Wespe SPG with a coat of Winter whitewash

ESCI’s 1/72 Wespe kit. An original, not the recent Italeri re-release. Purchased at a Swap & Sell.

While some lucky AFVs received very solid, evenly applied Winter camouflage coats using air-compressed sprayguns (spraygun seen in use here) many had thinned out or poorly-mixed whitewash applied in varying fashiuons – often using ordinary brushes such as these gents do to their Tiger here, but using brooms and even dipping rags into the mixutre then smacking the rag against the vehicle was not unknown.

The whitewash often didn’t stay on for very long, either, leading to all sorts of streaking and fading. This is what I’ve tried to replicate in this kit.

Overall, this kit was pretty easy to assemble. The rack on the left side for holding jerrycans was not standard-issue, however…therefore if I do up a platoon, most won’t have that rack and they certainly won’t have the spare box that I added on the right.

 

Hasegawa’s Kettenkrad in 1/72

The Hasegawa Kettenkrad included in the “Schwimmwagen + Kettenkrad” 1/72 scale Minibox kit turns out pretty well, as you can see from the pictures above. You can also see three ESCI telegraph poles from their Diorama Accessories kit. Those telegraph poles are certainly better than the Fujimi ones! Much more detailed and realistic.

The Hasegawa Kettenkrad is only problematic when it comes to including the figures that are meant to be used with it. Two problems here: 1) You cannot get two blokes sitting on the back – realistically, they should be able to. I decided to go with just one passenger. Mine is packing an MG-34.    2) The fully assembled driver cannot be placed properly. I cut off much of his lower legs, trimmed & filed the stumps and his thighs and then he fitted on his seat and his posture looked mostly normal. Otherwise, it’s quick to assemble and looks pretty good.

You can read about what On the Way! has to say about Hasegawa here. In particular, Stephen Brezinski provides a comparison of Hasegawa’s Kettenkrad versus Academy’s Kettenkrad here.

Heat, trucks, guns and scenery

Still 4 weeks of Spring left, but today is the second day of over 30 degrees…in fact, looking at the MelbinYewni real time temperature graph, today got to just over 34! This means it’s time to think about doing lots of wargames terrain / wargames scenery, as there will be the heat to cure and dry everything thoroughly and promptly.

I’ve made a start: the three telegraph posts from an old ESCI Diorama Accessories set have been assembled, based and given some lumpy earth around their bases…ready now for painting.

I finished off a platoon of PaK 36 anti-tank guns with crews, plus that ICM Krupp truck, so that they wouldn’t bother me and so that “Operation Barbarossa” next year will be a reality. The PaK 36s are from Fujimi, the crews are the one worthwhile figure from the Fujimi set the gun comes in, a chap from the  Revell  Fallschirmjägers and one of the two ESCI / Italeri Sd. Kfz. 251/1 crew. Photos: .

Some more comments about the ICM Krupp L2H143 Kfz 70 kit…it turns out pretty well and looks great painted. I opted to have the MG 34 on a pintle mount in the rear tray option, to fit in with the Kubelwagen Type 82 which also had pintle-mounted MG34. I don’t like the decals that ICM provided for this kit, though. There is too much excess clear decal surrounding the rear number plate, and even drybrushing with Kommando Khaki as a coat of dust didn’t help…in fact it made it worse and drew attention to the excess. There was also far too much excess on the front number plate – which is meant to wrap around a front bumper bar which is probably only a milimetre wide. Stupid! It wrapped but wouldn’t glue. I know some modellers add a special glue under any decal they apply, but I don’t have that glue and don’t think it should be necessary. The front number plate decal’s glue didn’t hold and so the whole thing popped off during drybrushing. A shame. Sorry ICM, sorry Roden, but I’m not having much luck with your decals.

Now, Fujimi’s product is meant to be 1/76 scale, but it isn’t. Let me clarify…the house probably is, but the figures and PaK gun supplied with it are definitely 1/72 scale or even larger…possibly even 1/70 scale! Anyway, only one figure from that product is worth using with the anti-tank gun because the others are even worsely sculpted and moulded than the figures Hasegawa provide with their WWII AFVs. Hence why each PaK 36 base I’ve done has figures from other manufacturers to make up the two-man crews that Panzerfaust: Armored Fist requires.

Lastly – a couple of Battlefield Accessories wall sections (enough to make two simple houses) have been assembled and are being painted, along with a Faller German, Austrian or Swiss log cabin that I bought at a model railroad shop.

