Yeah, come on, Phill! You're our fearless leader. We're counting on you.
I think they could be sitting on tall benches. If they were standing, they'd quickly lose their balance on a bump or quick start and fall like dominoes. By my count, there are 11 rows of 4 soldaten. Do you have 44 sitting German soldiers in your stash?
-Sean H.

Sean ... ummm 44 ?? no ,,not sure how many i have but i know for damn sure its no where near 44 won't be any men in this ..well maybe a driver but nothing else .. i'll load it up with some cargo if i can find enough ,most of the cargo has already got a home to go to and i cant do much to change that ..but you guys know me ..i'll come up with something

Phill

Hi Phill,
I like Bob's idea of the Mobile Field Bordello, but I think you'd want something with softer springs than a tank chassis. You may have to settle for a load of cabbages.
Cheers,
Dick

Dick .. i quite like cabbage ,,I will bet that they used these for more than just hauling men around so ya cargo would be a good second choice and hell i would even use this to haul timber instead of moving it by hand .
Besides i want this to be a easy build so the easier i make it the easier it is ,,strange how that works huh ??

Phill

I agree. Besides think of the enjoyment of painting 44 half naked women, a LOT more than 44 soldiers.
Sorry Phil, I just decided to get in on the ball-breaking.

Have a good one,
Gene

The Return of the Incredible Flying/Bouncing Tank!!



Yes, here it is.... really not all that worse for the experience of flying and bouncing.... they sure make tanks tough don't they? The little white area inside the yellow circle is the repair for the actual physical damage it sustained.... that and a bit of paint chipping.

I want you to notice the tread. That is the exact same tank tread that lead to the vehicle learning to fly. It took a few days to put it on, the last few links at one a day, but it is there. Now to mud up the seams where things didn't go together just right.

Bob

Gene ,, you can shut up too matey ,, things have come to a grinding halt with this little project ,, the tracks are so bad that i am having to save up some cash to get replacement tracks for it . the originals are so bad its not funny , they have been binned .

Bob ,,that flying tank is looking pretty good man even after its rather uncontrolled attempt at flight , once weathered it should pretty damn sweet ,,looking forward to the end result .

Phill

Easy Gene. There's only one, errr ... maybe 2 comedians on-board here and us Hoosiers are not it.









~ Jeff

THE END OF THE INCREDIBLE FLYING TANK!

Hi all,

No, the end I am talking about is not that it went flying again..... only that it is, for all intents and purposes done, completed, finished, over with, --30--, fini....




Gee, you can hardly tell that this is the track that gave me all the problems, and caused me to give the tank a flying lesson. You can see my playing with ground up pastel chalk.... fixed on with a wash of alcohol. I need to practice more, but if I had messed with it much more it might have had another flight.



A....
Here is my marker light on a spring. Well, that is what it is supposed to represent, would have been better if I had found some thin spring steel to make the spring from rather than having to wind it around a bit of clear sprue....

B....
Here is the rear of the vehicle, showing the muffler. Normally everyone shows mufflers rusted over, however, I think that considering the time and use of this vehicle it would be different. After all, it was a training vehicle in peacetime.... and sargents, of any country, love to have you clean and paint. So I am thinking that paint chips would be touched up quickly and that if you really screwed up they might just have you wire brush and paint the muffler...

C....
Here is the other side of the vehicle.. Odd looking little thing, but overall kind of a fun build until I got to the tracks.

Later all.....

Very nicely done Bob ,,after all the trouble the tracks gave you they turned out very nice .. still i know what you mean tho ..just plain had enough and with some projects you just want to bin them ,,glad you didnt ..its very cool man

Phill

Phill,

Thanks for the comments.... yeah, this one escaped being binned several times, how I don't know but it did. So, I think I might dig up that Roland that gave me so much trouble and poke around with it for a while.

Bob

Excellent finish, Bob! Lots of nifty detail on that guy.
Cheers!
-Sean H.

Thanks Sean....

