Hello friends.
Breaking silence from a fairly busy final year of work in a new job. By final year, I mean retirement from the Canadian Forces in June 2020. , which I quite look forward to. By new job, well, I like it and it keeps my busy, so all good.
Not a lot of hobby time of late, but I have been on a bit of a model airplane kit. Not sure why. I built quite a few plastic kids as a kid, and it’s enjoyable to revisit that part of my past.
At least a decade ago, I bought an Airfix 1/72nd scale Typhoon for WW2 gaming. It was typical of the old Airfix kits, a few parts, poorly moulded, and not very interesting. I made a start on it, lost interest, and forgot about it. Found it last year, realized I had lost the clear plastic canopy, and took a chance on emailing Airfix customer service to see if I could get a replacement. Lo and behold they sent one in the post, free of charge, and that inspired me to finish the job.
A fairly simple paint job, and here it is, ready to make a brief appearance in a 20mm war-game as the scourge of some poor panzer.
Zoom zoom.
Typhoon on a stick. The stand is a fairly thick piece of dowel with a nail at the top, which inserts into the bottom of he fuselage. The bottom of the dowel is glued onto a base which is heavily weighted by a large metal washer. Works fairly well.
I enjoyed making this so much that I went out and bought another one, a fairly new release, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much quality Airfix has put into their products. The quality of the parts, the complexity of the model, the detail of the instructions and the options for assembly were all vastly improved over my old Typhoon kit.
Here’s the finished product in the decals and paint scheme of a Typhoon in a Canadian squadron in early 1945. I chose to make it with the landing gear down, which is always a tricky business for me, as the parts can be fiddly in the smaller scales and the strut assemblies sometimes lack strength to support the model. Here it worked fairly well.
The kit includes the possibility of opening the gun compartments, which appealed to me, even though it required some delicate surgery with a craft knife. That and the open canopy suggest that the pilot if waiting for the final check by his ground crew.
What does this have to do with wargaming? Nothing, really, but he will sit on a shelf behind my desk at work, and it gives me ridiculous amounts of pleasure to glance at it from time to time.
What have you made, not for gaming, but just for the pleasure of making it?