Easter Activities

Some while since the last post... It has been Easter, and little time for blogging - without further ado, here's the Easter in review!

First of all, a closer look at the Bf110c miniatures from Raiden. Though I might well be repeating myself here, it is no secret that Raiden is one of my favourite manufacturers due to their propensity for capturing the feel of an aircraft in 1/300, despite the occasional slight symmetry issue and other, detail-oriented concerns.

Nice lines!

The Bf110c was designed on theoretically sound principles that were learned during the first world war and reaffirmed during the the Spanish civil war - namely that in air superiority combat, maneuverability was subordinate to speed. The more nimble radial-engine biplane fighters of both WW1 and the Spanish civil war could easily out-maneuver more modern designs of both conflicts - though this helped little. The more powerful, modern designs of both conflicts were unable to out-turn the opposition, yet had enough engine power to pick their fights - and this proved a desicive advantage. If the situation was favourable, the faster fighters could "boom-and-zoom," diving down on the opposition, make a high speed attack and then use velocity gained in the dive to climb rapidly out of retaliation range to repeat as required. If the situation was unfavourable, the faster fighters could quite simply avoid combat altogether.

Symmetry issues - at the least to me, it appears like the wings are not quite alike. Never mind, it will never be noticed during a game...

The Bf110c was designed to both have long range and to use superior speed to win air engagements. The only problem was that, like for many other inter-war "fast" designs, aircraft design evolution overtook the 110 before the war broke out. Designs like the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire pushed the envelope on what was thought possible performance-wise, and heralded a new age of high-speed, single engine monoplane air superiority fighters. During the first year of world war 2, the concept of the "fast" multi-engine bombers and fighters was buried by the merciless evolution of powerful single engine fighters by all air forces.

Though the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters gave the 110s a run for their money over the Channel and England in 1940, I find it interesting to note that the design principle was proven very sound in other theatres where the opposition lacked high-speed fighters. On the eastern front, the 110 proved a fearsome opponent for the slower opposition.

Before and after images. Due to the size of the model no doubt, there are lumps of metal on both engine spinners and the nose, where the air has been allowed to escape the mould. It cleans up well, though I must say it was less than ideal to have this lump right below the finely detailed nose machine guns. Although the poor maneuverability of the 110 may make tailing the more nimble RAF fighters tricky, the four 7.92 mm MGs and two 20 mm cannon should have good effect in fly-by and boom-and-zoom attacks.

At any rate, early war + 20 mm cannon = win...

So, what can be said of the models themselves? Like all the Raiden sculpts I have received, they are fine models indeed. After making an effort to compare the sculpts to photographs of the aircraft, I am satisfied. Except for the less than optimal placement of the metal lump remaining from the casting right below the four nicely made 7.92 mm MGs, there is one other detail that bothers me - the etched lines on the canopy were quite subtle, meaning painting the multi-pane canopy will be a right bitch, pardon my french...

Due to these details, I'd rate this model as a 4 out of 5. A fine model that I am very much looking forward to painting up and gaming with.

As a side note, the Bf110c is a huge aircraft, nearly rivaling the Do17zs for size!

Coming soon to a fjord near you - undercoated Zerstörers ready for painting

Being at my father-in-law's cabin, I had brought only the Bf110cs for udnercoating. Having some available time later that week-end, I sat down with my children's crayons and paper to draw a little something for my office wall. As I have previously said, the Bf110c fascinates me no end. That being said, the nazi regime does not, so I was happy to find a photograph to draw after that had the swastika obscured due to exposure.

By clamping a straight piece of material onto the plywood, one can saw uncannily straight using just a normal hand saw.

 

Finally, I started work on a project that has been lying in my basement for ages - a full size gaming table, which will be required to get the gaming mat fully unfolded. The "table" will consist of a 4-by-8 foot plywood plate, cut in two, stiffened with wood beams and fitted with hinges and latches for stowage. Work was cut short when it started to snow like mad, preventing outdoor carpentry work.

The table will not have legs, instead I will stick on felt pads so it can rest on any smaller table without scratching it. Latches will secure it in a locked, unfolded position. It will likely be unpainted, as I intend to use felt mats whenever gaming on it, though I might paint it for some added durability, in that case in any neutral colour.

And that was that. Well, there was one other matter, though I'll return to that later...

Dorniers Done

Finally!

This project started december 13th last year, with the painting of the prototype model. Since then, a lot has happened which has delayed the completion of these miniatures. Much time has been spent making quick reference charts for Bag the Hun 2 and designing cards for the game deck, damage and aircraft status. Some time has also been eaten up by the assembly of additional flight stands, the making of bogeys, as well as other gaming and storage aids. Last, but not least, the five Gloster Gladiators of Jagevingen took their sweet time to complete.

Last night only the rudders of the Dorniers, as well as varnishing, remained to do. The rudders have been used as hand-holds for the duration of painting, to ensure that paint was not rubbed off other parts of the miniatures prior to varnishing. Finishing these was quick and easy, and as the varnishing progressed (I use paint-on varnish) I realised that this was the night.

Admittedly, I stayed up far too late - though I thankfully could not tell today - yet after burning the midnight oil the last aircraft was done and I could look down on a squadron of twelve Do17zs, ready to cross the Channel!

