Armoured Preparation

One of my club chums commented to me that my Blog had been quiet recently. Yes, I coudn't
disagree with him but there have been a number of reasons for that.

First of all I had nothing in particular that I wanted to share with my blog readers for a week or two.

Secondly, the weather recently played havoc with the roofing felt on my wargames hut which produced a leak which dripped onto my wargames table.

An initial repair made during the storm produced a patchy conglomeration of temporarily nailed down torn felt and a very large sheet of polythene. This reduced me to a shivering wreck, soaked to the skin, fairly well battered, missing the skin off a few knuckles and a bruised thumb.

A few days later during a dry windless spell another 30 meters of new roofing felt and 2 Kg of clout nails restored the roof to its former glory whereas my shivering battered state was increased to one of reluctant immobility as well as a quite painful shoulder.

On the good side I did some remedial therapy in that I painted and based all the World War Two tanks I had lying around in preparation for an Autumn/Winter series of games using Charles Grants Battle rules.

Three Hetzers in ambush camouflage, lefthand pair made by UM purchased in Prague. The heavily camouflaged Hetzer is a second hand purchase, maker unknown.

A trio of Panzer IV's with the long 75mm cannon, maker is probably Airfix.

A Tiger 1 with a pair of Panthers. Makers are unknown, the far right Panther is the Schmalturm configuration, unusual I know! The commanders standing in the turret hatches are yet to be painted.

A pair of Jagdpanthers and a Tiger II. The Jagdpanthers were an already built eBay purchase . I added scratch built mudguards, schurzen plates and repainted them. The Tiger II is a Revell kit.

The nearest vehicle is a Grille Ausf. M with 150mm gun and is a kit by Attack purchased in Prague. The central model is a Panzer IV, maker unknown but possibly Airfix or Revell. The schurzen plate brackets are incredibly fragile and I have to repair them often. The far vehicle is Sdkfz 251/10 with a 37mm cannon.

Here's them altogether ready to Blitz.

Three Shermans, the nearest two are M4A3 105mm by Armourfast. The third Sherman is by ESCI. The machine gunner is needing painted.

More Sherman M4's by Armourfast.

And some more Sherman M4's by Armourfast with scratchbuilt stowage.

Resin cast Shermans by Britannia Miniatures. These are heavy compared to a plastic kit.

And finally a trio of Sherman M4A1's by ESCI. These were painted some years ago when my painting style was considerably lighter in tone than today.

And here's a fuzzy shot of them all together. Do I have enough Shermans?

My next task is to get some infantry and some transport together.

Clay Stretch Kentucky

Do any of my American readers know a wargamer called Clay Stretch from Kentucky.

Clay recently made a posting on TMP.

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=283593

I'm not a member of TMP.

Could someone please point Clay at my Blog.

http://jim-duncan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/movement-trays-american-civil-war.html

Clay may find my method useful.

Jim

Crisis 2012 Antwerp

Anyone planning on attending Crisis 2012 in Antwerp?

I am currently costing a trip which will probably entail flying from Edinburgh to Amsterdam and then a train down to Antwerp.

I'm not sure what hotel to go for and I'm waiting to see if any of my friends or club chums are making the trip. I may well go on my own if need be.

Leuchars Airshow 2012 - part three

Here are some of my photographs from the day. They are not a complete record of all that could have been seen and photographed but represent the better ones from a day which was difficult for photography due to the wind, bright sunshine in your face and the damned planes kept moving about!

B-52H Stratofortress. This plane is almost as old as myself and comes from 2nd Bomb Wing, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.

BAe Systems Hawk T1, standard fast jet trainer for the RAF although this colour scheme is very much non-standard. The Hawk has been in RAF service for almost 40 years.

BAe Systems Hawk T2 in its normal day job colour scheme of 100 Squadron as indicated by the skull and crossbones on the tail.

English Electric Lightning F3, supersonic fighter from the Cold War Era.

An Olympic connection on this Tornado.

Phantom FG1 in The Black Arrows colour scheme, famous predecessors of the Red Arrows who once performed a formation loop with 22 aircraft circa 1958.

Royal Aircraft Factory SE 5a, a formidable fighter from World War One.

The Supermarine Spitfire needs no introduction!

I think this is a Ferret but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong! 51st Highland division markings. (It is a Daimler Dingo, thanks Peter)

LRDG Jeep

Some ground pounders in blue!

Some more in red!!


All in all it was a good day although very long and a bit wearying. The big downside to the airshow at Leuchars is geographical. The crowd area is to the north of the flight line which means that the displaying aircraft are down sun most of the time and subsequently difficult to photograph with a normal camera.

Leuchars Airshow 2012 - part two

Just back from Leuchars, burnt to a crisp. Who says Scotland doesn't see the sun!

Will put some pictures up tomorrow although I don't have many good ones.

Score for the day was:

Red Arrows - 7 (only 7 displayed after 9 had arrived and only 8 left later on)

SE5a - 2 (it was overtaken in the strong breeze by a passing crow)

B52 - 1 (flew (lumbered) over the airfield and left after a single pass)

 Meteor - 9 (zoomed all over the sky like a fighter, sorry it IS a fighter!!)

Vulcan - 10 (zoomed all over the sky like a fighter)

Everything else was probably a 3 except maybe the Chinook which did things that helicopters can't do and so scored a creditable 9!!

Leuchars Airshow 2012

There is an airshow at RAF Leuchars this Saturday.

http://www.airshow.co.uk/

Is anyone going?

Jim

Spencer Smith Frontages

Following on from some discussion on the Old School Wargaming forum I present the following information on frontages suitable for Spencer Smith figures.

The question discussed 'is 0.5" OK for a figure frontage' in respect to Charge.

As you can see a 20mm frontage gives this ACW unit a slightly spaced out look. In my mind this is fine for ACW.

As you can see the figures could be closed up a little bit!

The base depth of 20mm is also fine for these figures although you have to make sure the forward thrusting bayonet is at an angle to avoid the figure in fronts backpack.

You can see that an 0.5" frontage is a little bit tight for these figures.

Some judicious filing of the bases could make them fit. The figures look pretty well shoulder to shoulder.

0.5" as a base depth is a non-starter for these figures. No amount of filing will help here.

As far as I know the Spencer Smith Classic range are produced in the same fashion as the ACW figures above. I would expect their frontages to be much the same.