Oh, and there’s a Wespe and that other Kubelwagen still in Tankoberg…but I’m feeling the time is nigh to make a caulk creek / stream following the laws laid down by Nikolas Lloyd.

 

 

On the assembly line at Tankoberg…

…3 of Hasegawa’s 251/9 ‘Stummels’ and a vintage ESCI ‘Wespe’. The ‘Stummels” are continuing the fine detail and mostly easy-to-follow instructions of their other kits I’ve completed (except this time I forgot to drill some fine holes into the floor – I’ll rectify this by cutting off the pins on the relevenat pieces and glueing them flush to the floor, which ishow they would sit, anyway).

The ‘Wespe’ has old vinyl tracks (which it seems Italeri are oddly continuing to re-use in their re-releases, even when link-and-length tracks are better!) which has meant a lot of cyanoacrylate glue (and a bit of a headpin from the fumes), miniature clamps and clothes pegs to held everything in place during assembly. This certainly has dampened my interest in buying two of their Panzer II Ausf. Fs to complete a platoon of 5 with the three vintage ESCI ones I’ve acquired at Swap&Sells and get them all ready for a New Year 2010 ‘Operation Barbarossa’ game…I certainly won’t be hurrying to buy the re-released (by Italeri) Wespe to make up a platoon of 6…why can’t Italeri use the nice vinyl tracks Hasegawa has in their Sd. Kfz. 251 range of kits?

Still, everything is progressing well, all tracks glued well, with the Hasegawa ones even having some nice track sag (thanks to clever use of clothes pegs to hold them during the glueing).

 

Löwe on the streets

The Sd. Kfz 250/3 (an ESCI kit re-released by Italeri) that I’d been working on is finished, as is a house that I’d bought a couple of years back from Battlefield Accessories. Here they are together:

The light green flock on the wall was to simulate moss growing on the northern side of the building…but it’s a little too light in colour, I think. Should be a bit darker. Oh well, you don’t know until you try.

This house is a Ruined Building from the Battlefield Accessories range. Resin kits, simple to assemble and customise. Fairly good detail – except the interior could have used more effort, like window frames and door frames, which it lacks – so the interior is all flat with no detail. Mine has painted up pretty well – I painted it to match the railway station I did some time ago (see much earlier posts on this blog about the railway station).

‘Löwe’ was done with my home-made Dark Grey paint and features my first attempt at making my own air-recognition flag. The flag has turned out OK and I learned a lot doing it. I’ll save how I made it for another blog post but I’m keen to try other methods, like using tissues heavily doused with PVA glue and then painted.

This 250/3 Schutzenpanzerwagen was then given a heavy coat of dust, as I decided that it would represent a vehicle from Operation Barbarossa…and many vehicles on that campaign got very heavily coated with dust while on the march.

Here’s a few more pics of it:

You can see that I didn’t hesitate to make this a GrossDeutschland vehicle…how could I resist, when Italeri nicely provided me with a ’stahlhelm’ decal on their decal sheet?!

I’ve commenced painting the ICM Sd. Kfz 222, and it will look similar to the above as I’ve decided to paint it as a vehicle from the same campaign.

Something old, something new?

NEWSFLASH!

Italeri are re-releasing the old ESCI Pz.Kpfw II F & Wespe kits!  I’d been slowly accumulating these by purchasing them at Swap & Sells for the princely sum of $5 AUD per box. I have 3 already, now I won’t have to wait too long to have a platoon of 5 ready.