After tidying up and introducing the Dorniers to their new abode, the storage box, and being the kind of bloke that I am, I immediately moseyed over to Raiden Miniatures to order the next project for the queue - twelve Junkers 87B 'Stukas'. The new(ish) Raiden Online Store impressed me with a very good and easy to use interface.

Though I intended to say that the Stukas are some of my favourite aircraft, I'll have to rephrase that - every time I start another project from this period, it seems like all of the aircraft I paint are some of my favourites! The aircraft designs of WW2 are all very fascinating to me, being in that border period between the historic and the modern where design was still a matter of experience and aesthetics more than equations and computer simulations. The early-war period fascinates me even more, as guesswork can be added as another desing factor, leading to some very interesting concepts being aloft for the initial battles...

Can you imagine why the Norwegian defenders 9th of April 1940 believed the Germans were deploying Do17zs to attack Oslo, when no such airplane was part of the main effort?

Afterwards, I laid out the next project - The Bf110c 'Zerstörers'. As these are really similar to the Dorniers, I will forego painting a prototye - they will even be using the same colour scheme. The four 110s on top have had their molding lines filed off. The next update on this project should hopefully contain some sort of review of these models.

Before I start painting these in earnest, though, I have to assemble bomber flight stands and make aircraft status cards for the Dorniers - I really can't wait to get in the first bomber-centric game!

Nearly there!

For the last week, I have been able to get in a few hours of painting more or less every night. As a result, the Dorniers are nearly finished, which suits me fine in every respect:

- The next project is one of my favourite fighters, the Messerschmitt Bf110c. It will be good to get some variation in the fighters available for the Luftwaffe as well, and these can allow me to start playtesting the "Dogfight over Oslofjord"-scenario.

- As a result of long experience, I have to limit myself to having one set of miniatures in the painting queue. Finishing the Dorniers will allow me to place a new order (most likely for a batch of Raiden Stukas). More shiny toys! Me like!

- And, finally, I will have a full squadron of bombers, allowing some variation to our scenarios.

Well, that, and the fliegender Bleistift is a damn hot aeroplane to have in the collection too...

Picking up the action where I let off last time. At that time, the camouflage pattern was finished. The next step was to paint the cockpit canopies. This is a job that I detest, and as a result I like to do it as early as possible in the painting process to have it out of the way. On single engine fighters, the canopy will be finished as soon as the undercoat is done. For these aircraft, there is a lot of glass, separated by thin strips of the fuselage. When painting the prototype, one of the things I discovered was that it would be far easier to paint on the canopy after the camouflage was finished. Therefore, this was one of the last painting operations to be done on these particular aircraft.

Well, what do you know? These windows, which are only present on the right-hand side of the fuselage were overlooked when I painted the prototype, as I by chance have only seen pictures of the left side of the aircraft when working out the colour scheme!

Despite some web research, I have been unable to conclusively decide why the windows were positioned like this. However, I did find enough incidental evidence to make up my mind. The small bulge under the aircraft's nose is the bomb sight nacelle, and this was positioned offset to the right - placing it directly below these windows. To me it therefore seems overwhelmingly evident that these windows were for the benefit of the bomb aimer.

There, fixed it! 

Over the course of a few evenings, all the canopies were done. With the exception of the "hand-hold" rudders, the paint job was now complete, allowing me to move on to...

...decals! These are the 300-GE-1 High-visibilty and 300-GE-2 Low visibility Balkenkreuz from Dom's Decals. They are easy to work with and apply, and I think they look really good. Dom offered excellent service and quick delivery when I ordrered these.

The website does not appear to have been updated in quite a while, so I'll make sure to ask in the Toofatlardies-group if everything is ok - I expect it to be, as Dom is a frequent contributer there. The balkenkreuzes are starting to run out, and I will definitly be ordering from Dom the next time too.

http://www.domsdecals.co.uk/

 There was something strangely poetic in seeing two dozen balkenkreuzes floating around in a small, white bowl...

High-viz Balkenkreuz in their natural habitat. The brushes are used to apply the decals (as if you did not know already :)

To get the spacing more or less equal on all the aircraft, I use whatever suitable items I might have at hand - in this case, a square-nosed file (that hardly gets used for anything else, really).

Seeing as it had been a while since I finished the prototype, I had a bit of a puzzle to solve when it came to the low-viz Balkenkreuz on the top of the wings. By trying out various items from my paint brush storage cup I was finally able to determine that I had used the shaft of my scalpel!

 This is either how I kept track of my progress in applying the under-wing decals, or a new type of Othello with really fancy tokens...

All done! Only the rudders and varnish to go, and these puppies will be intruding an airspace near you!

As a side note, the shine of the decal film around the Balkenkreuz will disappear once the varnish is applied.

Quick, hide!

Last night, I was able to sit down and finish the camouflage pattern on my Dorniers:

Soon time to bomb Fighter Command - Soon time to order more planes!

Having always thought of camouflage in the sky as somewhat ridiculous - how do you propose to hide a multi-engined aircraft with several crew after all - I just had to mosey on over and see what Wikipedia had to say on the subject.

