November’s Gone

November is already over, and I can’t believe it.  It was a fun month from a gaming standpoint.  I played in a great Black Powder game over at Jim Sagen’s house, attended the Museum of Flight where Dave Schueler and I ran our convoy game twice–and had a blast, and on Friday I ran the second Buffalo Hunt game with some rule changes and had some more suggested to me.  So, more gaming than my pre-retirement self played.

Some photos from our Museum of Flight game convoy game.  British players chose from a variety of bombers to attack an Italian convoy shepherded by two large Cant 1007Z bombers as well as choices of MC 42 or MC 200 fighters.  In the first game the Brits pretty much had their way, but the second game was much closer, with British losses.  However they did torpedo the tanker in the convoy which exploded.

It was also a pretty productive month on the painting table, though I felt like I tried a whole lot of different stuff and wasted a fair amount of time being fairly aimless. Here is what I accomplished:

Aircraft:

These are Raiden’s splendid Beaufort bombers.  One of my favorite airplane miniatures. Unforunately they don’t make the Aussie version with powered dorsal turret.

• four P-40N’s in RAAF colors.  Scotia planes, I wrote about these.
• six Beaufort torpedo bombers in RAAF colors. Miniatures by Raiden.  More planes for Rabaul.  These are in Foliage Green with markings by Flight Deck decals.  Fun to paint and pretty darn easy
• Six Beaufighter attack planes in RAAF colors.  Miniatures by Scotia.  Foliage Green, decals by I-94. Again headed for Rabaul.  The first of my attempts at weathering.

Scotia’s very nice Beaufighter.  They are just nasty.  Aussies replaced wing-mounted 8 X .303’s with 4 X .50 machine guns.  Teamed up with the 4 X 20mm cannon in the nose equals some real firepower.

Philippines:

• 18 figures of bolomen for my Philippine project.  These were pretty easy to paint, and I enjoy painting them.  No rayadillo, mostly white, how tough can it be?

• 12 figures of irregular riflemen.  I limited myself to three figures with rayadillo, which will probably be my standard going forward.

Ships:

• One Dragon model of the HMS Zulu, a Tribal class destroyer.  Had an easier time building this than the Orwell, but struggled with the final colors.  Planned to do her as the HMS Eskimo, but just couldn’t get the gray on white paint scheme to work.  Note to self, use white primer next time.

Anti-aircraft

 

I acquired many, many little boxes of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, transport and radars from George Kettler and the Phil Bardsley estate.  What to do with them?  I’m not sure, but I definitely can’t do anything with them if they aren’t painted.  I’m not sure what these are, but I painted four of ’em and stuck ’em on leftover Litko bases.  It’s a start, but plan to see more of them. Some are clearly WWII  German, others are Soviet and intended for Vietnam.  In either case, pretty easy stuff to paint.

December will be a lot more focused.  I’ll have to have plans made for Enfilade as game registration will open in early January.  More about those plans in my next post, but they involve lots of painting.

On My Painting Table

28mm British Legion-These are Old Glory British Legion.  Not the best figures, but perfectly serviceable. They are a big chunk of the painting I need to do for my AWI Rebels and Patriots game I’ll be working on with David Sullivan.  I like these figures.  Different poses in the saddle, decent detail, and the price is right. Not so large I shouldn’t be able to jam two on a 50mm circular base. I need 18 of them for our scenario.  I actually have 30, but twelve of them will get a fresh re-paint job from a game I ran a decade ago.

1/300 A-4F Skyhawks-George passed on a pile of these to me a while back, and I truly appreciate it.  There were 18 humpy backed Skyhawks and I’ve decided to divide them equally between USMC and USN versions.  These are the later versions of the little attack plane that remained in service all the way through Desert Storm, and certainly fought off the North Vietnamese 1972 offensive. I’ll find something useful for them to do. The miniatures are from Scotia and NavWar/Heroics and Ros.  Decent miniatures. I’ve tried to equip them with ample drop tanks and bomb loads.  They’ll appear in light gull grey and white.

What I’m Listening To

I’ve really enjoyed having the two stereo systems so I can listen to music wherever I am.  Lots of great albums on the turntables, including The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Isley Brothers, The Grateful Dead and The Eagles. But I’ve really had a great time listening to a Roy Orbison anthology-The Monument Singles Collection 1960-1964.  This two LP set issued by Music On Vinyl has mono mixes of all the great Orbison songs from the early 60’s-“Pretty Woman,” “Crying,” “Blue Bayou,” and my favorite “In Dreams” are all there in heart-rending glory with Roy’s absolutely inimitable voice.

Generally not a big fan of anthologies and Orbison has a zillion of them.  But he is also one of those artists who profited from the sale of ’45’s and not so much from LP sales.  This is definitely the best of the lot.

 

 

 

Last of the Gunfighters

With the Concord grenadiers, I was able to get some time to do something–anything- different.  My go to is always some planes, so I reached in my box of many-unpainted-winged-objects and pulled out some F-8 Crusaders from Raiden.