While I’m mentioning the Panzer II, ACE from the Ukraine have their Pz.Kpfw II C ready – have a gander here. It’s available from some vendors.

~~~

I’m working on the recon game AFVs. Two Pumas are being painted while a number of other vehicles are now being assembled in TankoBerg.

Not what it purports to be

The 250/3 is assembled – another Tankoberg production. Apart from those one-piece vinyl tracks, it was quick and straightforward (and twice those tracks have detached themselves from their glue and required more gluing and clamping…I sprayed the finished unit with more Chaos Black to hopefully seal and fix those tracks, as I’ve heard the same tactic used by another modeller (sparying one-piece tracks with spraycan products to fix/set them)). Even the overhead aerial arrangement turned out not to be so difficult or fiddly, holding and keeping a good shape.

My problem with it is that I then tried to position one of the three crew figures supplied in its cabin…and failed. He was far too big. I already had my suspicions when I looked at the bench for the radio operators in the cabin and decided it was a bit undersized, but now I’ve confirmed it. I’m not sure what scale the vehicle itself is – maybe 1/76? Maybe even a bit smaller? The crew figures are definitely 1/72.  A funker doing his job and using that bench would be sitting with his chin resting on his knees, it’s so low.The MG looks 1/72…perhaps it’s certain parts of the kit where, for simplicity, they made decisions that some features would be smaller? Thus,  the MG is 1/72 but the cabin is 1/80 or something?

This means I’m not going to put crew figures (there are three supplied with this Italeri kit) in it at all. Yay, I’ve got three figures as spares. Boo, I like open-top vehicles to have some crew figure/s involved – otherwise, on the wargames table, it looks like all these empty, crew-less vehicles are moving around under remote control.

One-piece vinyl tracks

…really are a pain. Italeri’s 250/3 kit is a direct re-release of the ESCI kit – they haven’t yet got rid of the one-piece vinyl tracks for this kit, as they have with a good number of other kits where you now get solid styrene “length and link” tracks. (Italeri, if you read this, could you please change over all your 1:72 kits to “length and link” tracks, please?)

I also did not follow the instructions for the kit, which recommend that you assemble the wheels and running gears and then glue the one-piece vinyl tracks on, before then glueing all this to the chassis of the vehicle. No, I went and assembled the wheels and running gears and glued them onto the chassis (and congratulated myself for the kit’s assembly moving forward so rapidly!) and then further compounded my error by glueing the mudguards on.

This meant that I wasgoing to have to try to slip, slide and fit the tracks on when everything else was already in place, which significantly reduces the space and room to try to achieve that.  Further, with the wheels and gears already attached to the chassis, getting the tracks in place requires more glue than normal and using lots of broken-up matchsticks and broken-up bamboo satay skewers to push, prop and hold everything into place – which is fiddly and often requires many attempts (plus foul language) until success. If I had instead assembled the wheels and running gears and then glued on the tracks as per the instructions, I could have much more easily and simply clamped the vinyl tracks in place using bulldog clips or clothes pegs – thus saving time, breath and glue.

The kit looks nice, so far. Another blog entry very soon – I have a dispute with the instructions to discuss.

Ends of the roads

The roads are good to go…or be driven on…most importantly, ready for gaming. The colours have come up relatively well and using ‘Ardcoat for water or liquid effects has been suitable.

Here’s a first view, of the roads in action:

…and stupidly, I chose to use two vehicles without any mud on them! The schwimmwagen is far too clean (it was painted to represent having just come out of a water crossing) and the Sd. Kfz 11 was painted up with a heavy dust coat, as if it was mid-Summer! Oh well.

This next photo was to try to show the sparingly-used ‘Ardcoat to represent water and differentiate it from mud, which was such a feature of roads on the Eastern Front:

I mentioned that I had used Kayak Brown, then a mix of Kayak Brown with Vermin Brown, plain Kayak Brown and then ‘Ardcoat for water. This last shot is to show a section of muddy road without any ‘Ardcoat, so you can get an idea of the differences in colour.

The ‘Ardcoat was a cause for much nervous nail-biting on Thursday , Friday and Saturday. The ‘Ardcoat was not the newest – I think I had it for two years and what’s more, it was kept in a room that can get over 50 degrees centigrade on a hot day. It was applied well shaken, but towards the end of the pot, was getting stickier and toffee-like,  unlike its normal watery consistency.

The nail-biting commenced when I realised that the thickly-applied sections of ‘Ardcoat (where it was perhaps 2-3mm thick, filling puddles and pot holes) was still a bit milky in colour a good 24 hours after application. I went and bought more ‘Ardcoat and Chestnut Ink in case I had to re-do all of it, but decided to give it more time to cure/dry. 48 more hours (and Melbourne’s hottest day on record, 46.2 degrees) did the job – all the milkiness disappeared and I was left with crystal clear gloss.

So, even with older ‘Ardcoat that goes on a bit milky or cloudy, just give it plenty of curing/drying time – like the better part of a week.

On a related note, we’ve had the worst bushfires ever as a result of the incredible heatwave. Please give some money to:

Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009

Inspecting the troops

In an earlier post, I expressed my interest in a new 1/72 scale set by Caeser Miniatures, WW2 German Panzergrenadiers set 1. Clicking on the link shows you the box art as well as a photo of the poses included.