"Aircraft camouflage is the use of light and color patterns applied to military aircraft for the purpose of making an aircraft more difficult to see on the ground, in the air, or to make its speed, distance or attitude difficult to determine." (Wikipedia)

Fancy that.

Anyway, the article was fairly interesting and answered several questions I had regarding aircraft camouflage - like why the Americans thought shining metal and signal colours was a good way to hide in the sky towards the end of the war - and contained several interesting tidbits, like the fact that camouflage paint - being matte - could reduce the maximum airspeed of an aircraft considerably. Take a look if you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_camouflage

Well, time to get working on those canopies!

Out-turning the opposition

When playing the Four-In-A -Day scenario in the last post, we tried out the new movement budget idea I have been thinking about. The goal is to eliminate the D4 from the rules - as part of BtH "Lite," I am looking to eliminate the oddly shaped dice (D10 and D4), and have a ruleset with exclusively D6. Originally, I intended to post this as part of the after action report, though it got completely out of hand, so here it is in a separate post...

Rather than roll D4 for movement budget, we rolled a D6 and interpreted the results as follows:

  

	D6 roll
	1-4	5-6
Sprog	Add indicated value	Choose 1-4. Easy maneuvers only.
Reg	Add indicated value	Choose 1-4
Vet	Add UP TO indicated value	Choose 1-4
JA/TA	Choose 1-4	Choose 1-4

This allows the lower experience levels to choose their own speed more often than the standard rules, yet retains a marked difference between them and the higher experience ranks. Sprogs are in trouble if they fall out of formation - no longer being able to watch the formation leader, they are prone to taking less extreme maneuvers. This matches accounts of dogfights I have read well - the classic example is the Battle of Britain Hurri vs. Spit vs. Emil. There are examples of pilots in all these aircraft who claimed to be able to out-turn the other two types, despite the fact that the Hurricane is able to out-turn both the Spit and Emil under controlled conditions. The Spit, however, had its fabulous wing design that gave the pilot more warning when the aircraft was about to stall, and that made the Spit easier to recover. This likely made pilots more willing to push the Spitfire further than they would have done with a Hurri.

As for the Emils - well, the Me109 pilots had earned their wings over Spain, Poland and France... There are accounts of German pilots easily out-turning Spitfires, though this should theoretically not be possible. One theory is that green Spitfire pilots failed to tighten their turns sufficiently, stopping when the first vibrations set in whereas they could have pulled an even tighter turn without actually stalling. The other probable cause comes down to experience – by adjusting the position of the  attacking aircraft (rather than trying to stick on someone’s tail), an experienced pilot can maneuver to get a shot on an aircraft with a lower wing loading.

Point-in-case: Low Yo-Yo . By using the low and high yo-yo, even a P47 Thunderbolt could "out-turn" a Spitfire.

Late in the war, this was formalized in the "Energy Management" approach to dogfighting, which is still being taught to fighter pilots worldwide today - the first four minutes of the video below should be of interest to anyone gaming aerial combat, regardless of historical period of choice:

Early in the war, none of this was formalised and taught, which meant that the experienced pilots could appearantly out-turn less experienced opponents, regardless of the rate of roll and wing loading of the aircraft involved. It truly is the man, not the machine!

 At any rate, I feel this argument justifies giving Sprogs a 1-in-3 chance of performing Easy maneuvers only - once they are out of formation with the (hopefully) more experienced section leader!

Below are two more links to articles that should be of interest if you want to read more about the subject. The first is written for modern (jet) air combat simulators - yet the principles remain true for piston-engined fighters as well. The second article might be more accessible, though I feel the first article is wider in scope.

http://www.combatsim.com/review.php?id=6
http://www.musketeers.org/?page_id=93

Two-In-A-Night

Last Sunday, I got together with Tor and decided to try out how well scenarios written for Check Your 6! would translate to Bag the Hun. The scenario chosen was "Four-In-A-Day" from the "Over the Channel" scenario book for the Battle of Britain. The scenario recreates a combat from August 18th 1940, where Oberleutnant Gerhard Schopfel's schwarm bounced a formation of Hurricanes of 501. Squadron. Schopfel shot down four of them within five minutes.

In hindsight, the choice was fortunate, as gaming space was limited - my experience is that once fighters have converged in a pure dogfight scenario, our combats have tended to evolve into twisting furballs that revolve slowly across the game mat. The one bomber chase we have done (http://persprojects.blogspot.com/2012/02/tally-ho.html) really stretched the game out.

This was also the first time we tried the altered movement budget that I have been thinking about. This sytem eliminates the last oddly shaped dice from the game, the D4 (the revised damage chart for BtH Lite already removed the D10). This is a subject that I will return to in my next post, as it threatened to de-rail this after action report completely.

Enough chatter, here's the report...

Initial set-up - forgot to take the picture! Schopfel was rated a Top Ace and led Gelb Rotte.

A while ago, I downloaded the free layout program Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus), with the intention to use it for redesigning my Bag the Hun Lite cards and tables. This is the first time that I used it for image annotation, and I though it worked very well!

As you can see, I have made the mistake of writing Schwarm in the images rather than Rotte - though that is a mistake I (and you) will have to live with :)

Hurricanes of Blue Section move to spot Gelb Rotte as the Luftwaffe fighters successfully spot all the RAF sections.