These planes were given to me by George Kettler last year, and I really wanted to paint them for several reasons.  First they are are a sign of good faith to George that I truly appreciate his generosity.  There are many more to come, including some A-4F’s that are probably next on my agenda.

The Crusaders are also a down payment on my promise to paint planes for a Vietnam project.  I’ve changed my original intent to focus on just planes for Rolling Thunder (1965-68) to something more inclusive that will also include planes for the first Linebacker missions  (1972). What does that mean?  It means I can paint a wider variety of plane types for the both the Navy and the Air Force.  Of course that means painting more planes. Imagine that.

I already painted a handful of F-8’s for an earlier project-13 Days Goes Hot. The seven planes I painted this month were those I had.  I’d like to add one more to make an even eight.  I also decided I wanted to paint planes from the air wing of the U.S.S. Forrestal.  The late senator John McCain flew his A-4E from the deck of the Forrestal, and he was almost miraculously saved when he was caught in the middle of the infamous fire on that ship in 1967 that killed over 150 crewmen.

The Raiden Crusaders are among my favorite miniatures.  They are straight and very properly proportioned.  They do come with an annoying mold mark on the nose that must be filed or scraped off. But once that’s done, they are quite nice.

If I have a criticism of the model, it is that the canopy seems just a little too bubbly. Or, at least when I paint it, the canopy seems a a little too bubble shaped-not in a cartoonish way-instead of the sleek, nearly flat design I see in pictures.

I painted my planes in the standard navy dress of the mid-1960’s. The overall upper surfaces were painted with Testor’s acrylic Gull Gray.  I used two coats, well-stirred, to get it to largely eliminated brush strokes. I tried to use Testor’s acrylic gloss white on the control surfaces and underside, and I just couldn’t get a decent cover, even with multiple coats.  I decided, after two coats of each to spray with Dullcote, and went back over the white surfaces with your basic Ceramcoat white, and re-painted with Vallejo gloss varnish.

I painted the canopy Ceramcoat ivory.  No, not some form of light blue.  Sorry that’s who I am. If you see planes on a board with ivory colored canopies, you’ll know it’s my junk. Nose and canopy bindings are basic cheap-ass craft black.

I chose to do the VF-103 Sluggers, assigned to the Forrestal from 1960-65.  I chose it primarily because the arrow markings on the tail were angular and paint-able, though I still managed to mess it up on some of the models.  I used Vallejo Deep Yellow for the main color, and followed up with black edging.  The AJ is also hand-painted, again, with mixed success.  In 1965, the Crusaders were joined in VF-103 with F-4B Phantoms, so I have a template for painting them, down the road.

U.S. national markings, and Navy markings are by Beacon publications,manufactured and sold by I-94 Enterprises.

Unfortunately, my planned Forrestal template is a little haywire because CV-59 was assigned to the Mediterranean from 1960-65, and switched to the USS Saratoga the same year.  Oh, well.

Overall, however, I’m pretty happy with how the little minis turned out.

 

Super Sabers and more

I started preparing planes to paint while I worked through deadline week, and waited for my Aztec order from Eureka Miniatures USA.  As I stated in my last post, I am adding planes to my collection that could have participated in air action during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I have twenty planes altogether, including Navy fighters and attack planes, as well as Soviet piloted MiG-21’s.

I’m beginning with some F-100’s by Scotia Collectair.  They have a nice shape, but nothing special.  Very clean but not much scribing to work with so I have to paint in a lot of the detail.  I wouldn’t mind trying a couple of the Raiden minis, just by way of comparison. These are pretty easy work, with a base silver by Formula P-3.  The blue is Vallejo Prussian blue.  The paint scheme is loosely modeled on the 366th Tactical Fighter squadron from England Air Force Base in Louisiana.  However, by 1962, many of the USAF units are beginning to lose their fancy squadron insignia, according to my Squadron/Signal book on F-100’s.

Collectair F-100’s awaiting their full complement of decals. Fun, and relatively easy to paint. 

By 1962 there are still a fair number of Super Sabers in service, mostly as tactical fighters, i.e. fighter bombers, though that role is mostly being taken over by F-105B’s.  There was an incident over Cuba in November 1962, just after the missile crisis, in which F-104’s overflying the island were intercepted by MiG 21’s and were fired on, but no blood, no foul. So, the F-100’s have a role, but air superiority is clearly one they’ve passed on to other planes.

Oh look, a dozen U.S. Navy planes to finish by next weekend. Four each of F-8 Crusaders, F3H Demons, and A-4C Skyhawks.  Not difficult to paint, but lots of them. They’ve gotten their top coat of Light Gull Grey by Testors acrylic. 

