F is for Flying Jeep, H is for Hafner, M is for Malcom, R is for Rotabuggy

Brian Berke, roving reporter in NY, sent me these a month or so ago, and they got put on hold because of Rack Toy Month (and everything else he'd sent the blog), and the fact that I needed to play a bit of catch-up with the queue, but it's a fascinating thing, which nearly 'happened', and was performing well in tests, when it was pulled, purely due to advancements in Allied glider capacity/abilities.

 

The R. Malcom & Co's., M. L. 10/42 'Hafner' Rotachute-Rotabuggy, Flying Jeep, it's a Jeep . . . wot flu!

 

Utilising the New Ray Jeep, itself a nice model I haven't tracked down yet (well, I'm miles behind with larger scale vehicles, and they aren't a priority!), Brian has built a model of the Hafner Jeep for his troops, and above is the work-in-progress shot, showing how he went about it.

 

Basically Brian seems to have used a stiff paper or card, over a plastic frame, and when I was a modeller, I often used tissue paper for vehicle tilts/canopies - after a couple of coats of Humbrol they became quite robust, if you use a stiffer paper - a bit of Basildon Bond or something - you're laughing, it's as good as plastic sheet. Also, some people now wash the paper with super-glue to get even more plastic-like rigidity.

 

Finished and posed with the Lone Star paratroopers, who seem perfectly suited to the task, it really looks the part, for more on this machine, there's always Wikipedia:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafner_Rotabuggy

 

Strangely I have a memory of seeing this in the Airborne Forces Museum, at Browning Barracks in Aldershot as a kid, but if the only one (at Middle Wallop) is a 1980's mock-up, I must be imagining it, because I'm thinking of '71/72? There was a long series of cabinets along the window side of the museum as you entered, which contained models made by the modelling club of Depot Para', and it's likely there was a model of this there maybe? But I have a - presumably false - memory of one, out on the parade ground with the air-portable Land Rover on Hercules pallet, and the similarly bound Humber Hornet with Malkara missiles, which were parked near the main-road past the barracks.

 

Fiddler's Green, a name we've seen here before, also offer an all card model:

 

http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/aircraft/Flying-Jeep.html

 

It looks more like a mini-moke, but it's a bit of fun. And, to be honest, their page (scroll down) is better than Wikipedia's for imagery and history! And it didn't fail, it wasn't unsuccessful, it was working, when it was pulled, because it was easier to land a jeep with its gun, from a glider, without a big hollow tail attached!

 

Funny how people get all excited about things like the German Maus, a monumental waste of time, money and material, while we were towing people down the runway in these! I hope all that window area was plexiglass, not real glass, you wouldn't want to fly hot into a war-zone with all that glass, 12-inches from your face?

Many thanks to Brian for the shots of this fascinating scratch-build.

R is for Radiobird is No-Go!

I know, I'll get me coat, but not before I've blurbed this up! These have - with the exception of the evilBay image - been in Picasa since 2011, when I ran out of steam halfway through a project which hasn't gone any further, but they need to go, so they may give someone else an idea, and we can always return to it of I ever have the time and space to finish it off!

 

The KY-branded novelty USAF Rocket Radio out of Hong Kong is not actually particularly rare (there are about four on feeBay today, including two, boxed and working), and would have been the sort of thing piled high in the old electrical shops or Woolworth's when I were't lad!

I picked up a non-working, severely sun-discoloured one at Sandown Park in the March of 2011, and set out to 'do something' with it, and I wasn't sure (still 'aint!) whether that would be scratch-build a more accurate Thunderbird 1, it being the basis of the knock-off, or produce something less like the original, and, perhaps, more sci-fi/pulp'y.

 

To which end I stripped out the dead radio, wiring, battery componants and et cetera, removed all the stickers and filed-off all the paint with a very-fine, flat-profile, steel, rat-tailed file.

I then glued everything together, filled the screw-holes, and sanded, fettled, filled, de-seamed and smoothed everything until it was a single piece. The two dial/button holes hadn't been done when these shots were taken and would have been part of the next phases shots!

 

The swing-wings being non-functional, there was no need for a continued gap between the two fuselage halves, while once the battery compartment had been emptied the nose-cone could be glued-on, and filled clean and neat!

 

I also still had to remove the two raised chevron lines on the wings. And the chrome was lifted with neat TFR (traffic film remover). At which point it all ground to a halt for reasons which never got explained here, by order of the tribunal judge, such are the nature of NDA's, but I won, sort of!

 

However, it's still around, somewhere in the stash, and the question remains, do I try to reproduce the eight winglets, by making a single moulding (jet fighter tail plane or wing tip from the spares zone?), casting eight identical copies and trying to line them all up nicely to get a half-decent T1, or do I somehow remove the four silly boxes and fill in the holes (not so easy to match all that moulding), try to fair them into the fuselage, or extend them down as four pulp-era 'flying buttress' landing legs? They - the last option, usually being depicted as tripods, not four-ways.

 

Shot on the old swivel-chair by the computer, I recognise the fabric! I rather miss it as it was quite comfortable, but it did fall apart in the end, and even nostalgia has to be let go eventually; nothing lasts forever. And the glare off the chrome engine reminds me, that camera (the second Fuji Finepix - never had another) was failing around March 2011, I got through the year borrowing Giles's little pocket thing!

News, Views Etc . . . more Giant and 6H-4!