As I had managed to forget the bogey markers at home, we used flying stands for bogeys and placed wingmen as the bogeys became spotted. This worked well with our limited formations, and as Tor pointed out the 3D-feel became much better than when using bogey tokens on the game mat. This means I will have to move the new bogey counter project up to the head of the queue...

 

Sprogs coming through from two o'clock, and Jerry on the six!

The RAF dropped in altitude to get a spotting bonus against the high-flying Emils, a gamble that turned out well as the last bogeys were identified. The Luftwaffe, not having the "Vic" penalty of the RAF, had no problems spotting the English bogeys.
Schopfel now maneuvered in to get on the tail of Red Leader, the RAF's only Veteran Pilot in this scenario. Red Leader pulled a quick reversal to shake the Messerschmitts, yet failed against the massive bonuses of the German Ace Pilot. Both English and German wingmen were on the ball and managed to stay in formation during the difficult maneuver.
Meanwhile, Blue Leader pulled a hard turn to get behind Grün Rotte. The inexperienced wingmen failed to keep up, and moved straight ahead, plowing through Red Section - though no collisions occurred.
Note that there is a mistake on this image that was corrected later - Blue Leader should be 1 ALT up and is not tailing Grün Leader.

Red Leader desperately tries to shake Schopfel, who efforlessly remains on the RAF Veteran's tail. They obviously did not teach tight chandelles in flight school, however, as the Vic breaks up and Red 2 and 3 fail to stay in fomation.

Got you, Engländer!

A fortunate string of activation and bonus cards now came up that allowed the German Ace three rounds of shooting at the RAF fighter before it got to move again. The shooting was not exactly flawless, and the Hurricane's legendary robustness keeps it in the air for the first burst - though on the second and third attempts, the Emil's 20mm cannon made its presence felt. First, a shell smashed the Hurricane's instrumentation - though the RAF pilot barely had time to worry about this before his aircraft was blown out of the sky in the next salvo!

Grün Rotte swings around and latches on the tail of Red 3, who has barely gotten his wings. Easy prey...

Looking to claim his second victory of the day, Schopfel tails Red 2. The Hurricane pilot has other plans though, and the wily bugger exploits a rulebook definition to escape!

What happened was that according to the rules, when two aircraft end the movement in the same hex, a roll for collision is made - then the aircraft that moved last into the hex is moved one step forward. As Schopfel was in the hex immediately behind Red 2, he would have had to roll for collision with Grün Leader, then move forward, roll with Red 2, then move forward--- straight into the Hurri's sights! Needless to say, the Emil remained where it was.

In hindsight, "playing the period, not the rules," we might have moved Schopfel to the no. 3 hex hehind Red 2 and allowed him to stay on the tail, though at the moment we were both to amused at this obvious exploitation of the rules to worry about this!

Auf Wiedersehen! Grün Leader places an accurate burst onto the hapless Sprog, and the 20 mm cannon does the rest.

In my "Lite" version of BtH, I do not really worry about what becomes of an aircraft once it is no longer combat worthy. Finding out whether little Billy manages to crash-land his stricken machine and pop in for a pint at the local pub while waiting for a lift to the airfield is really not the kind of detail I require of my games! Therefore, in the "Lite" rules, the  "Engine Destroyed" for a single engine fighter is counted as a shot down aircraft, and the model is removed from the game mat. It was desicions like this that allowed me to condense the damage table down from six to one column.

Red 2 opens the distance to Grün Rotte. Schopfel moves onto Blue Leader's tail, as Gelb 2 gets on the tail of the last RAF Sprog, Blue 3. At this point, we called the game due to time.

An exciting scrap, although I felt somewhat bad for Tor - at the end of the game, the Hurricane gun ports were still all sealed! After the early demise of the only Veteran RAF pilot, the agile Me109Es flew in circles around their opponents, easily getting on and staying on the tail as required. On the one occasion where an RAF fighter found itself in a position to shoot, the fire card failed to materialize before the Luftwaffe Ace pilot had activated and moved off. While Schopfel's ammo was running low, the Luftwaffe still had plenty of ammunition to spare and the next turn would likely have seen one or more RAF fighters badly damaged or destroyed.

The BtH Lite rules are certainly offering the right balance of speed and detail for my taste, and now another period of consolidation will take place as I attempt to improve on the design and layout of my quick reference sheets using Scribus.

Another pleasant surprise was that the Over the Channel scenario seemed to translate really well to BtH, giving an entertaining game. Skirmish Campaigns offer well-written books, and I would reccomend them to anyone starting to game in a new theater, as they offer a good historical overview, supplies a list of relevant aircraft types and quantities - and detail scenarios that seem to easily translate into good Bag the Hun games.

Skirmish Campaigns:

http://www.skirmishcampaigns.com/

Damned cowlings!

Managed to sneak in some painting the last two evenings, and used that time to complete the second layer of the Dornier's top coat- Vallejo 830 German Fieldgrey WWII. Painting the aircraft was certainly easier this time around compared to the prototype - I am wainting with the cockpit until the rest of the plane is finished, which means I do not have to worry about painting neatly around the windows for now. This was the first time I have had use for my own previous blog posts - I had managed to have two different tables listing the old and new second layer paint code side by side, and by looking up the blog post I made at that time it was easy to find which table was correct.

