Not Quite Apocalyptic

I have been following Imperial Rebel Ork’s post-apocalyptic tree house  (yes really!) with some interest. So as the UK virus apocalypse is not quite as exciting, and needs fewer handguns, I thought that it was time for Shed du Soleil to get an upgrade.

Essentially, this is just a long-winded way of saying that I have extended the veranda canopy by a couple of feet, and run a cloister along the side of the wall. It is a proper cloister, with spandrels and a tension half-hammer beam that is only possible due to the lightweight polycarbonate roof, and which is there to provide stiffening under tension if wind tries to get under the roof and lift it off.

As usual, cowboybuilders.co.uk did the job by moonlight, with their wobbly ladders. A neighbour was throwing a front door away, so it went down to the Tank Shed (Shed 24). I’m in the process of moving the French doors to the front of the sitting out area to make it weathertight. The hobbit next to the shed is under scale aged about 7. With true-scale modelling, your bits box just takes up more space and the figures won’t stand still to be photographed.

Sd Kfz 11 and 3.7cm Flak 36/37

The Skytrex 3.7cm Flak 36/37 and Syborg 3D Sd Kfz 11 have been sitting around undercoated for a while now. I finally married them up on a single base and added a bit of colour. There is not much pictorial evidence around of prime movers for the Flak 36/37. I found pictures of an Opel Blitz and a captured French Citroen online, but have no idea whether they are representative  or not. Going to the Milicast site, suggests that heavy field cars, trucks both armoured and unarmoured, were pressed into service as self-propelled mounts. I generally reckon that Milicast are pretty accurate in their choice of models and information, having strong links to MAFVA.

At 1,550Kg combat weight, The Flak 36/37 is well within the limits for an ’11, as it also towed the zwillingen twin barrelled version of the Flak 43 (according to Wiki). Mine is painted up in a simple desert scheme of sand with grey showing through. I improved the texture of the canopy by the simple expedient of sticking tissue paper to it, to hide the contour lines that are endemic to FDM printed models.

There is no shortage of pictures of self-propelled mounts on Sd Kfz 7/2s, (about a thousand produced) or Flakpanzer IVs (240 Möbelwagen 3.7cm and 43-46 Ostwind 3.7cm) etc., however I think that the majority of these guns would probably have been towed by wheeled transport in the Luftwaffe, with half-tracked tows reserved for the Luftwaffe field divisions.

Crews should be painted as Luftwaffe, or army. If army, they may either have white infantry piping if Flabatallion with 2cm and 3.7cm guns, all on self-propelled ,mounts; or red piping if artillery in mechanised mixed Heeresflak Batallions in Corps orbats, with three 8.8cm Flak companies and two 2cm/3.7cm companies. the crews in black below are not Panzer troops, they are still in their undercoats!

For NQM, I simplify orbats to show Heeresflak Batallions as artillery with SP 8.8cm and Flabatallions as infantry with SP 2cm and 3.7cm. If it’s self propelled, then it’s army, but if towed then Luftwaffe. Nierhorster confirms this, showing 135 Flak Regiment as having four Luftwaffe mixed battalions attached to DAK. Army Flak also had machine guns. YesthatPhil has a superb scratch-build of a horse-drawn version  here.

For anyone modelling below corps scale, searchlights were spread out amongst the Flak battalions.  Andrew Bruce’s blog in the sidebar to the right, is very helpful with this source: Special Series 10. German Antiaircraft artillery (1943) Military Intelligence Service, War Department [https://drive.google.com/file/d/11vE6fYDGCm1rCPyU9gBn1baCOW3MI-jv/view] Accessed 14/2/21

Lone Sentry also has this useful intelligence brief on tactical employment.

Light Box

Seeing someone’s light box on their blog, prompted me to buy one online. For the princely sum of about £12, this neat little origami cube came with six coloured backdrops, a USB cable that powers an LED strip, and a carry bag.

My indoor photos have suddenly improved. About time too! I can hear the relieved sighs of patient folk who have been putting up with my blurry badly lit photos for years. Judge for yourself.

