrees in the stash. Appropriate markings for a pristine JG26 aircraft shouldn't be too hard to find. More shortly. John

I've posted this before but it illustrates that, until mid-1960s or thereabouts, Humbrol 30 was a distinctively olive green: John

One date I can be sure of is that 100 years ago today, Grandpa left France on his way to Dollis Hill: J