For some reason, I found that I strongly disliked painting the engine cowlings! Completely irrational, yet there it is. It might have been the need to turn the miniature ever which way to get everything covered. Most likely, I have just gotten spoiled painting single-engine fighters, where the entire painting surface is easily accessible! Most of my painting for the foreseeable future will involve twin-engined aircraft, however (well, apart from a dozen Stukas, some Defiants, Battles...), so I had better just stop whining...!

While I am devoting a lot of my available hobby time to gettting good game aids in place and working on BtH2 Lite, I really hope to get these aircraft finished soon. The cockpits will take some time (small area though very fiddly), yet the only other step remaining is the camo pattern which tends to go on fairly quickly, so there is hope. The after-action reports I have been reading on the web lately all seem to indicate that fighter-only games tend to end up in the swirling furballs of turning dogfights, whereas games involving bombers tend to have a wholly different dynamic with the entire game revolving around the bomber formation. Getting some bombers done should also give me something to do once I decide to umpire multiplayer games!

Pipe Dream

Ever since I decided on Bag the Hun as the ruleset I would use for my WW2 aerial wargaming, I have found myself in a real pinch between priorites. There is a finite amount of time and money that I can spend on the hobby, and what little I have is divided between the following priorities (in no particular order):

- Re-working the BtH rules into a format I am more comfortable with
- Generating game aids - cards and quick reference sheets
- Purchasing and painting miniature aircraft
- Purcashing and assemblying game accessories - markers, flight stands, transport cases
- Blogging :)
- Actually getting to play the damn game!

The first point takes time. The second point takes a LOT of time - making cards, sheets and tables is a real time-eater! So far, my work has been done in Windows Paint, Word and Excel, though I recently downloaded a free layout program that is supposed to be quite good and will attempt to learn and use this when I start to re-work the cards. The goal is to introduce colour graphics and icons to make the cards an even better game aid. The tables and QR sheets will also need to be re-done here, to improve readability and layout.

The third point, painting, is one of my favourites, and it is really hard to prioritize time away from this and over to the other points - though I have realised that it helps little to have all the miniatures if I do not have anything to use them for. Fortuneately I have gotten wise, er, I mean old enough to have only one unpainted project (around a aquadron) in the pipeline at any one time, so with my current painting frequence at the least this part does not require a lot of money!

The fourth part, game accessories, is dreary. It reminds me of work :) Assemblying and painting flight stands is hardly creative work, once the initial concept is worked out. Spending money on this part is also quite hard - scenario books and miniatures are far more tempting. Still, this is the old gamer syndrome of having miniatures for hundreds of euros yet crap terrain. Having decided to focus on BtH exclusively for the time being has made this part of the hobby more important however - good game accessories, like the Hotz mat, good markers and flight stands enhance the game experience immeasurably and this is an area that I am investing heavily into at the moment - both in time and money. Yesterday I posted about the new transport boxes for my aircraft, and last night I made - this!

No, it is not a Stinger missile. Why, did you think the U.S. would supply a mountainous country bordering on Russia with advanced surface-to-air missiles? Don't be ridiculous!

This is my transport tube for my gaming mat. The main component is a 1,3 meter piece of 75mm diameter PVC plumbing tube! This was really cheap to get, though it required some cleaning - using soapy water, I stuffed paper towels trough the tube until they came out white. Next, I sealed off the bottom using a circular plug that I cut from leftovers of the kitchen refurbishing, topped with some foam to give the game mat a soft place to rest against. This was attached using a hot glue gun (naturally!), three small screws and a liberal application of duct tape (the other geek adhesive).

The pipe had an unsightly text line with its specifications in red ink running down its length, so I decided to pimp the tube with a continuous label and some chevrons. The legend reads "BAG the HUN" (oh fanboy me), I then decided to just go for it and added the address of this blog in small type underneath. Yes, modesty does not become me...

Once the "decorations" were in place, a 3m cargo strap was attached by using a pair of those metal bands made to squeeze together tubes and pipes. Forgive me, my English fails me here and I cannot even begin to guess what this is called in other languages!

The pipe also has a cap, which is a blind plug for plumbing in matching dimensions. This was sanded to remove sharp edges, and fits quite well without using any sort of latch - though I had to remove the pipe's rubber gasket in order to make it possible to get the cap on and off.

The full-size Hotz game mat measures roughly 180 by 120 cm and is rolled around a wooden stick for support before being stuffed into the tube. This fits almost too snugly - fortuneately, I purchased the largest dimension round stick available (28 mm) and can shave off 7 mm by purchasing a smaller stick, which will make the current mad tight rolling of the game mat less vital.

In hindsight, I might have gone for the next larger pipe dimension to get room to fit two maps at once. That being said, I am very happy with this solution - the mat is now stored in a made-to-fit sturdy and splash-proof tube that will certainly last a lot longer than a similar cardboard one.

The project cost me less than 25 euros, one hour of shopping around in hardware stores and one hour of assembly. That I can live with, even though it means I will likely have to wait 'till the next paycheck to get my next gaming accessory - don't worry, you will see it posted here as soon as I get my hands on it!

