Happy New Year to regulars and followers … Welcome to newcomers …
I’m sorry there hasn’t been much on P.B.Eye-Candy over Christmas and New Year: I try to reserve the ‘break’ for go somewhere projects – I find, during the rest of the year, with its events, shopping and shows, I tend to focus on the dominant public project whilst only nibbling at other bits and pieces and/or maintaining my commitment to paint and put into service any new stuff I buy.
So, for a magical couple of weeks, I like to pick something that never gets done or has stayed not done for too long, and really tick a box.
This year I managed to shift a number of ancients flats from to do to ticked by configuring them into a ‘displays options’ project (more of which on my FoG Blog ), in addition to which I have cleared up the last remaining German half tracks.
These were originally acquired as Headquarters assets available to send forward to support my PBI Company … so represent various Panzer Division vehicles that might come into play, and come in pairs to suit PBI …
The Rocket Troops had never been built (see below), only one of the Flammpanzerwagens, and neither they nor the Flakvierlings had their basing done properly. So the Stukas have been done, and the others tidied up. That leaves nothing outstanding from the original project, and some useful and attractive vehicles allocated to new tasks. Tick!
In addition to which I have done a Half track ambulance for the unnamed project … I get two ticks for that one as it is one of the delightful little Zvezda models and is a proper NQM reorganisation model all in one. I have wanted to fit a Zvezda Hanomag in somewhere, but given I still had metal ones to paint (til now) it wasn’t immediately clear where I should go … but searching Medical assets proved fruitful …
(Sdkfz 251/8 armoured ambulance – from the Zvezda 1/100 model)
It’s a really nice model to which I have added a canvas made from a piece of plastic bottle which I have covered with tissue to represent fabric (as usual). The red Cross symbols are hand painted of course (so apologies for that, I need to go back and tidy them up or get some decals I guess – but until the scrutiny of a digital camera they looked OK 😉 )
For my on going Operational Games project, I intend that players will either need – or do better with – reorg/recover facilities in the field … for troops, that means medical facilities or similar, for vehicles that means a repair stand or similar. I think I may have mentioned that when I introduced 22 PZ’s recovery tractor …
What I did to the Zvezda that wasn’t at all necessary is I swapped the running gear with a Quality Castings model that was waiting to have its rockets attached. This I did just as a fiddler, and to harmonise the models: the Zvezda is just a littler bit big, and the QC just a little bit small. Also it adds a little plastic to the metal model and a little metal to the plastic (which I though might make the ‘feel’ similar*)
(1/100 SDKFZ 251: QC with Zvezda tracks, left, Zvezda with QC tracks, right)
It was not quite as clever an idea as I thought, as it mean extending the mudguards on the QC vehicle (and now I’ve mentioned it, I suspect you can see what might otherwise count as a gap on the Zvezda) …
That said, it does make it harder to spot the different makes in a line up and I think the QC with Zvezda tracks is probably my favourite 251 of all of the (BF, Skytrex, Piggie, whatever) …
In all, I am particularly pleased with the Stuka Half tracks …
(Sdkfz 251/Wurfrahmen 40 – left: Quality Castings mount; right: Skytrex … the rocket equipment is all Skytrex and the crews a mix of Skytrex, BF and Peter Pig)
The 251 Wurfrahmen 40, or Stuka zu Fuss, was available to Panzer Pioneer support companies and could rapidly saturate an area in High Explosive if your first responders got into trouble …
These vehicles took ages. Although I swapped the vehicles around abit, the gear is all Skytrex and I chose it because it looked sharper and less clumsy than some of the alternatives. Now they’re done, it was perhaps a good idea. The disadvantages were …
It is very fiddly: each mount has a fixing and a rocket pack (so 6 + 6 per vehicle) … and like all metal kit, the fit is only ‘so so’.
As ever, there are bits I want to fiddle with – e.g. the Skytrex gear lacks the front and rear cross pieces (added from brass wire – the front one is not straight, so involves a bit of fabrication) … the mounting brackets have spaces in them which are not open in the miniature versions (so would need drilling and filing). OK – simple enough – but (sigh!) repeat 12 times …
After that, paint. This also takes much much longer … it is just a green bomb in a wooden box … but, again, repeat 12 times**.
So I a so pleased to have finally stopped putting the project off, done it properly and finished!
(OK – I did have to go back and repaint the base of all the rocket packs when I saw what they really looked like)
(It is ironic that you only seem to find pictures like this when you think you have finished!)
On balance I think the Peter Pig models (which have all the rocket gear cast on) have a lot to be said for them. Less fine and less adaptable but, trust me, the self assembly versions are quite a lot of work, I have seen plenty that look more than a little (shall we say) wonky, and all those joints are only an accident away from disaster …
Fiddly? I feel some horse-drawn transport coming on …
*in retrospect I might have added the rockets to the Zvezda model and used the QC for the ambulance: the ambulance is still a bit of a lightweight – I didn’t fill it with plasticine as I thought the weight of the tracks might help (wrong) – whereas the metal vehicles with all that gear bolted on a really hefty beasts!
**each box has 3 visible sides, of course … so even though painting the green bomb is only a dash of paint plus a dash of highlight, that is the repeat 36 times ….
P.B.Eye-Candy 