Hi Tony - just recently found out about this site, so I've been enjoying the forums and working my way through all the posts. When I saw yours I immediately recognized it as the dio I'd seen at Nanton.

It was a whirlwind day and when they finally took down the judging ropes and let everyone in I never got to spend all the time I would have wanted looking at the 600+ models on display.

A great show, that's for sure.

You did a great job I have to say, and I had no idea of the work that went into the project. Congrats on your well-deserved award.

tony this is great

the windmill is fantastic
is there a particular group your kingtiger and fallschmajer ( if spelt right ) are attatched to
the canister the officer has pullin the map out how did you go about that??

great work


tony

Wow, just wow. This is a great dio, especcially for a first! The whole scene just screams Italy to me.. so your title is well chosen! I am looking forward to more of your work!

Thomas

Unless he changed the title of the piece I think you need to do a little geography Thomas

Alan: the title is 'This isn't the Ardennes' isn't it? So that means it could be Italy.. Amiright?

Congratulations on the well deserved recognition received here and at the show. Your diorama is very unique and interesting.
Thanks for the venue photos. That looks like a great museum and excellent model show.

Cheers,
Charles

Hi

The title of the thread is "Ardennes tower mill diorama" and several people early on, including myself, commented on the fact of a Windmill would be very rare if simply not at all located in the Ardennes despite it being an excellent diorama.

It seems buried in the various posts Tony decided to change the title of the piece to as you say "This isn't the Ardennes" so you are right, that's what the title of the piece is now, I stand corrected on the dio's title as it is now.

As for it being Italy......nope, King Tigers didn't fight there to my knowledge But they did as I understand it, fight in Holland .... where you get lots of Windmills as you from your details will know

No offence, only a bit of fun.

The JU52 pilot would need a good kicking if he'd managed to cock it up so badly he'd dropped them in Holland or Italy if the drop zone was to have been the Ardennes.

Alan

Hi Alan,
No offence taken..! :-) It's true that there are a lot of windmills over her but they usually look a bit different.. But that's a whole other discussion!

As said, great dio!

Again, I’d like to thank you all for the nice comments.

James, about three quarters of the museum was set-up with tables and the far hangar was also full of vendor displays. Like Howard commented, there were just too many models to see in one day. I wish I had spent more time talking with some of the other modelers on techniques. I was awestruck seeing the models on display and the quality of workmanship.
The enthusiasm with the 604 Moose Squadron Air Cadets at the show was great and the Army even showed up with some military vehicles outside.

Anthony, the King Tiger 104 is from 1st Company.

http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/uu328/skortch/tig2s_2.jpg?t=1252373620

I can’t say much about the Dragon Fallschirmjagers other than they came with the kit and that they sure love their smokes. My idea was that the Fallschirmjagers were leading this tiger and hanging together when coming upon the Observation crew at the tower mill. How they might have got there? Well, I just don’t know. So I’m going with Alan’s theory and claiming the JU52 pilot was drunk. 'And was probably smoking as well.

When I started this 3 years ago, I was thinking at that time that there really was towermills in the neighborhood between the Rheinland and the Ardennes.

I never threw in a box art picture yet. You can see how easy it was to adjust the Tamiya Officer for pulling out the map.
http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/uu328/skortch/DioBoxArt.jpg?t=1252373768

Thanks for noticing the map case as it ended up being one of the premier components of this dio.
I made the map canister from a protective plastic tube from a paint brush and a little putty on the end. I painted it with oils to look like a leather finish then put a sling on it like a rifle with a swivel. For what it was worth, I actually tried to find a map of Belgium area and printed it to small scale. It might have looked better if I tried drawing the map.

Alan, Thomas, thanks for the discussion. You both summed this up pretty good.
Believe me, I tried hard to find a way out of this dilemma of location versus mill. The controversy kept things interesting to say the least. I wanted to keep it all together and figured the name of this thread should stay but the dio title had to change as Alan has noted. The only logical place that I can think of for this dio is off north to Holland.
I might have even lost some sleep before coming up with the idea of the officer & map explaining that these guys are lost.