We're Back Baby!

Oh yes!  It's been a while, that's for sure.  There are a whole load of items to report as a consequence, just to get the ball rolling I'll catch you up with a report on some of the March painting achieved.

Part of this was a trip down memory lane, building an Airfix kit from a selection my Brother got me for Xmas several years ago.

Ah, Airfix! where so many of us began, and yet as is often observed far from the best introduction to the hobby.

Spending ages attempting to figure out vague instructions and a curious mix of some sharply engineered parts and how they go with other much more arbitrary articles.  I was assembling the SDKFZ 234/4 with Pak40.  Of course that's not what Airfix called it, and the model is inaccurate in several respects.  Still for the most part it went together fairly well.

 Painted up as a model for Tunisia or Italy the final model was pleasing enough.

I ignored the poor quality transfers and painted the Balkan Crosses myself.  In the end the model conveys a German armoured car more than it accurately represents one.  Still a trip down memory lane that benefited from an additional couple of decades of practice!

Otherwise, some money-earning jobs were in mind and so in March I also produced a Battlefield Evolution Panzer Grenadier Platoon:

 Infantry light thanks to that massive tank at the back.

These of course show how time has moved on since the heyday of Airfix (though, credit where it's due, their new models are much improved).  High quality, and historically accurate hard and soft plastic models combined to form this force.  Including mostly Valiant infantry, some Italieri troops with a Pak40 and a Dragon Industries Kingtiger tank.

Necessity required I do a little conversion work.  Having run out of heavy machine guns in the static mode, I instead converted up a group to advance as such a party.

The Koenigstiger is the Porsche model used mainly in the West and so this force is particularly suited to the fighting in Normandy and Holland.  This was also the first model I used Mig weathering powders on.  Having had them for some FOUR years, I really felt it was time I gave them a try.  I mixed them with a little varnish, as suggested to make a a paste suitable to make mud.  This results in basically a gritty paint, that leaves a better texture than just paint.  I have a lot to learn, but they are promising materials.

I hope to get them on eBay soon.

Anyway the total for march was good, in total:

Dogs of War characters: 2
Terminator characters:3
1Bn Garde Imperiale: 24
Goblin Boss: 1
Uri Canton Crossbowmen: 12
Koenigstiger and SDKfz 234/4: 10
German Panzergrenadiers and artillery: 37

So that's 89 points or twice as many as February!  building up nicely indeed, and three times what I set as a minimum.