Paint and Glue Miniatures Kfz 21 Krupp Pkw

This post on the Kfz. 21 Krupp Pkw (Personenkraftwagen or people carrier) shows the superiority of a resin print over an FDM one (see my review of the Kfz. 19 last week).  The Krupp is a good model to highlight the differences, because of its long sloping bonnet.

As far as I can ascertain, the Kfz. 21 was used as a staff car for senior officers, or as a troop carrier for the Führer-Begleit-Bataillon. The motley crew are mostly Command Decision, with the rather fat general in the middle right hand seat coming from the Plastic Soldier Company Marder crew.

Paint and Glue Miniatures Kfz 19 Krupp Protze

This iconic vehicle featured heavily in the sort of photographs that were available in pre-internet days to a teenaged Panzer fancier.  I always fancied building one, but never got round to it. So I was delighted when PGM offered this model. It is a very nice print too. The usual comments about print lines apply , and when I get the review of the resin schwerer geländegängiger Personenkraftwagen (6rad) (Kfz. 21)
mit Fahrgestell des l. gl. Lkw. (o) onto the blog, the differences can easily be seen, showcasing the superiority of  resin over FDM. As resin printers become more affordable, they are the way forward, I think.

The PGM model can be used as a Fernsprech-Betriebskraftwagen (Kfz. 19)
mit Fahrgestell des l. gl. Lkw. (o) (telephone vehicle ) or as a Funkkraftwagen (Kfz. 19) mit Fahrgestell des l. gl. Lkw. (o) (Radio vehicle). The latter , according to Holger Erdmann (see sidebar), was a rare variant, making up numbers for the commoner Kfz. 15.

Wikipedia gives 7000 chassis being built overall, but the radio and telephone bodies would have been a much smaller proportion of these. I believe that the Kfz. 19 and 21 were essentially early war vehicles, so I have painted mine grey. I haven’t seen any vehicles painted in mid war camouflage yet, although there are a couple of Kfz. 70s in the pre-war three tone pattern of dunkelgelb, green and brown. The vertical wooden panels on the doors and body are rendered nicely, but it would really take a resin print to take full advantage of this detail. the wheels are printed separately, needing to be stuck on. I’m very happy with my model, and can recommend it.

Box Cataloguing

 

Every year, for my own benefit,  I attempt to bring the NQM Box Catalogue and its index up to date. It allows me to spot Orbat gaps and continue to fill in with models as new purchases are made. Older less accurate models are pushed down the Orbat. It’s dull. Enjoy!

Archiving is described thus by the The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, TW9 4DU :

“Cataloguing is an important aspect of documenting collections. It can:

• give you greater intellectual control over collections, creating accurate descriptions
• allow you to identify preservation/conservation needs
• widen access to descriptions and the collections themselves
• enable you to contribute data to archive networks“

Happily I can ignore most of this and just continue to bung stuff in boxes, with photos to remind me what still needs to be done. Still a way to go yet!

Paint and Glue Miniatures Cyclists

The PGM resin cyclists and motorcycle combinations in 15mm are the most absurdly perfect 15mm prints that I have seen. Anatomical proportions of the riders are correct. Animation is both realistic and lively. The cycles have chains and spokes. There are over ten different models.

I am fully expecting bits of the finely detailed weapons and wheel spokes to snap off in game use. I’m sure that my Soviet Artillery painting style¹ will not do the figures justice, but who cares. These figures need to be seen before my paint brush gets to them for the detail to be fully appreciated.

If the Soviet motorcycle combo looks like a BMW, it is no coincidence. I owned a Cossack Dnieper in the ’80s and it was clearly a BMW copy, made from scrap iron by rural tractor mechanics. Like everything else Soviet, it did the job after a fashion. There were enough of them to win the war.

