Work in Progress and Personal News

First off, my current employment project is ending tomorrow and I am to drive back from South Carolina to finally go back home after 14 months of working here. So, this weekend is my packing up and cleaning up the apartment to end my lease for Monday morning. As of now, I am drive back on Monday and Tuesday and charge my time to this job, but I have no word to where I am to report on Wednesday or where and when is my next project...if there is one. Since I my employment and relocation is up in the air, this maybe the last entry for a while. I will not unpack most of my stuff when I get home as I might be told to leave at the end of weekend to lord knows here, or if I am required to use up some of my vacation time while waiting for an assignment, or the other option. Ah, the life of a migrant worker!

I will probably not be doing much painting unless I know for a fact that I will have down time to unpack my miniatures will have time to repack them. So I figure I would get a "Work in Progress" collection up before packing everything up. Sorry about the quality of the pictures, the camera that I was using does not have a good macro setting. I left my good camera back home the last time I was there.

L and R: British infantry from Hotspur for the Falklands / Malvinas mainly, but most can double for Northern Ireland. The ones on the right are fairly close to being finished.

L: My PIRA's Active Service Unit squad for Northern Ireland. most of the figures are from Liberation with the exception of the figure in the front setting explosives. I don't know where I got him from 10+ years ago. I actually like that figure. It is a nice sculpture.

R: Hotspur's rioters and armed thugs to make the "PBI" squaddies have a rough go at things in N.I.

L: US Rangers!?!?!? Yes, US Rangers from Hotspur's Grenadia line. I like these figures and just want to paint them up.

R: More Hotspur's British soldiers for N.I. When I am done, I hope to have a section for the Paras, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (which are done and can be see in an earlier thread), and section of a regular line unit from the Army. If I feel really up to it, I might order a couple of more packs from Stonewall and do a section for the Royal Marines.

Above: British weapon teams for the Falklands. The figures in the back are from Liberation with two Carl Gustav recoilless rifle teams flanking a soldier with a 52mm mortar. The machine gun team in the front is from FAA and was originally sculpted to be a match with the Hotspur's (I believe the sculpter worked for both companies.)

L and R: More armoured cars for the British to police N.I. To the left is a Ferret MK II/III armoured car from Liberation Miniatures. To the right is three Humber Pigs, one Hotspur armoured patrol truck for the RUC, and one Saxon Patrol, a modified Saxon armoured troop carrier for Northern Ireland duty. All of these vehicles are the BW Models.

L and R: PENGUINS!!!! How could you have a Falklands / Malvinas game without penguins! The penguins are from the defunct MJ Figures. They were suppose to be for 15mm figures, but they were very tall penguins for 15mm. This is all that I have of this miniature...pity, as I want more. The penguins are not finished as I still have more work to finish to make them look like Gentoo penguins (my personal favorites...and they have colonies on the Falklands / Malvinas and South Georgia Islands too!) The picture to the right gives a comparsion for height to the 20mm Hotspur figures.

"Armoured cars and tanks and guns..Came to take away our sons..."

"Armoured cars and tanks and guns
Came to take away our sons
But every man must stand behind
The men behind the wire"

- The Wolfe Tones, "The Men Behind the Wire"

Well, I am back after a long dry spell. First off, much apologies to the Wolfe Tones for stealing their lyrics for the title of this posting. As the title sort of infers to is what I have been working on for my 20mm Northern Ireland Ambush Alley game...armored vehicles for the Crown forces. They are not complete, but far enough along that I feel that I am getting somewhere.

First up is the iconic symbol of the British Army policing during 'The Troubles," the Humber FV 1611 MK II. But it is more commonly referred to as the "Pig." This is a 1/76 scale white metal casting kit by BW Models. As you can see, I still have to fix the front ram as one side broke off while trying to cut it loose from the casting. After I reviewed the photos, I see a few other things I want to correct as well.

The next vehicle is the Royal Ulster Constabulary's Shorland Armoured Patrol Car. Sixteen of these served with the RUC from June of 1966 to January of 1970. They served in the RUC's Reserve Force Platoons, an organization carried out normal police duties, and in addition to handling crowd or riot control, as well as military / para-military operations. When the RUC was instructed to stand down their armored vehicles, these vehicles went to mothballs for a short period and then turned over to the Ulster Defence Force. This specific model is painted up to be Fleet number 273, from the No. 3 Platoon (Glenravel Street), Belfast, RUC. I am not happy with the color of the tires, so I will touching those up later. I plan to get another one and paint it up for the UDR. Again, this is model from BW Models.

Now, the following is the Shorland SB301 armored personnel carrier. Three of these served with the RUC, (and where commonly referred to as "The Three Amigos'.) The SB301 entered service in August of 1975 and were withdrawn from operational service in 1979. There were still used as part of the reserve fleet until late 1990. Since all of my military vehicles will be green and most of my RUC vehicles will be grey, I thought that it would be different to paint this one up when the SB301's were painted blue. This specific vehicle is painted to be Fleet number 3131 and was attached to the explosives escort unit at Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in 1976. Again, this is a model from BW Models.