I ordered two boxes of these figures and have had a good look at them since they have arrived. Here are my thoughts about them, both as miniatures in general and as miniatures for wargaming.

This set of figures is usable and workable with fairly good sculpting. I have very little exposure to their other figures, apart from what I’ve seen and read over at Plastic Soldier Review. I have bought and used Caesar’s now-discontinued WW2 German Infantry in Winter Gear, and consider that a superior set to this.

There are three things that I feel could have been re-done with this set. Firstly, the rifles in this kit are thin. Very thin. I found a number of them were bent, probably incurred during transit. They may be a little more realistic in dimensions to those from the Winter Gear set, but I think in the moulding something has been lost…at this scale, I think figures need slight exaggeration so that what they represent is clearly grasped, especially from a distance. I think that I’ll find painting these rifles much harder than those carried by the Winter Gear set!

Secondly, some of the poses have extra flashing/moulding that cannot be removed, and was not present in the Winter Gear set. The soldier standing and firing his MP-40 from the shoulder has extra moulding approximately 2mm thick between his gun and his arm – in the “crook” of his arm. The soldier stalking forward with his MP-40 has the same excess plastic. A shame, because this wasn’t present in the Winter Gear set. The space was empty between their arm and their weapon, so you could slide a toothpick or paintbrush between them. With this set, you’ve got this extra stuff just sitting there, looking a bit unnatural. This extra plastic is going to have to be somehow “hidden” by painting – perhaps painting the excess plastic with black…. This may be a moulding limitation, but I’m not sure why it would be if they were able to avoid this in a previous set.

Thirdly, everyone is wearing the same type of boots – and they seem to be mid-thigh boots. I thought that by that time (1943-1945) they were wearing ankle-high boots with gaiters?

Let me discuss the poses – you can see these in the photo over at Caeser Miniatures’ Australian website (use the first link in this article). There are 12 of them. Of the twelve, only 3 are firing a weapon. Two are throwing grenades. Discount one who is an Officer commanding his troops – that leaves 6 whom are doing something else.

The chap kneeling and waiting with his MP-40 (maybe in ambush?) is for me the highlight figure of the whole set. It’s a very natural pose and very useful for wargaming.
The chap mentioned earlier, stalking forward with his MP-40, is almost the same pose from a figure in the Winter Gear set. Well done, but not too original…some sort of variation in stance – perhaps running rather than walking but still with his gun in a similar position would have been nicer? Pressing forward the advantage?
The chap kneeling and waiting with his rifle is well done – another natural pose and another useful one for wargaming, rather than someone running forward with a rifle.
The officer is holding an MP-40, wearing a helmet and pointing forward and upward – in a general sort of direction. Perhaps he’s bellowing out someone about which direction the enemy is in? I think this sort of pose is much more useful than the older / more traditional one where the officer is looking through his binoculars, or just holding a pistol.
There are two grenade-throwing poses. One is carrying his rifle in his other hand and is using it as a counterweight as he throws his grenade. This is a pose that we’ve seen before, but it’s nicely done here. The other looks as if he has just pulled the primer – he hasn’t brought his throwing arm back yet and his other hand is empty. Of the 3 copies of this pose in one box, the grenade warheads had broken off in transit – a shame. Why a shame? Because the grenades here are certainly more to scale than in the Winter Gear set which I felt were over-exaggerated. Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far to the other side and now they are too flimsy?
There are two firing their rifles – one standing, one kneeling. While they look fine, they don’t look too worried about any return fire – perhaps they are at a firing range? They look too casual. They aren’t even leaning forward on their left foot as they shoot, which would provide more balance – the ESCI/Italeri German Infantry figure is better and more realistic in that regard.

The chap firing his MP-40 from the shoulder (mentioned earlier) IS leaning forward on his front foot – which makes me wonder which pose was done first and why was consistency forgotten?
There is a chap holding an MP-40, slightly crouching (or at least he’s partially bent his knees) and looking to the side, as if he’s listening to instructions and then will race off to carry them out. Another good, natural pose – but not useful enough to warrant 4 of them, in my opinion. Still, better than just standing and holding is MP-40 in a forgettable or non-combat way.
The second-last pose to mention is a chap holding his rifle diagonally across his chest while his attention is focussed on something else. I recall this sort of pose, but rendered as if the troops held their rifles like that while they ran or jogged forward into battle. (Maybe they were US Infantry by Airfix? Russian Infantry by Airfix?) I think that for a set like this, where the troops were fighting desperately, that he could have been doing something different.
The last chap is holding his rifle horizontally across his waist while he looks to the left. Natural, and more useful than the previous pose.

All seem to have the exact same kit (breadbag, entrenching tool etc.) and overall the sculpting is of good quality.

Something that struck me about this set after thirty minutes of examining them is that no-one is carrying or using: MG-34/42s, Panzerfausts, flamethrowers, radios or anything else. Perhaps they will surface in Panzergrenadiers Set 2? They are sorely needed for this set of troops and time-period…