Last of the many ( I hope)

I visited a local fellow kitbuilder (aka hoarder) who is liquidating his 1/72 collection and I brought him some of my surplus 1/35 stuff. In the end, I can say we were both pretty happy with our trade..

I picked up the following:

 Partially started Skyhawk, with upgradeparts for the extended exhaust for the Israeli's. Goes into the 1982 Israel pile.

 Toss up between a Iraqi or a Argentinian bird, purely planned for display purposes.

 Decals for the Gazelle helo, so I'm now sorted for the Syrian, Iraqi and Yugoslav ones.

If I can find a cheap box of these, I always snatch them up. With additional plastic bits they become lovely.

 For the burned Russian convoy.

 My favourite 222

 For my Overlord British

 Even though it has rubber tyres, I picked it up anyway. I'll either wreck it or trade it.

 Will this joing my future French of the German Polizei Units? Who knows....

 Straight onto the Israeli pile.

 Extra AAA for the Desert Brits or the BEF.

 Will be a civillian aircraft, I think.

 Another Russian wreck.

 For Iran-Iraq.

Other then some outstanding orders with the Hobby Den, Grubby Tanks and some second hand trades, I'm kind done with buying/swapping/trading (not selling though!). I'm going back to building stuff several nights a week to make a dent in the pile in the atic, as well as more scenery, courtesy of a new friend:

After getting interested in these a few years ago, but never having the money to buy one, I've been looking on and off for one for the past 2 years. 6 months ago Erik and decided to put a little more effort into it, and tonight I picked up this beauty at half retail. The receipt says it was bought last week, and the owner bought it to try it out, and felt he could find something better, so bought a 700 euro model with all the trims and fittings possible, and put this one up for sale. Jay me.

I will invest in some add ons for it, to make easy and consistent angular cuts and straight cuts with thicker foam. For now I will just play with it for a bit.

Italeri 1/72 Carro Armato M13/40 - a review of the wargames- and standard kit models.

With the Early War in Afrika Battlegroup book imminent, I've been looking around for suitable kits to make wrecks from (as always), and eventually ended up with 2 boxes from Italeri of the Italian M13/40 tank (and a box of the wargames Semovente 75/18 M40-M41 but that played no part in the period the book is for so is set aside for later)

If you like anymore information of the vehicle, please look here > Wikipedia M13/40

The kits come in the standard Italeri box one can open from the sides. I'll start off with the regular kit first.

Italeri kit No 7036 is actually a rerelease from the old Esci kit, and as such, comes with rubber/vinyl tracks. Getting these in the local shop might be a problem as this was released in 2006 and as far as I know, is no longer in the Italeri catalogue so can't be backordered anymore. But you never know, there still may be some in your local shop. I know they can be found on Ebay, and some of my local shops still have them. They tend to charge 10-13 euros for this single kit, but I guess I lucked out because I picked up my copy for 5 euros on the 2nd hand market.

You get 2 sprues, a decalsheet, and a set of rubber/vinyl tracks. The decalsheet is worth it's weight in gold, because sofar it is the only set I have seen that has the Australian white kangaroo on it that they used for the captured versions. I have not been able to find aftermarket set for those sofar, so this is nice to have. Suspension comes in a lot of pieces (too many if you ask me) and the turret hatches can open. According to the Internet the tracks takes superglue with no problem and they are nicely detailed.

Italeri kit No 7517 is the wargamesversion, with 2 basic standard painted tanks on the cover. The very basic machinegun on the turret and the very basic trackwork stand out, but the rest of the tank is nicely detailed.

The single trackunits make building this kit very short work compared to the normal kit. No opening hathces on this turret though, but from the looks of it the top turret box is the same so could be swapped out with the wargames model. I've seen this box online for 10-12 Pounds UK (I've seen listings that noted they had 10+ in stock), but found none with the local retailers. I found this one on the second hand market for 5 euros.

If you want a tank in your Italian forces (or a captured one for the Germans or Asutralians), you can get the wargames version and have a nice deal with these, if you can find them. If you need quite a few more, you are best off looking for the ones sold by wargames companies like EWM who do a resin and metal one for 8.50 Pounds (and sell a command version too) or Frontline who do one for 7 Pounds but is of considerable lesser quality. There are some prebuilts on Ebay as well and they go from 5-15 Pounds. SHQ sells a all metal 1/76 one that goes for 10 pounds. Britannia does one that has open top hatches and sells for 6,50 Pounds, but their qaulity can be hit/miss.

It does pay to shop around. If you are like me and only play 350-500 pts games, you'll never need loads, but for bigger games you will need a few more.

Since picking these up for use as wrecks, I've decided to keep searching locally for a few more and set them aside for a small Italian/ German anti-partisan force. So they won't become wrecks yet :)