Month: March 2021

Esci Opel Blitz with AA Flak Gun

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 15 Comments

Another great vintage kit I found on eBay for a few pennies. Nicely worn cardboard smelt twenty years old, and the decals had long since passed into browny, crispy bits. As i have found with some of these older kits they really stand up even being twenty years old or more. This one was good fun to build and quite straight forward.

i made some adjustments mainly adding my own clear plastic windshield and also a driver who you cannot see anyway. I did manage to make a pigs ear of attaching the bonnet and had to cover my error with an extra shovel. Looks OK for a cover up. I decided the crew were setting up ready for action so i only dropped one side of the back. The decals came from my pile of spares. The crew are the excellent AB figures who i gave field grey jackets and pea dot camo pants. I did have to remove the back seat of the flak gun as the seated AB dude had his seat welded to his backside. I added a box or two, a panzerfaust and an SMG for some extra protection.

It’s my first bit of anti aircraft equipment for the Germans, but not the last as i have a heap of MACO kits i am saving up for a rainy day!

US GMC Trucks In 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 15 Comments

I am slowly building up some US forces and I really like building trucks. Especially these super cool US GMC trucks. I cannot help myself as far as trucks and armoured cars go. These guys come from Heller (Airfix) and Hasegawa. The Heller kit has finer detail and is more delicate. It comes with an excellent gun ring on the roof, and its dimensions are longer and thinner than the Hasegawa kits. The Japanese kits are very solid and chunky and very quick to build. You can get them super cheap direct from Japan. They do have weird metal axels which need super gluing otherwise the wheels rotate. I added windshields with plastic and also added some thin chains on the front fender as i had seen photos of this somewhere. My drivers are all AB Figures as usual. They are such cool trucks. I have an IBG Diamond Cargo Truck just arrived in tbe post which I am now itching to make!

Hovels Ruined Buildings in 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 5 Comments

I have had my eye on some of these buildings from hovels for a while. Finally succumbed to picking up two ruins, a cool bridge with a toll booth and a nice little church. Here are the two ruins to start with. They are both one piece light resin type material which is really easy to paint. I primed them in black and grey and then used acrylics for the terracotta red brick look. They do not have removable first floors so i made them their own bases to sit on which will let me lift up the buildings and place men underneath. The bases are made from MDF and covered in a plastic sheet with paving stones textured like pavement. These look the part and make a quick addition to any table. For quality, however, i think Sentry/Raventhorpe produce the best resin buildings out there!