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https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/national/23510528.irish-deputy-premier-says-ireland-not-relying-raf/ This is interesting typical politically blah blah ....gets you Whifers excited though.

Wiesel LeFlaSys BF/UF (03336) 1:35 Carrera Revell The Wiesel was a development initially at the request of the Bundeswehr for a light-weight, air transportable light armoured vehicle that was cancelled before the designers Porsche could complete the prototype, but because of interest from other parties, development of the type continued, ensuring that it remained able to be carried by most NATO cargo aircraft, keeping the weight down, while remaining suitable for purpose and capable of carrying out its duties. It was named the Wiesel, which unsurprisingly means Weasel in English due to its speed and agility, and the Bundeswehr eventually bought over 300 vehicles once it was complete. Toward the end of the 90s it was decided that a new version was needed that was larger, while retaining the same qualities, with design work undertaken by Rheinmetall Landsysteme, as the company was then known. The chassis was extended with an extra road wheel to total five axles, and it was powered by a 1.9L Volkswagen turbo-diesel engine that was mated with an automatic gearbox for ease of use, ease of maintenance and availability of parts. It was named Wiesel 2, with the original version retrospectively referred to as Wiesel 1. There are several variants of the Wiesel 2, some of which look a little strange, but are capable performers despite the top-heavy look of some of the air-defence vehicles that have missiles in pods above the roofline. The Air Defence systems are named LeFlaSys, which stems from a concatenation of the German leichtes Flugabwehrsystem, or Light Air Defence System in English. The Air Defence battalions have command vehicles that aren’t equipped with weapons other than a self-defence MG3 machine gun on the top hatch, and the crew inside are tasked with managing the operations with which the vehicles are entrusted. The crew consists of the driver under the front hatch, the vehicle commander who can pop out of the top hatch to operate the gun if required, and the battalion commander, with the total interior spare now twice that of the earlier variant at 4m3. Troop carrying vehicles can seat up to seven soldiers in that space who are protected from small arms fire up to 7.62mm by the armoured shell, exiting through the rear door that is common to most variants. The Kit This is a reboxing of the 2010 tooling from Revell, with the new parts that were tooled for the 2014 triple boxing that included this variant of the vehicle, plus a radar equipped Wiesel and a missile carrier to depict the whole LeFlaSys system. It arrives in the usual shallow end-opening box that makes some modellers cry due to the ease with which it is crushed, and inside are three sprues in light grey styrene, a pair of Diehl Type 622 tracks in black flexible plastic, the instruction booklet in colour, with two lengths of bright metal wire taped to it for you to depict the aerials that are prominent on this type of vehicle. The Weasel is a small vehicle as you may have already guessed, but the detail is good, covering the exterior of the body, the road wheels and suspension, plus all the anti-slip patches that cover the upper surfaces. Construction begins with the body shell, building up the sides and rear on the floor, which has X-shaped stiffeners engraved on the underside. The narrow front and sharply sloped upper close up the body, except for the two hatches that will be filled in later. The road wheels, idler wheels and drive sprockets are all made from two halves, but aren’t installed until the idler mechanism and the other suspension swing-arms are fixed to the sides, with two small return-rollers attached to stub axles above them. The tracks are flexible, and are glued together after removing the overflow tabs on the sides of the runs, which also act as ejector-pin points to preserve the detail. You aren’t told what type of glue to use, but I can confirm that liquid glue does not have any effect on the material, so super glue (CA) is going to be the best bet. If you put the joint on the lower run, it is unlikely to be seen after any painting and weathering is completed. They slip over the road wheels without glue, but if you want to depict sag, you may consider adding some glue to the process to replicate that. The rear of the vehicle is detailed with light cluster boxes that have short mudguards and reflectors moulded-in, with a Leitkreuz “light cross” convoy aid on a shield that hangs from the rear of the vehicle, which you get a choice of decals or hand-painting it as you see fit. Several loops and grab handles are added to holes and depressions in the rear of the hull, with a few more fitted at the front. The right side of the vehicle has a half-length fender slotted into the front, with a hazard light to be painted red near the front, or snipped off and replaced by a piece of profiled clear plastic. More loops and an aerial base, then some pioneer tools are glued to the right side, with more equipment and another antenna base on the left, however the left side has a full-length fender that has the exhaust stretching back from the location of the motor, which is then covered over by a part that represents the perforated shield that protects the crew from burns. Clearly, this would have been better depicted by Photo-Etch (PE), but Revell generally don’t include this medium and not everyone wants to wrangle PE, as it takes a little experience, tools and some swearing to become competent. Looking at photos of that area