Transport solutions

Finally starting to get some steam up again after the one-month hiatus due to refurbishing the kitchen. Got in another game Sunday, and will post about that later when I get time, hopefully this week.

Meanwhile, a short glance at my new transport solution for the aircraft models. Previously, I stored the fighters in a small, sectioned plastic box, though as soon as I got the Dorniers I knew this solution was doomed. With these large, two-engine aircraft, I realised I would need something bigger, more flexible - and cheap!

This is the solution I decided to go with. 13 cm tall storage boxes. 10 euros for two is not bad (in Norway at any rate). The foam is from a car supply chain and originally intended for noise dampening in self made/self assembled speaker setups. 18 euros for five sheets, two sheets requred  per box. Total cost of around 14 euros per finished box is about as cheap as it gets over here.

Marking the foam for cutting. The first layer is made up of leftovers and glued into the bottom of the box. The remaining layers are cut slightly too small to make for easy removal from the box.

Ground floor: RAF Fighters - Spits and Hurries for the Battle of Britain.

First floor: 'Emils' and Norwegian Gladiators.

The box is now less than half full, and I have another one I have not started on yet. Likely, I will be able to fit all the aircraft I plan to buy for the Battle of Britain into these two boxes. That is the good thing. The bad thing is that this makes it painfully obvious how pitifully small my collection is - though it should be bulked out fairly quickly, as the majority of the remaining aircraft will be large two-engine aircraft!

Also, I have purchased the bits required to transport my gaming mat in style. Or, style... Well, more on that later!

Under the influence

Now that I am finally starting to get time for gaming related activities again (and having finished the Jagevingen 'side project'), I took the opportunity to sit down to continue with the Dorniners. The next step after finishing the belly coat was to do the first of two layers on the top coat in 979 Vallejo German Camo Dark Green. This step was something I had not particularily looked forward to, as it would involve placing some rather long horizontal lines along the tail section where the top coat meets the belly coat. Where excatly would I put the line? Could I make it straight enough on all 11 aircraft? Even having my finished 'prototype' to consult did not seem to calm my nerves.

As chance would have it (I hesitate to say 'fortunately'), just prior to painting I downed a pint of beer while watching the half of an episode of Game of Thrones that I missed last week. Not having had much alcohol for the last month due to refurbishing, this left me with a small buzz that persisted when I started to paint. Of course, deciding to have a few glasses of liqueur might also have had something to do with it...

At any rate, there I was, tipsy and with brushes in hand, and the anxiety I had about the top coat had vanished completely. Painting went like a breeze, and I only twice had to go back and touch up where I had missed the line slightly. About half-way through, I even remembered to do some checks on how symmetrical the lines were on either side of the models - and could find no faults. It remains to be seen if I am as satisfied with the lines today, though!

All in all a very curious experience, yet I am very happy to be done with this particular stage of the paint job - though I certainly would not reccomend painting during the influence in general, detail work would certainly suffer and quality control becomes spotty... At some point about half-way through the painting session I realised that I was no longer applying 979 German Camo Dark Green - a few drops from a bottle of 896 German Camo Extra Dark Green had snuck in beside it on the palette! Being the base coat I had no worries, though I would likely not have been equally relaxed had it been the top coat...

Jagevingen palette

Another of those bookeeping posts for my own reference... Boy, that sure is a lot of paint!

	Jagevingen	433
1. Cowling	GW Brazen Brass	GW Brazen Brass
2. Wheels	Vallejo 950 Black	Vallejo 950 Black
3. Cowling	GW Black Wash	GW Black Wash
4. Canopy	Vallejo 943 Grey Blue	Vallejo 943 Grey Blue
5. Cowling	GW Brazen Brass	GW Brazen Brass
6. Canopy	Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue	Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue
7. Body	GW Boltgun Metal	GW Boltgun Metal
8.Spinner	GW Boltgun Metal	Vallejo 950 Black
9. Body	GW Mithril Silver	GW Mithril Silver + Vallejo 906 Pale Blue
10. Cowling	GW Black Wash	GW Black Wash
11. Wing tops 1	n/a	Vallejo 870 Medium Sea Grey
12. Wing tops 2	n/a	Vallejo 906 Pale Blue + Vallejo 830 German Fieldgrey WWII
13. Dark Camo	n/a	Vallejo 983 Flat Earth + Vallejo 830 German Fieldgrey WWII
14. Light Camo	n/a	Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue
15. National Colour 1	GW Regal Blue	GW Regal Blue
16. National Colour 2	Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue	Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue
17. National Colour 3	GW Mechrite Red	GW Mechrite Red

Gloster Gladiators of Jagevingen

This is a long post. As I have currently posted about the modelling and painting of my Do17Zs, I have been unwilling to make a mess by putting the following updates "in between" the other posts, rather I have been writing a little after each session with this project and post it now as it is complete.

Knowing that this project would involve a lot of tricky modelling and painting - to the point of tediousness in some cases - I ran this project in parallell with the Dorniers so as not to discard it in disgust halfway through. At some point, the project got a life of its own, however, and in spite of myself I found that the project had become an obsession. The Dorniers were left aside as all my spare time and effort - which was not much, as we started a major refurbishment project in our house at a point - was devoted to finishing these aircraft.