Finally, I am putting this up as sort of a warning to anyone who is considering of buying a 1/72 plastic kit from the Ukranian modelling company, ACE. The are a pain to assemble; there are no pins to hold the parts together and you can see the Grand Canyon size holes that need to be putty filled. This will be (if I can ever finish it) a Panhard M3 APC with a TL-2i turret for the Irish Defence Force. It (might) will show up with a section of Irish infantry that will be patrolling the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and trying to stop the flow of weapons for the IRA from the Republic of Ireland and supporting British operations...or are they preparing for 'Doomsday' scenario of crossing over the border and taking military action to support the IRA and drive the British out!

20mm Hotspur - Urban Operations

Finally, here are the selection of figures from Hotspur's Urban Operations line

Anti-Terrorist Team

British Army in Internal Security uniform

Armed Criminals or Terrorist

Innocent Bystanders: Note that there are 6 figures instead of 5 like the other packs

Plain Clothes Detectives

Riot Police

Rioters

SAS for Operation Nimrod (Storming the Iranian Embassy, 1980)

20mm Hotspur Miniatures - Operation Corporate - Argentine

Here are picks of what you get in the Hotspur 20mm Argentine sets for the 1982 Falklands / Malvinas Conflict.

Argentine Command

Argentine Infantry Firing: The one prone figure with the bipod has the Argentine Fusil Automatico Pesado, or their heavy barrelled FN FAL assault rifle.

Argentine Infantry Moving

Argentine Marines: They can also work for the Army Commandos

Argentine Special Forces

Hotspur 20mm figures - Operation Corporate - British

Hello! Well, I thought I would put up some images of what I am working on. This post is what the old Hotspur 20mm miniatures look like for their Operation Corporate (Falklands / Malvinas Conflict) in 1982. This unfinished figures grouped in what comes in each different pack. I thought it might be nice to see the different miniatures. I also found out this week that they are now available again through Stonewall Miniatures in the UK. This is a great news!

British Command: (note the figure in the back has a separate arm that has not been cut off the base and glued on to the body yet.)

British Infantry Firing: A nice selection of support weapons

British Infantry Advancing

Special Air Service: Just want you need to storm Pebble Island

Royal Marine Mountain and Arctic Warfarce Cadre: mostly armed with M16 rifles

Some say the Devil is Dead...but more say he rose again and joined the British Army!

"Some say the Devil is dead...but more say he rose again and joined the British Army" - The Wolfe Tones

Well...this is another new project that I am working on...again, one of too many started, but hopefully, I will finish this one.

Combat Colours and Tim! are really getting into Ambush Alley/Force on Force (www.ambushalleygames.com) in 20mm for various time periods. I had some old Hotspur 20mm figures from both their Urban Troubles and Falklands lines and some vehicles for the 1970's and 1980's Northern Ireland. Plus, I have enough Argentine figures that I should be able to do some Falklands games as well. So, there you have it. This is what I have done for now.

The 'Paras' on strench of road outside of the "No-Go Zone" in Londonderry or Free Derry.

A section of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (RRF) and an unarmed Women's Royal Army Corps (WRAC) searcher setting up an inspection post with the green fields of South Armagh behind them. 

I am adding the label for "Falklands" for this posting as the Paras will also do double duty for future Falklands games.

It has been a while...

Well, work has been a drag and I have not had much free time. But this is some stuff that I have got done a couple of months ago and just have not been posted.

This is another figure for my 1920's Ireland. This is a 20mm Liberation miniature from the British Army set. So far this is the only one that I have finish.

This is a wonderful little charity figure for the gaming blog, "Matakishi's Tea House". I love the figure and bought one. It is site worth visiting: www.matakishi.com . I did notice after taking the photograph of the little bit of build up of the putty at the bottom of the belly, that will be some that I will clean off later and re touch-up with paint.

144th WWII fighters

Hello again! Well this is some work in progress pictures I have taken of some 144th scale WWII fighters that I have been working on. They will be for some dogfight games about the air battle over the Philippines in 1941-42. I am trying to decide if I want to paint the panel lines in a darker color (like dark Olive Drab) or mark them with black ink. There is an advantage and a disadvantage to both methods. I still have to make a final decision on what I want to do.

Two of the models will be P-35A's for the USAAF and the other is for a P-26A for the Philippine Army Air Force. I will work on P-40's for the USAAF and Japanese airplanes later.

20mm Black & Tan War Miniatures

Just a quick posting of my latest items that I got painted. These are Liberation Miniatures' 20mm "Black & Tan / Auxies with Tam O'Shanters" and one of there Irish Republican miniatures as well. I painted the British up for "Auxies" with their later issued blue uniforms.
The first picture was taken outside in the natural sunlight. Shortly after taking it, it started to rain. So the rest of the pictures were taken with a flash and light indoors, that is why they look different.