however, very little can be seen of what is beneath the shield, so adding a little black wash to accentuate the depressions may well be sufficient for realism’s sake. Another grab-handle is placed next to the driver’s hatch, with a tow-cable neatly coiled on the centre of the glacis plate, and the commander’s cupola is made up from the base, brackets for the MG3, and the hatch itself, adding it to the hull along with the driver’s simple one-part hatch and a block of hidden equipment scabbed onto the deck on the opposite side. The anti-slip patches are all raised and have a very faint texture to differentiate them from the smooth deck. Some modellers use pumice powder glued to the surface with PVA to enhance the texture, but with the number of panels, you’ll need to take a bit of time to do it well. The smoke discharger fan at the front of the glacis is protected by a cage that is built out of four parts, with the discharger base and the four barrels mounted onto lugs on the sides before it is glued to the deck along with an L-shaped ancillary part. Additional lumps and bumps, lights and rear-view mirrors are dotted around the front of the glacis, including another antenna base, which is where the wire comes in handy. The instructions don’t give a length to cut the wire, but some pictures show that they are longer than the instructions would imply if they were 1:1, but others seem about right. The length of the antenna is usually a multiple of the frequency that they are transmitting and receiving on, so different lengths are entirely possible. They generally stand bolt upright though, so remove any curve from the wire before using it (easier said than done), or use some 0.5mm carbon fibre rod that you can buy online relatively cheaply. A communications expert is bound to come along with an appropriate length for the antennae, so watch this space, or check your references if you’re impatient. The MG3 machine gun is well-moulded, and bears a distinct family resemblance to the WWII era MG42 that most modern machine guns are based upon. It has the cocking handle and ammo box applied to the sides of the breech, and the mount is detailed with a long twin-rail support with a hoop over the rear, and a further support that should allow the gunner to keep on target despite the recoil. The gun’s rear slides into the covered area at the rear of the mount and glues to the front. The last part is optional, and is a single part moulded as a stowed camouflage tarpaulin that is strapped to the hull. A three-tone camouflage pattern is shown next to the colour rendition of the part, and the final step shows it in place on the glacis. Markings There are three decal options on the small sheet, all of which share the same three-tone NATO camouflage despite the difference in shades shown on the profiles due to the printing process, but there are dozens of digits supplied to personalise the number plates should you have something else in mind. From the box you can build one of the following: LeFlaBttr 100, Borken/LeFlaBttr 100, Seedorf, 2005/7 LeFlaBttr 300, Hardheim, 2011 LeFlaBttr 300, Hardheim, 2009 Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas. Conclusion The Wiesel 2 is a curious little vehicle, but it’s clearly useful and it has seen extensive service, since the original was replaced by something very similar. The kit is well-detailed, and having 120 extra digits for the number plates gives you endless choices of which one to represent. Highly recommended. Carrera Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For further information visit or

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A new project then. What to build, what to build? I have plans for a summer project so I was hoping to find something simple, preferably requiring very little outlay of money, so a perusal of the stash. I know, actually building something from the stash, who'd a thunk it? As well as being cheap(ish) it needed to satisfy a couple of other things; not my current trend of IDF as I'm sick of Sinai grey and it's variations, it had to be in 1/35 & it had be fairly simple so no complex interiors. With that in mind, I stumbled across these two bad boys. M113 ADV - 1 by phil da greek, on Flickr I'm a big fan of the M113 in all it's guises but I especially like something that's a little different. So, with a little imagination, a little truth and a little plastic card..................... By 1984 it was apparent to all but the most die hard in the US Army that the M247 Sgt. York DIVAD was not going to work. Meant to work alongside and ultimately replace the M163 Vulcan system and the MIM 72 Chaparral system (AIM 9 Sidewinder on tracks) the M247 was not working as planned and was horrifically over budget, by the late 80's it would be a bad memory that nobody would admit to having been involved with. Something was needed to plug the gap. They could have gone down the route of the Flakpanzer Gepard from West Germany but what fun would that have been? The army needed an air defence system that was mobile, that could keep up with the forces it was meant to protect and could provide a degree of protection from the enemy air forces. You'll remember the gunner / commander on the M163 has his head stuck out. The Stinger missile was now in service with the US and had recently been used in combat by UKSF in the Falklands in 1982, could this system be incorporated into existing vehicles? The IDF would of course eventually take a four shot Stinger pod and bolt it onto some of their M163s and give us the "Machbet". And of course there would be the M1097 Avenger system, Stinger on a Humvee and of course the short lived but very successful Canadian ADAT. But before that..........................