Hopefully, the length of the post will not put you off. Enjoy, and, particularily in this case I must say, comments are always welcome!

***

A couple of years ago, a Norwegian military history magazine had an article about the air combats near Oslo, the Norwegian capital, on the 9th of April 1940. Ever since, I have been determined to write a scenario about one of the episodes, when five Gloster Gladiator biplanes of the Norwegian Air Force squadron 'Jagevingen' (sic) bounced eight Bf110cs over Oslofjorden.

The Gloster Gladiators were ordrered (along with their opponents, eight Bf110cs) on November 24th last year, and delivered January 25th this year. Although Christmas undoubtfully caused some delay, this was not the first time it took weeks to get items from this UK based supplier, Raiden Miniatures.

As usual, the miniatures arrived in individual ziplock bags, along with an unexpected bonus - assembly instructions! Though the line drawings did not clearly show the positioning of the underwing gun pods, the written instructions were deeply appreciated.

Despite long delivery times, I keep ordering from Raiden for a number of reasons. First, their web site and web store is easy to use, the prices are good and the quailty is fabulous. Second, while not all the models are perfectly symmetrical - the Gladiator falls into this cathegory - Raiden's sculptors have a knack for carrying an aircraft's lines and personality into 1/300 scale. Their sculps inevitably feel right when you look at them.

When ordering from Raiden, expect very good quality at decent prices - though do count on it taking some weeks - or months - for your miniatures to arrive. Having learned my lesson, I now place orders while I still have one or two unstarted projects in queue.

Raiden miniatures:

http://www.raidenminiatures.co.uk/

Cor blimey, what a lot of bits!

Each Gladiator is made up of the main body, the upper wings, right wheel, left wheel, two gun pods for the lower wings and (oh joy) a piece of wire - to be cut into struts. 

My first attempt at air combat wargaming was with World War I some years ago. The painstaking work required to assemble lumpy 1/300 biplanes was what turned me decidedly away from that hobby and straigth into the wondrous world of World War 2 streamlined monoplanes. Thus, the assembly of five Gloster Gladiators was something I regarded with a fair bit of trepidation...

The struts, one piece of wire per plane to be cut into eight struts. Fortuneately, the fellow who wrote the instructions seemed to know his trade well - by using flexible wire, the struts can be fixed with superglue in roughly the right positions to begin with - then they can be adjusted by dry-fitting the top wing and bending the wire once the glue has set. The strut holes are actually clear and present, something which could not always be said for the WWI castings I fumbled with back in the day.

The instructions, along with the high quality of the Raiden castings, meant that I now only felt scared of assemblying all five models - as opposed to feeling scared of assemblying even one, like I did when they arrived.

Day of delivery: Project start - Dremeling out the hole for the supermagnet.

Due to the bulky nature of my flight stands coming in conflict with the fixed landing grear, I had to drill the magnet hole further back on the fuselage than the hole in the casting.

Five days after project start, and I sat down to spend 30 minutes of my life cleaning this? It was clearly nature's way of telling me 1/300 scale biplanes are not good for my health. The tiny bits are landing gears and gun pods. Seriously, I carved larger pieces off than what remained in the bowl...

Probably due to the very small, fiddly and oddly shaped components, these were the Raiden castings I have received that required the most cleaning up. That being said, the amount of flash and molding lines was not exactly daunting, and the time required was due to the size and shape of the components rather than casting deficencies.

The next evening: Silent before the storm. A few minutes with soapy water and the old toothbrush, and the Glosters were ready for assembly...

...and every little bit of terror I imagined suddenly turned to reality. Let me just guide you through the process, and you can see the full horror of it yourself. Assemblying wing gun pods - 35 minutes.

 Cutting struts. 25 minutes. What??

Most of the assembly work required tweezers due to the tiny components. In order to hold the struts until the superglue set, I found that small blobs of green stuff squeezed into the holes worked well.

 Mounting struts. 55 minutes!

A moment of respite. Greenstuffing the original flight stand attachment holes from the casting. 3 minutes...

The mind-numbing tediousness of it all made me forget to take a photo of the wheels attached stage. That took 30 minutes. This image is the end of day status, after spending yet another 30 minutes to reinforce the landing gear using green stuff.

Total time for this assemblying nightmare marathon: Nigh on 3 hours. That is for five aircraft, and I had yet to attach the upper wings! Yup, I will definitely think twice before assemblying another biplane in 1/300 again! Still, my spirit was unbroken, and I'd have forged right ahead the same evening had it not been for the need to let the superglued upper wings cure completely before trying to align the struts with the lower wings. To paraphrase our king, anything for Norway...
Some days later, the shock had worn off. It was time to attach the top wings! A little careful bending of the struts later, and...

Fcuk.

As it turned out, while the long struts remained flexible enough to adjust carefully, the short struts were too stiff due to their short length (2.5 mm) and snapped when I tried to nudge them into position. "Well," I thought, "This seems a bit wobbly, and I intend to game with the dang things."

So who you gonna call?

Green stuff!

Scoring the area in front of the canopy to provide better hold, I resorted to a trick used frequently by less reputable manufacturers of 1/300 biplanes. If you can't make struts, bugger the things and fill the gap with a nice, solid chunk of stuff instead.

