This years Christmas treat to myself.

 I thought it was time to treat myself to the last remaining Wings of Wars rulessets I was still missing, and a starterset for the SCW. It's a pity the taxman hit me up twice, once with VAT in the UK and then with BTW here in the Netherlands, taking the costs up to a eyewatering 125 euros for 3 starterpacks of aircraft and 3 booklets, but that is what it is. Now to pack it all up and shove it under the Xmas tree and not think too much about it all.

Tumbling Dice that roll in slow motion

 Last weekend till the move to the appartment, and after 45 days my Tumbling Dice order arrived and mail from Jack :) Like Christmas and Easter in one day. :P

Brexit opinions aside, getting stuff from the UK is back to 1980's levels of postal service. Granted, holidays, and I hear horror stories about Customs, but still, this is ridiculous in this day and age. Oh well, at least I've planned this project and was waiting for these to arrive, so I can continue work on Desert Spitfires. 

I'm pretty much knackerd though, Lung Covid isn't doing me any favors, and I'm worn out for getting everything (well, most) sorted for the flat, and I still have no idea when I can get all my hobby stuff shipped over.

Next week I'll just sit on a sofa watching time pass and excercise in between those sessions.

Egyptian C-47 WIP

 Paint down on the 2 Egyptian C-47 but I can't find my notes anywhere, and I never seem to have published any progress pics of the Egyptian stuff I painted, so I had to guess for my camouflaged C-47....and I guessed wrong. Looks more Iranian now, which wasn't what I was aiming for. So....repaint or what? Or use for a different country? I can always repaint over the bright sand for a toned down one but dont want to keeep adding more and more layers.

1948 is back on the menu boys!

 With a little motivation from Jack and a bit of cash sent to my favorite lasercutter this project is back on track. 

 

 

(though the 40mm bases are for Vietnam.....no other way to fit a B-52)

 

There could be the slight issue in the future when I start running out of certain aircraft and Brexit increasing shipping costs and time by a factor of 25%. Same for decals, but at least a US supplies has stepped up in the void left by Dom's Decals going....somewhere?

Anyhoo, bases need to be produced. And then the Netherlands went in lockdown. Again. Jay.

Sunderland repaint-ish

I wasn't entirely happy with the green-brown contrast (or lack thereof) on the Sunderland. As a lot of future aircraft need those colours I decided to lighten the brown colour to VMC 70.875 Beige Brown

As compared to the slightly darker tone:

It is a small difference, but looks better I think.

Crisis in Kashmir! ; The Pakistani Air Force

Read the book yesterday, made a list, found that I had enough aircraft and the correct decals and it just went from there.

Really enjoyed that. Practiced the airbrush on basecoating and priming these in metal. Nice results. Liked making the F-104's, schould do more of those soon, maybe the German Navy for some Cold War anti shipping actions near Denmark.

Nailing it: 1/600th aka 3mm

Fysio has been killing me this week (and with fitness starting tomorrow for the first time and a 45-60 min training scheme that isn't anything to laugh about that will not change) so I've been keeping it low sofar. What I did do after mondays Fysio was post a package (jay, more hobby income) and dropped in the DIY to make anice long bike run to train that knee of mine. Why the DIY? Well, they have a bin full of off cuts that people don't want (usually) and you never know what you will find. Sometimes people even bin very large sheets of MDF and other woods, a bit crazy to see a 1x1 metre sheet of perfectly fine 12mm MDF get binned but such is life. Anyway, I found six 5cm wide slats of Multiply plus half a broomstick and repaid them with a well meant Thank You! (and till next time, cause I like free stuff like this).

I find broomsticks, either thick (left) or thin (right) the ideal gripping size to hold for prolonged times and to glue stuff to to paint it. But I also have a bad habit of painting things halfway and then leaving them for a while....well, a long while, so extras are never a bad thing. Top left ones have nails in them so I can just click the 1/600th aircraft to them for painting.

FFW to cutting off some 5cm pieces of the multiply for zelf supporting painting bases, cutting the broom handle in 5cm pieces and sanding down everything I hammerd nails in the planks and a few bits of broom handle. And now I need more planks :)

Muliply slats, box of flathead nails, Bob's your uncle. The longest ones are the max size my cabinets can take. My sets of drawers can take much more but 25cm is all she (the cabinets) can take , Captain. A nail roughly every 3-4 cm's. Oddly enough, compared to the tackle box I used, this stores much more in less space and much quicker. The tackle box makes a great transport box though. IIRC, (fltr) the 1st plank stuff for Iran-Iraq, Vietnam and Cold War, 2nd plank is for the Desert Spitfires book from Wings at War (which I have just reprinted), 3rd plank is for Bombing the river Bug, 4th plank is what I need to paint for 1st campaign, Stars and Pyramid, Israeli side, 5th plank is almost all of my stuff for Thud Ridge and 6th plank is my painted stuff for the Stars and Pyramids, 1st campaign.

That's not all of my aircraft btw. There are more on the original block. Still, these planks make it very easy to sort stuff for a sceanrio and to keep things seperated in my cabinets/drawers. I've now found all of my completed, WIP and unpainted aircraft.

That's one brick of unsliced WW2 on your left, and 1 brick of pure Moderns on your right.

Now, I also found a box full of 6mm aircraft. A very, very large box. A rather heavy box too. I can either sort everything or try and sell it in one large lot to get rid of it. I can use the money, that is for sure. Atm I don't think I will get back into painting 6mm aircraft tbh, I much prefer 3mm..

