U is for Unfinished

I have loads of unfinished truck and soft-skin vehicle projects, and here are a few, in no particular order...

From the sublime to the ridiculous, or; David and Goliath! The white metal French carrier is by, er...um...who? (probably Skytrex?), while the 'Airfix' Thornycroft is actually an early MPC licenced product, made in a very peculier waxy-soft styrene which was also hopelessly miss registered re. the two halves of the mould, as a result I've had to pare-down or scrape all the pieces until some don't fit or others; look right!

My first Opel Blitz, made in about '79/1980? needs to be overhauled and will be given a nice load of oil-drums. The Matchbox early war command caravan was nearly finished when I discovered Cooper Craft (grey lump to rear of photo) and reckoned that if I swapped bodies I'd have two convincing vehicles for the fall of France, so the well-glued backs have GOT to come off...ouch!

Leaving to the left; An Esci Gun Motor Carriage with the gun left off to make a GS 'Beep' (I've never liked this kit, it seems far too big and the suspension is far two high, no?), and to the front another Cooper Craft, this time a Bedford which will join the 8th Army before I'm finished with it...compare with photo below.

These are all on the final strait, the Blitz (Esci) is getting a Cooper Craft trailer with Eidai wheels (Kfz.11 at the front and 88mm Flak.18 Anhanger 'duals' at the back), the trailer will be painted to match the truck and get a loan of crates.

The Steel bodied Bedford OYD is based on old Military Modelling or Airfix Magazine drawings, and was inspired by the pictures on page's 21 & 36 of Almark's Focus On Armour No. 2 (ISBN; 0 85524 279 2), and is a scratch build body on the Airfix fire tender with a widened bonnet (hood). To the right is a similar kit bash on the Airfix ambulance, a downed Luftwaffe pilot chats to an equally wingless commonwealth sky-Jockey while a grim looking Scot holds a bayonet on him! Both need weathering, with a figure painting session.

Ignore the skype thing, it is the ISBN No.

T is for Truck Part 2; Kit Stuff

What those below will hopefully look like if I ever get round to finishing them! The Hasegawa tanker body with a Cooper Craft Taskers tanker-trailer. This is one of my more recent efforts...I finished it about 15 years ago, Hey, it's a fits-&-starts thing!

Weathering was thinned gloss chocolate and gloss black for the spillage and a quick dry-brush with pale sand. Taskers were still making trailers when I was a kid and my cousins had a few on the farm for hauling grain. I reasoned that trailers were cheap and easy to produce, and with the US shipping heavy gear like tanks over the Atlantic, they might have bought/sourced some stuff over here?

Not one but two unfinished projects (the Hasegawa's are one project the Heller is another!). The Heller/Airfix kit is really nice once you get it together, but it's not easy to produce, given it's a recent moulding with all the new technology available during the design/manufacturing process, it suffers (like the Jeep released at the same time) from very poor joining points, some of the stud & holes are barely visible, and while it's a while since I built it, I seem to remember the long 'shelf's' to run the glue down and rest the other/larger parts on were problematical.

The Hasegawa ones I'm building as differently as possible, so it's screen down and no tilt for one, full cover for the other, and one's going to be dark olive, the other olive drab.

Comparison shot of the Heller/Airfix truck and Hasegawa sandwiched between the two versions of the Airfix Polyhthene readymades. On a war-games table there's nothing in it, in a line there are differences but they are slight, although the Heller truck is a bit slimmer than the others. I lined up longest at the front, I should have put it at the back but I can't be arsed to re-do the photo!

The full range of the Airfix readymades, the two colour variations of the first version on the left with a carded example behind, on the right the three main colours and a boxed second version. For a guide to the two versions see Part 3 below.