Ricks' Ramblings

[McColm]

Well done 

[Rick Lowe]

Thanks, everyone. 

[Rick Lowe]

As the Shinden has made an appearance recently, here's my take from a few years ago.

1/75 Kyushu Shinden **What If**

After WW2 the French, as part of the Allied Powers of Occupation of Japan, were looking for opportunities for War Reparations. They saw the potential of the Kyushu Shinden and removed the prototype airframes and all plans and tooling back to France, where they put the aircraft into limited production.

The airplane proved to possess a good performance and was popular, but with the advent of the jet engine, ultimately short-lived. There were thoughts of reengining it as a jet, as the Japanese had mooted, but other Western designs were available for less cost.

It was used primarily in the former French Colonies, particularly Algeria; and when this country was granted Independence, the remaining airframes were part of the Military materiel that was passed over to the new Armed Forces.
The model depicts an aircraft of the Etats Libre d'Afrique or Free African States, a coalition formed to resist the incursions of the Soviet-backed Democratic States of Southern Africa.

Model is the old Tamiya 1/75 kit. I built a cockpit, opened up the side intakes and backed them with card to prevent a see-through effect, moved the control surfaces, thinned the main gear doors and replaced the nose doors, and that was pretty much all I needed to do.

The scheme came from the graphic novel Scarlet Traces, the Great Game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlet_Traces

Paint is Humbrol for the most part, with GW colours for the wing and nose stripes, also the spinner.
Markings are dry-rub lettering.

[Wardukw]

Love the armoured car matey but this rocks hard core ..ya know me ..I do love myself a Shinden and this one is quite yummy 😋

I'm thinking now I need to get another one 😆 🤣

[Old Wombat]

Pretty & colourful!  



Should attract all the child soldiers any up-&-coming African warlord could desire.  

[Rick Lowe]

Love the armoured car matey but this rocks hard core ..ya know me ..I do love myself a Shinden and this one is quite yummy 😋

I'm thinking now I need to get another one 😆 🤣

Thanks, and happy to help! 

[NARSES2]

I like the Shinden, you've now got me thinking of a Regia Aeronautica one 

[Rick Lowe]

I like the Shinden, you've now got me thinking of a Regia Aeronautica one 

That'd be different.

[Rick Lowe]

And Now for Something Completely Different, as they say.

20mm Strontium Dogs from 2000AD comic **Sci Fi**

Working as Bounty Hunters on (and off) a Post-Nuclear War Earth, since that's the only job Mutants are allowed to hold. A hard, brutal and often short life for most, though some of them manage to survive for a reasonable time. Among the best are Johnny Alpha; his Norm partner Wulf Sternhammer; the Gronk, an alien who acts as their medic due to being from a race of pacifists; and Durham Red.

A good friend obtained a swag of old metal minis and when I expressed an interest in the GW ones, he graciously passed them on to me. Thanks, Mike!

Johnny, Wulf and the Gronk are the very old Games Workshop figures unaltered, apart from giving Gronk a Med Bag, and Durham Red is a modified Denizen figure which I already had; I tweaked her weapon and gave her a mini skirt from foil.

Painted in mostly GW paints, which I thought was appropriate, and other random paints to get the effect I wanted; some are artist's tube acrylics. Black washed.
No, the bases aren't finished yet; they may well get snipped off the current ones and put onto something a little more Sci-Fi. But that'll happen later.

[NARSES2]

Nice work sir   

[zenrat]

Oh my poor heartsises!

Looking good.  Strontium Dog was one of my favourites.

[Rick Lowe]

Thanks, Guys.
Yeah, Johnny & Co seemed to be among the better-written of the stories.

[Rick Lowe]

1/76 RAF Sdkfz 7 Fire Engine **Real World**

Post-WW2, the RAF in Germany experimented with a couple of ex-German half tracks as fire fighting vehicles for airfield use.
One was a pumper vehicle and the other a CO2 tanker.

Whilst their off-road capabilities were superior to the truck-based vehicles, they weren't as quick as the wheeled vehicles and they remained the only examples of the type.

The model is based on the old Edai wargaming model, with the rear apparatus taken from the Airfix RAF Rescue Set.

The track units were narrowed to a more correct width, and plastic bits glued on for the rubber track blocks.

The front seat was replaced with a wider one and a new windscreen frame sourced; a flat rear platform was made and the Airfix bits glued on, with a few mods here and there; the front and rear trackguards were reprofiled.

I couldn't find any shots of how the other equipment details looked, so I used some bits from the Refueling Set as gizmology, and the hoses are solder.
The rear spray unit had some levers added from micro strip and the spray nozzle had a handle added.

Contrary to the Airfix instructions, RAF fire-fighting equipment was RAF Blue-Grey until 1947 or 48, so I used the Humbrol shade with Black details.
The markings came from the Airfix refueling set for the circle, with the centre punched out, and the 'RAF' cut from the serial number.

Relatively quick and easy, but something different.

[Rick Lowe]

And let's have some Completed shots, too...

[Old Wombat]

Nice!

Oddly easier to see the changes in the completed images, probably comes down to all that white washing everything out in the build pic's.