Il-28 Egyptian Beagle flock, some wip Mistels and a black base.

And then I got my campaigns mixed up :) I could have sworn that these were in the first campaign of the Star and Pyramid book, but I was wrong so I have been painting items that didn't need to be painted yet. Tough, but fun none the less.

I went with gloss metal cause I think they would still be wearing that, and the only pictures of camouflaged Il-28's I could find were from the '73 war. Sadly, no more Beagles have to be painted for the rest of the campaigns so to get more done in the future I will have to look at other conflicts where they are used....maybe Africa?

Also, some progress on my Mistels that I want to use for the Bombing the river Bug - scenario, I copied my old conversion to the letter so I know have 2 Mistels. As I like making stuff in pairs I might leave it at that, and maybe build more in the future (with Fw-190's then), but I think having 2 is enough for now. I will paint matching seperate fighters to go with them. As I only had Me-109 G's and not the Me-109 F's that they actually had, I just trimmed off the cannon bulges from the nose and called it a day. Looks good enough at this scale.

Also, since I can't make my mind up about the bleeding bases I got from Warbases.co.uk, I painted one all black to see how I feel about it. Now it fits in on any table that I have, and the dial number (speed) stands out more, so a bit of a win/win. I wil strip down the others and repaint those black as well. Then I have 20 stands, more then enough for most games.

I will be making new photographs of old work as well as I found so many items I never really documented properly, and only need toutch ups or are good to go. Also, my magnet order from China arrived. 1000 3mm x1mm M35 magnets (so with less pullforce then the M53 and up, which is overkill for most aircraft by a big margin) shipped to my adress in less then 3 weeks for a fraction of the cost of local sellers, namely 10 euros. 1 magnet of the 1000 had shattered and the rest is working fine.

Short Sunderland, early 1940

A very simple conversion this time. The Tumbling Dice model is a later war one with the top turret, so I snipped that off and sanded it smooth. I tried painting the hatches on top for the gunners, but like the side windows (just round holes) they didn't turn out very well so I painted them over. For the next one I will know that filling those holes will be the smart thing to do!

I copied the scheme off these pictures.

Decals were all I-94 for a change as I don't have these from Doms Decals yet. 2 part decals was a first for me but they came out nice. Went for the simple M as identification (2nd Sunderland, top pic) as fitting all 3 in that size is impossible with the decals that I have.

Painting was simple enough; primer with Vallejo Surface Primer Black, then the brown with VMC 70921 English Uniform, the green with my old bottle of VMC 70894 Russian Uniform (and I know the new colour is a bit different) with a thinned down wash of Vallejo Model Wash 76517 Dark Grey to bring out the panel lines and shade the aircraft (dark grey works better then all black I think). Then do all of the panels again with the brown and green, paint the undersides black and get craking on the windows. Pain them with VGC 21 Magic Blue and then with VMC 70961 Sky Blue. Do the engine rims VGA 72.758 Brassy Brass. Gloss the aircraft with Vallejo Polyurethane Varnish (Gloss). After a good 30 minutes drying time you can apply the decals. For the 2 part one I applied the first layer, matted it down with solvent, let that dry, applied another coat of gloss varnish, and after 30 minutes applied the next layer. When all was done I applied another full coat of gloss varnish and let that dry for a night. Then my trusty Daler & Rowney matte varnish to cover everything but the props, engine fronts and glass.

I did find a bag of the correct Blenheims in my box so I can make a headstart of those as well, or I will do something else. With me, you never know! What I know is that I want to paint a late war Fleet Arm Sunderland in white and with radar since I like the scheme so much.

Me-262 A1/U4 with 50mm

One of the old conversions, finished off. Pity about the silvering on the wing decals but I'll note that down as "battle damage".

L5 Stinson Sentinel painted as Israeli Piper Super Cub

The "Head to Head"sceanrio calls for a Piper Super Cub. Nobody makes that, but the L-5 Sentinel does come close and with some additional painted windows (all the way underneath the wing) it looks quite ok. This is the last test, this time to see how I handled something really small, and I passed that too. Not too many left now on the block, and I want to get as many done as I can before Doms shipment comes in for the Falcon and the Duce scenarios.

2 Israeli Mirage IIIs in Six Day War scheme

Also in my scrapbox, as were 2 others, but they had the wrong magnets inserted....the ones I painted have 1x3mm round, the ones I did not paint have 3x1mm round bar, and they just keep falling off the flightstand whereas the 3mm round stick on like glue. I have a box of flat head nails that I will use for the smaller WW2 aircraft as a big 3mm magnet might be a bit much on those....I will experiment with that on a Israeli spotter plane next.

1/600th - finishing a job started a long time ago!

A job started in December 2011 to be precise! (never throw anything out)

Remember this one? Il-14

 Well, I didn't want to drown myself in thinner again tonight so grabbed the Il-14 from the scrapbox and had a go at it. And I'm quite happy with the result to be honest. A tad rough, windows could be a shade whiter but other then that, pretty happy. But, you be the judge (and jury).

I even did the presentation in my old way from back in 2009 when I was painting lots of aircraft. I think it suits them. The base coin is a 1 euro cent, the squares are 1 cm.

Original C-47 by Tumbling Dice, Roundels by Doms Decals, flag by I-94 and numerals by QRF