I've posted a quickie over on the 'But is it Giant' Blog, not quite as complete as I'd like, as I've mislaid one of the samples! However, with a few links to previous posts here at Small Scale World, I've cobbled-together a post on  . . .

. . . the defence works of Giant, with the closer copies - there's tons else in other scales!

As there is an additional (to the above screencap) mention of Dragons' Teeth at the end of the post, I've used it as a thin excuse for a barley credible segue to another of Hugh's Handy Helpful Home Hobby Hints - No.4 no less!

Dragons' Teeth

Needed:

• ·         1x diamond-corrugated meat (or fish) pack from your local supermarket, corner shop, convenience store or Eastern import emporium!
• ·         1x washing-up liquid
• ·         1x washing-up brush
• ·         1x burst of elbow-grease
• ·         A pair of scissors or a craft-knife 

Instructions:

• ·         Eat, or otherwise dispose of the meat . . . or fish!
• ·         Clean the packaging
• ·         Dry the packaging
• ·         Cut the diamond-corrugated section away from the rest of the packaging
• ·         Et viola!

Obviously you can then cut them into blocks or strips, or to fit round the corners of bunkers or ends of bridges &etc. I weight mine with blobs of Plasticine in the hollow underside before painting, but two-part epoxy might work, or basing will keep them firmer, you might also use the sheet to mass-produce plaster versions?

The example above produces slightly short, flat Dragons' Teeth (but big enough to 'ground' AFV's in 20mm, 1:76^th, 1:72^nd and 28mm war-gaming scales/sizes), but different food packers use different designs so there are others out there, these were found in a Polish/Turkish deli' (yes - of course Brwreakshit was a nonsense, but we're stuck with its bigotry for a while now!) a month or so ago, but I first made some in around 1980, which look almost the same!

P is for Pending

Also on the worktop are a number of artillery projects, I seem to have more guns than a greedy person, but they do tend to accompany large lots, usually in a beat-up state, hence the first pic...

Bags of guns, trailers and limbers waiting for the day they see a fresh coat of paint or replacement draw-bar, or get re-acquainted with their own wheels! Somewhere (bottom centre) is the US 105 M'whatever that came with the Aurora Skycrane, it ONLY needs painting!

Er...does this need a comment, representing as it does both greed (4 x 88's?) and tardiness (all still in pieces 15 years after they came into the fold...). Not to mention the fact that a set of wheels have been stolen for an overworked Opel's trailer!

This was (is still to be?) a BMSS entry, I built the sled in a one-evening burst about 4 years ago, while under the effects of a flash of inspiration brought on by a third reading of The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sejure, and his description of a 'left-behind' ad-hoc battle group, during the retreat from Russia. Slowed a bit after hand carving the horse trace spacers (what are they called???!) and having to actually ORDER two suitable horses (Hinchliffe I think...I sanded the bases!) and then put it on the medium back-burner.

Super-detailing the Esci Flak.36 came in another flurry, the same night I made all the magazines for this and a half-track project (lost somewhere, but visible - damaged - in some of the Tudor Rose/Spencer Smith posts), after which; Nothing. Well I've thrown the odd figure in the bag from time to time and a horse who's not got a job to do yet, nor a rider!

The plan is to have this one side of a frozen muddy road with the guys all looking up at the guy thumbing his helmet ring (ooh, matron!) in the Sd.Kfz 250 I shot in the snow last winter (see posts passim) as he whizzes past to safety, leaving this lot jammed in the wreckage of defeat, the other horse pulling a small sled with casualties, lots of dead horses, frozen bodies, empty ammo boxes, shell cases etc. Problem being...if I'm going to do lots of snow-stuff why don't I finish my Battle Of Hoth project...8 years and counting...haven't finished cutting it out yet... AAAAHHHHHHHHH!

H is for Half-track

My Artillery tractors lined up, it's a poor photograph I'm afraid. The gun on the left is actually the Matchbox Pak.40, but it was such a simple model next to the others, I gave it a curved shield to make it look more like a Pak.38 with the 50cm barrel.

This is supposed to be a Sd.Kfz10, smaller of the workhorse family, I converted it from the Matchbox Sd.Kfz.11 which was as awful as the gun it accompanied! It was not the most successful of conversions and the bonnet is all wrong, but at the time I was looking to produce war-games vehicles and it 'looked' right. The Nebelwerfer is the Esci one with a canvas weather cover made from tissue, and a battery number painted after a photograph in - I think - Panzer Colours.

In order to escape from the problem of building an interior I couldn't find good images of, I carved a piece of balsa until it fitted snugly against the windscreen and body sides, overlaid Evergreen round section strips as a tilt frame and covered the whole thing in tissue. The flexible PVC windows were represented by squares of draughtsman's paper with the pull-down folds drawn in in faint pencil.

This is the late-war einheits cab/'pick-up' truck variant of the Sd.Kfz.11, based on the Esci kit, and in some respects as amateurish as the previous one, however, in my defence - I only had a fuzzy black & white photograph on the instruction sheet to guide me. There are now some very good pictures of this variant on the Internet. Cab is scratch-built from the bonnet back to represent the 'einheits' wooden cab.

The Esci Kfz.11 straight from the box, note how it can't pull it's own gun properly as the gun is configured for firing only! Compare with the previous image which includes the Fujimi gun, which is configured for travelling. Airfix also made a Pak.40, and the three are all well detailed and about the same size, unlike the Matchbox pixie-gun.