1. Throw all your paint at the target. Some of it will hit.

Paint and Glue Miniatures Krupp Protze Kfz. 69 (L2 H43)

The Paint & Glue Miniatures Krupp Protze Kfz. 69 (L2 H43) is a very neat print that has excellent detail, and which models the rear tyre with its frame very accurately, and has good detail around the ammunition boxes. Print lines on the sloping front bonnet, the usual curse of printed models, are not too noticeable, and the windscreen is separate, so can be modelled up or down. Wheels are printed individually, which you either like, or don’t. It can be seen that printing separately enables better tyre detail. As usual, my battle-ready-get-it-on-the-table paint job does the model no favours.

It compares very favourably with the Butler’s and QRF Kfz. 70s and the QRF ’69, which lacks the rear wheel detail. The Kfz. 69 was most often seen towing the 3.7cm Pak, with the Kfz. 81 variant towing the 2cm FlaK 30 and 38 gun

2021 Started Well …

As we were again dining in alone for 2021, The lovely Mrs K decided that this year’s theme would be Fancy Dress, which of course, means Pirates¹.

It started well …

But rapidly degenerated at the crew’s end of the table …

And quickly became very messy! Which reminded me of the pirate game at Sandhurst in the late ’80s, in which,

Jim Roche brought copious quantities of rum and gunpowder …. (what could possibly go wrong?)

Suzanne almost took someone’s fingers off with a Kukri², whilst opening a coconut … (They weren’t Trebian’s, but he might have been there, being a re-enactor of some note in his day)

And John Mengham may or may not have been very drunk, singing sea shanties during the debriefing.

We continued the party on New Years Day in Shed 24 at the allotment, surrounded by all the comforts of home.

Arrrh!

1. For clarity, we mean those loveable swashbuckling scamps of Hollywood fame, not the murdering scum that were exterminated by the Royal Navy in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and South China Seas.
2. She was, and remained, sober throughout the day. Ours was one of the few ships that did not run aground at some stage during the game.

 

Dinner For Two

Dinner for Two – Miss Sophie

Every New Year’s Eve, Germans watch “Dinner for One“. If Freddy Frinton and May Warden are unfamiliar to you, then you are in for a treat. This year we toasted absent friends, and I managed to avoid spilling the port, tripping over the rug, and put most of the soup into the bowl.

Jim Webster introduced me to the quote “We are surrounded by members of our family; some of whom are alive, and some of whom are not.” This year it has never been more apposite.

So, to absent friends: Adrian, Albert, Alice, Alison, Andrea, Andreea, Anita, Anjim, Anne, Annie, Barbera, Beverly, Bob, Andreas, Andrew, Andy, Archduke, Arshad, Ben, Brian, Carol, Chris, Clive, Deborah, Dennis, Don, Elaine, Fred, General, and Mrs Whiskers, Geoff, Graham, Hamid, Heather, Ian, IRO, Jake, Jim, João, all the Jos, John, Jonny, José, Joseph, Julie, Karen, Kath, Keith, Ken, Kiera, Krish, Lewis, Lucy, Lydia, Mandy, Mary, Matt, Muriel, Paula, Peter, Phil, Posh, Mike, Richard, Roger, Roland, Ross, Sarah, Steve, Sue, Syrian, The Duchess, The Wargaming Pastor, Tim, Tom, Two Slice, Victoria, Will, Yvonne, Zorro¹.

I got a Pirate Hat – Cool!

As if things could not get worse in 2020, Locals reported seeing a crocodile on the flooded banks of the river Nene². It may have escaped from from Labs in The University of Northampton³. Happy New Year, everyone!

Crocodile on the Nene stalks unsuspecting locals.  UoN in the background.

1. Some of you share first names in common …. not Two Slice, obviously 🙂
2. Locals pronounce it “Nenn“, like pen. Further downstream towards Peterborough, they pronounce it “Neen“, like seen. On some Victorian Ordnance Survey maps, it is spelled “Nine“, which I believe to be a lettered Engineer’s interpretation of  “Neen”  as he struggled to make sense of a local dialect that used to render Irthlingborough as “Artle’noc“, within living memory.
3. The only lab in a traditional sense that I am aware of at UoN, is the Microbiology Lab, so that’s pretty scary!