Thanks to a friend on one of the online forums, I found this link to a series of amazing color photographs from the days of Blitz in London. The quality of the photographs is quite amazing. Anybody looking for an inspiration, eh?
This is Churchill AVRE Mk.III by AFV of course. I have built it also some year ago.
The kit was bit of a mixed bag. Some parts were very well done and overall model has very nice details. I liked the running gear, which is very detailed and realistic. The kit is bit overcomplicated in my opinion and needs a lot of dry fitting during the construction. This is sometimes extremely difficult due to the high number of parts into which it is broken down. Example: Upper track guards are made of three parts. These need to be aligned perfectly with the main hull body, both in front and at the back, even small misalignment may cause noticeable gaps at one end. But dry fitting 4 parts at the same time is not that easy unless you have an extra pair of hands.
Humber was my first Bronco model which I have built about 3 years ago. It was one of the Bronco’s early releases if I remember correctly. Sitting on a shelf for quite some time the model has already suffered some minor damage (broken rear view mirror).
It was rather easy build with nice detailed interior out of which very little can be seen. Model was built completely out of the box. Vehicle is painted in the light mud with blue-black camouflage, though looking at it know I think the light mud is bit too dark and greenish.
Seems that pictures from Ajax model show are one of the most popular posts here.
For those who have not noticed – there are pictures from number of other model shows of the past few years in my web album – Ajax, HeritageCon, London, Torcan, covering past 4 years.
Photo albums can be found here: Model Shows
Have a look and feel free to share.
Another contribution to the gallery of my finished models. The vehicle is Israeli APC Nagmachon, based on the Centurion chassis. It is one of those unique conversions, IDF is famous for. Using its experience from Intifada and years of low intensity conflicts, IDF realised it needs heavily armored personnel carrier capable of defeating the latest RPG weapons. At he same time vehicle did not need heavy caliber gun, as there were no enemy armoured vehicles to counter. Instead the need was for high situational awareness of the crew in urban areas and firepower against soft targets.
Last weekend I was caught off guard when I was browsing the shelves of Chapters store (one of my favourite hobbies, if only their military history sections were bit more extensive). Normally I don’t encounter any surprises as I monitor upcoming books on WWII quite closely, but this time I have really missed something:
As part of its Canadian battle series, Mark Zuehlke offers its ninth installment and this time he returns to Normandy. After the first two books dealing with this battlefield (Juno Beach and Holding Juno) he returns to finish the job and covers the events between July 4 and August 21.
During the summer I usually go to cottage for a week and I take some modeling “work” with me. I like to use this time to start building a new kit, since carrying painting tools would be bit complicated (given the amount of rest of the baggage). I prefer to choose a kit for which I don’t need zillion aftermarket parts to make it look good, goes well together without major corrections and scratchbuilding and the vehicle does not have significant interior visible, so that I don’t need to keep all the subcomponents separate.
This year the choice was Porsche King Tiger. I had Dragon Premium edition kit in my stash and it met the criteria above (mostly). I like this kit for many reasons - level of details is very good, I have good experience with the recent kits from Dragon in terms of fit of parts, it had a generous amount of photoetch provided with the kit (even the pre-formed engine mesh) so that unlike the third part accessories you don’t need to spend time trying to combine two sets of instructions and I can replace molded-on parts (such as tool brackets) with photoetch easily. The kit also includes single-link tracks, which I strongly prefer (with the exception of Sherman, I only use single link tracks).
Contrary to the criteria above I actually used one aftermarket part - zimmerit and this was due to the specific vehicle I want to depict.
This is model of Russian artillery tractor Stalinets S-60. The vehicle was a direct copy of the American Caterpillar 60 and was originally used as agricultural tractor. Almost 70,000 of them were produced by the Chelyabinsk Tractor plant between 1932 and 1937 (number used by red Army is unknown).
24-year-old Alwyn Collinson, An Oxford history graduate has begun a six-year project to tweet events from every day of the Second World War as they happened 72 years ago.
I am no particular fan of Twitter, but I think this is an interesting project, especially these days when memory of WWII is slowly fading away and the war is becoming part of a distant past.
I have added data feed from this Twitter account to my blog – you can find the tweets in the lower section of the column to the right.
Recent article in The Telegraph provides more information on the project:
Six-year project to tweet the Second World War
You can also follow the tweets directly here: Real Time WWII
Until my friend Richard (thx Richard) told me about the Ontario Regiment RCAC museum in Oshawa, I had no clue there is one (shame on me). So I was quite eager to visit the museum on October 1st this year, when they had this season’s last Tank Day – an occassion when the museum staff takes one of their vehicles out and hit the road. They don’t go anywhere far (just to a nearby airport and back), but for an armour fan such as me, this is definitely something worth seeing.
This time it was M4A3E8 that could be seen and heard outside. Not having any experienced any similar close encounter before, the sight was definitely impressive.
The museum itself is not large in terms of space, but almost its every inch is filled with vehicles of all kinds. These are accompanied with a small, but similarly busy exhibition of artefacts from both WWI and WWII.
I was able to snatch pictures of few of my favourite vehicles (e.g. Universal carrier) as well as some pictures of the Sherman interior – make sure to check these to see how the chipping looks in real life. Gallery is here: The Ontario Regiment Museum Tank Day
The official page of the museum can be found here: The Ontario Regiment Museum
Seems it is…at least for the modern armour fans.
After Bronco announced Buffalo MRAP already some time ago, boxart pictures are now finally available. M-ATV is now being offered by two producers – Panda (which is already in stores) and Kinetic.
The last surprise was the announcement of the MAXX-Pro full kit by Legend few days ago.
So what will Santa bring to you?
![CB35100[1]](http://miniarmour.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cb351001.jpg?w=150&h=98)