This morning, Saturday, I saw Dave’s post that he has a plan for our Museum of Flight scenario for Sunday, November 6th. Yep that’s a week from tomorrow and it includes a fair number of planes I don’t currently have in my arsenal, so the Smyth aircraft production line is underway.  Thankfully there aren’t any evening school commitments for this week . I could have a busy day tomorrow (Sunday) but I think I can squeeze in a couple hours here and there for painting and plunking decals on the F-100s.  I’ve got 20 planes I’d like to have completed for the Museum game, including four MiG -21’s, so I’ll have to give it my best shot.  Will keep you posted.

Smyth Aircraft WIP pt. 2

So I’ve tucked in a couple of pictures of Bettys and Spitfires under construction.  As you can see, they are a bit further along.

The Spitfires are in their late 1941 camo, with medium gray and military green both by Vallejo.  I paint their cockpits a Ceramcoat Light Gray.  The next step is a bit tricky.

Spitfires after they’ve been scrubbed and detailed.  Hopefully you can see how the camo has been lightened a bit.  I’ll add a bit of hue to the super light areas.  Before the canopies have been detailed.

The best airplane painter of all time, period, the end is Paul Hannah. Some of you may know him from his work with DBA and breathing fun into a set of rules that on their face are not.  Paul was a stickler for a couple of things around painting wee planes.  He is the first who raised the issue of scale and brightness of color.  The smaller the scale of the plane, the lighter the color should be, lest the detail  or the subtlety of the color scheme be lost entirely. (Paul also used to beautifully hand paint all his markings, but ’nuff said about that-because that’s just crazy talk.)

That being the case, I decided not to actually lighten my color, feeling that to reproduced the tinted colors over and over again would be impossible I “scrubbed” both the Betty bombers and the Spits.  It’s sort of an intense version of dry brushing with less paint on the brush.  I use it with a very ratty Army Painter dry brush.  A little bit of white paint on the end and then scrub away. It’s super important that almost all the paint is off the brush, or you end up in repaint mode.  It has two effects: it definitely lightens whatever the paint is, and it also offers a bit of a “weathered” effect.

Betty bombers after they’ve been “scrubbed.” It really lightens up the dark IJN navy green.   Some planes have received their canopy work. The wing details on these Scotia models is not quite so busy as the Raiden Spitfires.

Then it is on to detailing. I always paint charcoal gray or black in the wing panels and the creases caused by control surfaces.  It just adds a bit more to the miniature.  I also do my best to paint the framing for the canopy or other plexiglas surfaces.  Just adds a bit more to the complexity of the miniature. Yes I use a small brush.  I have a 5/0 from Dick Blick I use only for this purpose, but I also have an Army Painter “insane detail” brush that is less expensive and will also make due.

I’ll be moving on to the light undersides and the yellow forward edge markings  next.  I’ll show off again when the planes are completed less their edge markings.

Music to Paint By. Story.  My only brush with rock royalty was in 1999 when my son Patrick, age 19, played with his high school band at the Ballard Firehouse.  His was one of two bands who opened for rock great Robin Trower. I was able to say hello to Trower, though I don’t think he ever actually acknowledged me. He impressed me as a small, very out of place Englishman who didn’t really fit in with his Ballard surroundings.

I don’t want to say I’m big fan of Robin Trower.  I do want to say that some of his music is absolutely unbelievable.  The sound he gets out of his guitar, the textures of sound he’s able to create are absolutely incredible–on Bridge of Sighs, his best known and, critically, best received work. I haven’t listened to a lot of his other records.  In City Dreams is quite good, and For Earth Below is okay.

When Pat and I were up at Georgetown records the other day, we were thumbing through the magical $3.00 bin and I spied Truce, a 1981 collaboration between Trower and former Cream bassist and vocalist Jack Bruce. I thought it might be an interesting combination of musical talents. Unfortunately, I couldn’t grab it, because, under the rules of the game we were playing it couldn’t be a band I knew or had in my collection and I had some Trower.

But on Friday, I zipped into Tacoma to pick up some record sleeves at High Voltage and dipped in to see if there was anything “I had to have.” We know this term in gaming don’t we? It so happened they had a copy of Truce and I had a 20% off coupon, so we were made for each other.

I took the record home and threw it on the turntable as I was painting Bettys.  I can’t call this a brilliant record or give it five stars, but it is really good.  It’s pretty stripped down blues based rock.  Trower gets to show off his chops as a great guitarist and Bruce fits right in, with some of his best work since Cream. It’s hard rock, not for the faint of heart, but it’s melodic and accessible, and a pleasure to listen.  There is no single track that stands out, but likewise, there is nothing trashy either.  The perfect record to paint your basic Tiger IE, or Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard.

Trower and Baker have one more collaboration with drummer Bill Lordan called BLT (oh how cute)  that has joined by wantlist, so one more record to look out for.

 

 

Smyth Air, LLD

In this some what blurry photo, there are Beaufort torpedo bombers in back with Spitfire Mk.V fighters, both by Raiden.  The Scotia Betty bombers are to the right.  All the planes in the Channel Dash scenario will have the same camo, and begin with Vallejo Neutral Gray with Vallejo Military Green over the top. Phase one has just begun.