Something unusual - aircraft wheels

Some bits finished for Thursday's game - Operation Caravan


My aircraft are all finished as flying models, but for the game I need them on the ground - this is OK for fixed undercarriage planes, but these left over bits will go under my aircraft to give the right effect. Here's one deployed

The SAS jeep is also just finished it's a repaired Early War Miniatures reject

German armoured cars - sdkfz 232, etc.

Just off the painting table four armoured cars from one Plastic Soldier pack. From the from counter clockwise sdkfz 231, sdkfz 232, sdkfz 233, sdkfz 263 all painted for early war. So how I have the option of replacing my old 6 wheeled versions.


The sdkfz 263 is a bit of a fudge as I had parts left when I upgraded an Airfix sdkfz 234/4 with bits from the Matchboz Puma sdkfz 234/2. The difference in the scales made it more difficult than expected


For Andrew, the fudge involved adding plasticard to either side of the Puma lower hull, but the tricky bit is matching it to the upper hull as the angles are different. Another difficult bit was cutting down the old Airfix mudguards, they are about 2mm too wide but the angle is about right. The rest is just a matter of normal assembly with the front and back hull filled with plasticard shapes to fit. The spaced armour was added to hide the distorsion.

Another milestone - 29,000

Hurrah, with the painting of the US winter infantry I've passed the 29,000 figure mark in my 20mm collection. For those including myself who like to see a breakdown. it certainly highlights where I've been concentrating since September 2016.

Period	Sep-16	Oct-17	Delta
Ancients	2202	2282	80
Dark Ages	395	438	43
Early Medieval	492	492	0
Late Medieval	1029	1213	184
Aztec/Conquistadores	434	434	0
C17 Polish/Ottoman	631	789	158
C17 TYW	1036	1262	226
C18 WSS	720	741	21
C18 SYW	1866	1866	0
C18 AWI	1292	1332	40
C18 French Revolution	658	658	0
C18 Napoleon in Egypt	331	331	0
C19 Napoleonic	6632	6635	3
C19 Napoleonic skirmish	241	241	0
C19 ACW	1220	1220	0
C19 Anglo Zulu War	860	875	15
C19 Colonial North Africa/Sudan	1066	1066	0
C20 WW1/RCW	1225	1230	5
C20 Interwar French/Rif	180	192	12
C20 Early WW2 Europe	855	884	29
C20 WW2 North Africa	1238	1274	36
C20 WW2 far east	119	119	0
C20 late WW2 europe	2523	2557	34
C20 WW2 winter	401	537	136
C20 post WW2	373	373	0
Grand Total	28019	29041	1022

Hopefully I may pass the 30,000 mark by the end of 2018.

A significant diversion - more US winter infantry

Having acquired the extra infantry needed to complete two Rapid Fire US Infantry Battalions at Derby I decided to paint them straight away.


I included a number of extra figures so I could use them as a couple of Platoons for either Chain of Command or Battlegroup


These include the figures completed for a game in September


Makes me feel cold!

Vikings

Just finished the Vikings, the pictures are not the best, but I decided to post anyway. I created three shieldwall units, a skirmishing archer unit plus a commander.


Figures are one pack of Zvezda Vikings plus a couple of old Airfix Ancient Briton archers to make up the number of archers.

A short pause in output

Spent the laste three days in hospital having my pacemaker repaced with a new wizzo version. It should have been a day case, but a minor complication meant I had to spend two extra days on oxygen. Hopefully I'll get the Vikings finished soon.

A motley crew of pirates

I always like to keep a unit of "irregulars" somewhere near the painting desk so I can add odd bits of left over paint to aid the lack of conformity. So I have just finished half a set of Orion pirates, except for the guns which are too small.

Typically, when I was part way through, I realised that when I sold off the unwanted half a couple of years ago, I had sold two identical sprues instead of two different ones, hence the duplicate poses.