Hi all.... Anyone need any scrap metal?

http://paul-itk.livejournal.com/9681.html

Hi Bob,
Your tank looks a lot like a tinplate wind-up toy tank I had when I was a kid, except that my tank had a rotating turret and lacked road wheels. The camouflage paint was quite similar. The clockwork motor would move it 8 or 10 feet on its rubber tracks, and there was a spark wheel which shot sparks from a machine gun in the bow. The gun in the turret had a spring, and you could load it with small wooden projectiles and shoot them a fair distance. We discovered that it would also shoot firecrackers, and everything went well until one day we had one stick in the barrel. Split the tube wide open and did serious damage to the turret, but it was fun while it lasted.
Cheers
Dick

HELLO what happened here did you guys all forget about all those strange and weird builds that everyone had going there has been no action here in weeks and I was so looking forward to seeing all of these freaky projects

Sal ,, Oh we out there dude ,,since this thing runs for a year there is plenty of time and then some .
I'm still farting around with campaigns and i know all this trouble is my own doing but hell its fun ,,guess i ain't ever gonna learn .


Phill

Ditto,
Sean.

Well this was going to be a quick and simple build a M113 fitted with the turret of a M8 Greyhound armoured car as used by the ARVN.







But in the words of that great poet “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft agley,”


:| The driver's hatch can't fully open because of the turret, so back to the trusty hobby knife, glue and filler and move the turret stage right.





A few more details to add and then on with the painting.

Cheers
David

David ,, Mate i seriously like that ..its gonna look brilliant ,,i am quite surprised i don't have any pics of that ..gonna have to change that i think


Phill

Good process David....

Hey Everybody, Finally have some time to at least consider working on a kit.
Interesting stuff in here so far.
Bob, A interesting idea with your flying tank. The thing that made me drool was the scrapyard. Parked 'em with Blazer Blocks and all. That would be a paradise for me to rebuild a few good ones from there and have fun with them. Nothing like a 1/1 scale working model!
David, that's a slick idea. I've never seen the M 8/113 before.
Phil, I have to agree with everyone else to egg you on. The transport/trailer thing would be a very unique piece.

I'm gong to build Trumpeters Heuschrecke. Ran across one on Ebay and picked it up for $15 including shipping. Looks like a nice kit straight from the box and came with 2 nicely done sets of the wrong type of tracks. The amount of time the Germans spent designing this was definitely a plus for the Allies. The more I look at it the more stupid the idea becomes.
Anyway, I'll build it for Berlin in '45. It's plausible that one might/could have been there and I see a very good way to camoflage it for urban combat.

Ok, so y'all want to talk about flying tanks, how about a flying jeep...

This is the Piasecki VZ-8P airjeep

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SERvwWALOM
they did "fly" a prototype in the 50s but the idea never really caught on.

This kit by GLENCOE looked really interesting in the catalogue so I figured I'd build something completely different.
Great Idea, rotten kit


Yep, if you look closely you'll see all the steps in the assembly. FOUR


assembly took no more than an hour. The kit claims to be 1/35th but the windscreen and included troops (which are sooo bad that I've banished them to the back of the spares drawer) make this kit look more like 1/32ish.


I haven't done enough research on the Airjeep to see if this kit is of a proposed militarized version to follow the prototype shown in the video above.

Personally, after I finish painting this up I may take it over to the 'End of Days' campaign and add on a few rocket launchers and a brace of machineguns and give it to a recon patrol looking for zombies, after it runs out of ammo it could always just hover, real low over them.

Greetings fellow lovers of the Strange and Weird military vehicles that is.

Here it is, a M113 fitted with the turret from a M8 Armoured Car. It was one of a number of different attempts by the ARVN to increase the fire-power of the M113.

Firstly, the only known photo of the vehicle that I know of.

US Army SC636789

Now for my interpretation,











cheers
David

Nice work, David. That's an excellent addition to the campaign! I can't wait to get into it myself. You've set the bar high!
-Sean H.

Is this kit acceptable to the campaign?

Thanks,
Tom