Happy Messerschmitt New Year

Hello friends:  

Three days into the new year and I’m only now wishing you a happy 2024 is about on pace for this sadly diminished blog.   I hope that you and yours passed a happy holiday season and for those of you who still keep Christmas, there are devotions and homilies on my other blog, the “God Blog”.

In 2023 my identity as a wargaming vicar weighed 90% on the vicar side, and only 10% on the hobby side.   At sixty one I still have energy and enthusiasm for my vocation, but began to notice that the hobby and the friendships that make it so enjoyable have suffered.  Until this last week I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in months, and hadn’t rolled dice in ages.   

Case in point, I have kept a model kit in my church office, in the hopes that I would add a part here or there in my spare moments, but hadn’t touched it since the summer.   I have resolved to be more attentive to these sorts of distractions in future, for my mental health and overall wellbeing.   A thoughtful Christmas present from my wife Joy, a local gym membership, will also be used.  

Just after Christmas I hauled out the model kit, an Airfix 1/48 scale ME 109 E3, and finished it on New Years’ Eve.  I used the paint and decals scheme for the plane flown by Oblt Josef “Pips” Priller, immortalized in the film The Longest Day.

I’m too old a bunny to try an airbrush on a kit like this, so contented myself with using a brush for the cammo scheme. I did try using a dark ink wash for the panels.  

I don’t see any wargaming use for this model, I think it will just adorn a shelf somewhere, and one day sit beside the 1/48 scale Hurricane that is waiting to be built.

I pray that 2024 is off to a good start for you and that we will all be happier and more fulfilled because of the hobbies that give us joy.

MP+

B17 and all the Trimmings

In another totally gratuitous, non-wargaming use of my time, I made some model kits to amuse myself.    This 1/72 scale B17-F sits behind my desk at work, and was made in my office during my lunch hours over the past few months.     The model is by Academy, a Korean-based company, and the service vehicles are from an Airfix USAAF bomber resupply kit.  I purchased both kits from a store in Toronto, Wheels and Wings, on Danforth Ave.   It’s a great store for plastic model fans.   I painted the B-17 in the iconic aluminum and red paint scheme rather than the more ubiquitous olive-green, though both are good looks.  There is something quite American about the silver bomber, a curious mix of arrogance and naivety.

Autocar tractor and fuel trailer.

 Chevrolet bomb service truck and bomb trailer.

 Cushman package car, perhaps delivering thermoses of coffee and tomato soup before take off?

Like I said, no wargaming value that I can see in these models, but I greatly enjoyed putting them together and they make a nice display grouping.  Also a bit of a tribute to those brave men who got into these planes day after day to go bomb the Reich.

Cheers and thanks for looking.  Blessings to your models.

MP+

A Tale of Two Typhoons

Hello friends.

Breaking silence from a fairly busy final year of work in a new job.   By final year, I mean retirement from the Canadian Forces in June 2020. , which I quite look forward to.  By new job, well, I like it and it keeps my busy, so all good.

Not a lot of hobby time of late, but I have been on a bit of a model airplane kit.  Not sure why.  I built quite a few plastic kids as a kid, and it’s enjoyable to revisit that part of my past.

At least a decade ago, I bought an Airfix 1/72nd scale Typhoon for WW2 gaming.   It was typical of the old Airfix kits, a few parts, poorly moulded, and not very interesting.  I made a start on it, lost interest, and forgot about it.  Found it last year, realized I had lost the clear plastic canopy, and took a chance on emailing Airfix customer service to see if I could get a replacement.  Lo and behold they sent one in the post, free of charge, and that inspired me to finish the job.   

A fairly simple paint job, and here it is, ready to make a brief appearance in a 20mm war-game as the scourge of some poor panzer.

Zoom zoom.

Typhoon on a stick.  The stand is a fairly thick piece of dowel with a nail at the top, which inserts into the bottom of he fuselage.   The bottom of the dowel is glued onto a base which is heavily weighted by a large metal washer.   Works fairly well.

I enjoyed making this so much that I went out and bought another one, a fairly new release, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much quality Airfix has put into their products.  The quality of the parts, the complexity of the model, the detail of the instructions and the options for assembly were all vastly improved over my old Typhoon kit.

Here’s the finished product in the decals and paint scheme of a Typhoon in a Canadian squadron in early 1945.  I chose to make it with the landing gear down, which is always a tricky business for me, as the parts can be fiddly in the smaller scales and the strut assemblies sometimes lack strength to support the model.   Here it worked fairly well.

The kit includes the possibility of opening the gun compartments, which appealed to me, even though it required some delicate surgery with a craft knife.   That and the open canopy suggest that the pilot if waiting for the final check by his ground crew.

What does this have to do with wargaming?   Nothing, really, but he will sit on a shelf behind my desk at work, and it gives me ridiculous amounts of pleasure to glance at it from time to time.

 

What have you made, not for gaming, but just for the pleasure of making it?