Holiday Time

I've just got back from a much needed holiday and had a great time doing absolutely nothing! As usual my destination of choice was the beautiful island of Zakynthos where the sun is hot, the beer is ice cold and the food is awesome.  

A great time was had by all and I'm now ready to crack on with some more bench time as I really must get the AS90's finished soon.

IPMS Salisbury Show Report

Today I was at IPMS Salisbury's annual show held as usual at Laverstock just on the edge of the city. Myself and Brian Stoddart in our guise of "Stonehenge Modellers" were set up and ready for the show in record time even with a slightly longer walk with all the kit from the car this year. We even had time for a quick look around before the public was admitted. 

As usual for us we were busy from the start with lots of interest in Brian's latest AMX 13, no it's not the latest Takom offering but the ancient Heller one! Quite a few people thought it was the Takom kit & they were all very surprised when told it was not. My AS 90's went as WIP and it was nice to talk to a chap who actually worked on them and even more bizarrely 24KK42. What are the odds of that? 

It was also great to meet a few people who follow this blog, especially the guy who was building a Chieftain mk9 and showed me some pictures of his scratch built drivers compartment. Very impressive indeed, I just wish I had asked his name! Dick and Chris from modelworx were also in attendance and at one stage we were ousted from behind the tables as they took up residence! Much banter and hilarity were the order of the day as well as watching Chris increase his stash in double quick time!

Looking around the displays there was plenty to keep you interested and plenty of tempting items from the traders. The competition this year whilst having some outstanding entries seemed a bit sparse. With only a few entries per class and none in the juniors section. Perhaps this is just a phase as almost all shows I have been to lately have a lot less entries in the comps.

Again another cracking day this is always a great show to visit. Thanks to IPMS Salisbury for the invite and a smashing day out.

A dodgy pair of buggers behind our table!

My VERY restrained stash additions,

   

Takom Iranian Chieftain Build In Print

For those of you interested my Takom Iranian Chieftain appears in the June issue of Military Illustrated Modeller this month. You'll find a full build up article plus plenty of pictures if you are so inclined.

So that's two months with articles published & I must say I'm pretty chuffed! I just hope that they inform and inspire others to have a go or learn something new to try.

AS90 Decals

 Decals are now all done and here I used the kit ones for the Bowman model, slightly changing the reg number. For the BATUS model I had to use some spare decals which I cobbled together for the tac markings then finished off with kit decals for the reg numbers and union flag. All settled down nicely with daco medium decal solution.

AS90 Detail Painting & Gloss

After a few days painting all the small details and painting the black camo pattern the models have now been gloss varnished and are ready to receive decals. Once that's done some very light wear will be added before the washes and filters go on.

AS90 Further Improvments

I had resigned myself to not having the loader station machine guns fitted due to the over scale and oversimplified items provided in the kits. However most of my references do show that this is normally fitted so I decided that I'd better sort out some replacements. A quick email to Accurate Armour and a nice email back from Derek Hansen confirmed that they would happily provide me with a couple from their AS90 update sets for a reasonable price. 

The guns arrived quickly and I've now cleaned them up and fitted a couple of carry handles. They are much better than the kit items and will make a big difference to the final look of the models. Of course I could have scratch built the mounts and used some aftermarket machine guns but I wanted a quick and easy fix. Plus I'm basically lazy! 

So now I can tackle the rather big task of painting up all the road wheels and detail parts.