A Yellow Fort!!

Well, I got fed up with the freezing weather and took a last minute holiday to Madeira. It was mainly walking and catching up on my reading pile. However on one end of the old town of Funchal is this wonderful yellow painted fort. Fort Sao Tiago was built to protect the coast from piracy during the 16-17th century.

Its not large and only costs €3 to have a look around and that includes the contemporary art museum, unfortunately the military museum has moved to the Palácio de São Lourenço and was closed whenever I had the chance to visit.

King of Tigers?

So I've finished my Airfix King Tiger, a lovely kit with one exception - rubber band tracks. Of course as you would expect when fitting them I broke off one of the idler wheels. I was not a happy bunny! In the end I left them loose as they are not noticeable with the side skirts.

As for the colour of the image, I have a new camera and I'm still trying to find the best settings for taking indoor pictures. The Dunkelgalb certainly looks to yellow in this picture.


Also in the picture is an Edai Stug IV that I picked up at the Derby show.

DAK radio trucks

After quite a bit of work they're complete, a large KFZ61 for my kampfgruppe/regimental HQ and smaller Kfz 17 for the artillery. The cause of the slow progress is the complexity of the mouldings and ensuring a good fit, even then after a lot of care on the underside of the Kfz17 I found the wheels were too far out and therefore after a lot of soul searching I ripped off the suspension. The replacement was just a simple length of sprue cut to size and it's virtually unnoticeable without turning the vehicle over.


Since I had a second Kfz17 I decided to assemble it at the same time to save time on the learning curve. This time it's for my early war German forces.

Kits are the Ace Kfz17 and the ZV Models Kfz61, both limited production run models.

More DAK Infantry

A few bits and pieces to fill in gaps I have identified in my force. A pair of OP teams, a couple of extra 81mm mortars and some conversions. These are AT Rifles and a 50mm mortar for my early DAK forces.

Figures are mainly Italeri plus a few Airfix, the 81mm mortars came from the Zvezda German mortar set.

WW1 Austrian Artillery

Another interloper on the workbench. I was hunting for some stowage for my vehicles when I remembered that the Hat WW1 Austrian gunners included some boxes, having sorted them out it only took a short time to paint these bods in their very simple uniform.

Normal service will be resumed shortly as I slowly assemble some Ace Radio vans

Frundsberg Pontooners

A new unit for my imagi-nation the Frundsberg Frei Stadt. I realised that I would need these so they sneaked onto the workbench while I was waiting for a replacement highlander and some plastic kits to harden.


For yhose interested there are more pictures of the Pontoon bridge here ,the barges in action here and some construction details here

British 12th Light Dragoons 1801

After some struggles trying to find the right uniforms, I settled on the the version as shown. It's not clear exactly when the helmet turban stopped being in the facing colour and became blue, similarly the shabraque, I went for the conversion being before the period. Similarly, the colour of the trumpeters coat was unclear, I opted for reversed colours because it looks better.


Thanks to Bob for the loan of the Grant books