Now that was more like it! From the "gaming view," the blob was hardly visible. Furthermore, the miniature was made more robust (necessary when gaming blokes are to fumble with tiny planes perched on flying stands) and my sanity preserved. This was a rather calm and composed evening, even though it took me around an hour to attach all five top wings. After all, not only did I have to smooth over the green stuff work on the landing gear  before attaching the top wing, I also had to remove all the superfluous centre struts and superglue as well!

Yes, it might be an ugly lump once you turned the plane onto its side - though in hindsight, this was the only practical solution for me, what with the model being intended for gaming after all.

Even though I did not manage to attach the centre struts like the assembly instructions detailed, I still have a special place in my heart for whomever wrote the instructions:

"Once in place, add lots more super glue to make it as secure as possible."

One cannot fault logic like that!

Jagevingen flies again!

It was extremely pleasing to be done with assembly of these models, something that I had been dreading ever since I placed the order for them - and rightly so, as it turned out.

All in all, assembly ran to a mind-boggling 5 hours for 5 miniatures!

That being said, I did not regret it at all - the miniatures looked smashing, and I could not wait to get them undercoated.

After the last image, we started refurbishing the kitchen - so it was a week before I got another opportunity to sit down with the miniatures again. Additionally, now that the worst bit (assembly) was out of the way, I felt like I could afford to step down the intensity of work with these aircraft. Strictly speaking, they were intended as a side project to run parallell with whatever other project was ongoing at the time, and at the time that was the Dorniers. Thus, after the primer was applied to the Gladiators I turned to the Dorniers for the time I had left that evening.

Side project. Right. The very next night I sat down and gave them all a coat of Citadel Colour Boltgun Metal, painted the engine cowling in Citadel Colour Brazen Brass and the tires Citadel Colour Chaos Black. Some seldomly used paints just seem to last forever, I still have a pot of Citadel Colour Ultramarines Blue that I got when I was 12...

Here you can see the canopy, painted my "standard" Vallejo 943 Grey Blue and Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue. Also, before hitting the sack, I just had to give one of the planes a dry(ish)brushing with Citadel Colour Mithril Silver to get the "final" colour - here is a before and after picture, with after being to the right. Admittedly, Jagevingen used a matte silver to avoid reflections - yet the images I have seen looked quite bright and the satin varnish I persist in using would ruin any matte effect anyway.

Seeing as the area was hard to get at and would at any rate never be seen in a game, I chose to not brush the underside of the top wing silver. The colour difference was not so marked when not in the camera flash, all it really ended up doing was to leave the area appropriately shadowed.

All that would remain after brushing silver on the other aircraft was to add national colours and aircraft ID numbers! That is, with the exception of Gladiator 433...

 Several days later, I got to sit down with the planes again. The first thing I did was finish the silver coat on the "regular" Gladiators. Then I painted up Gladiator 433.
433 had been at the forefront of my mind ever since I ordrered these miniatures. While 11 out of 12 Norwegian Gladiators were painted in the peactime matte silver and national colours, in January 1940 Gladiator 433 was painted in an experimental camouflage pattern suggested by a Norwegian Army Air Force staff officer.
Very little information exists about this pattern, so I was left with guesswork.

In addition to two black-and-white photographs showing the aircraft from the same side, this was the only written description I was able to find:

"On the experimental aircraft, Gladiator 433, areas of the wings and fuselage (the dark areas) are partially covered with brown-green (khaki) and grey, wavy lines that blend into one another. The remainder of the fuselage sides and bottom (the light areas) are painted in a mix of matte silver and light blue, intended to make the aircraft as inconspicuous as possible when seen against the sky. Areas of the top of the wings (the light areas) are instead painted grey or grey-green." (Cato Guhnfeldt - Fornebu 9. April, published by Wings, Oslo, 1990).

Leave that description with a roomful of model kit builders, and I would dare you to find two similar models once they were done...

One week later, a lot of fiddly painting ensued. First, the inner line was painted using Cidadel Colour Regal Blue. Then the middle lines were painted using Vallejo 907 Pale Greyblue, before finally the outer lines were doine in Citadel Colour Mechrite Red. This took a while, let me assure you...

Though my freehand technique is hardly perfect, I was extremely pleased with the result. The effect of the national colours was striking, and completely transformed the planes.

Gladiator 433 had the national colours as a band around the fuselage only.

A picture of the aircraft of Jagevingen in "sveit," the contemporary Norwegian word for formation. As you will hopefully agree, the aircraft look smashing when viewed together (and at "gaming distance!").

Next day: A picture of the finished sveit, complete with aircraft identification numbers. Note that Gladiator 433 (in camouflage) has tiny numbers at the rudder only. These aircraft are now accurately marked like the aircraft in action over Oslofjorden April 9th 1940. The sveit is set up on the cover of the book that has served as my primary source of information and motivation, in the formation used prior to the attack on the German aircraft.

From left to right (of formation):

433 - Fenrik Thorsager (=2nd. Lt.)

425 - Sergeant Waaler

429 - Lieutenant Tradin (sveit leader)

427 - Sergeant Schye

423 - Lieutenant Krohn

 Well, this was some project all right! The aircraft have taken time completely out of proportion to their number, though I am extremely pleased with the result. Colour palette will be posted later, and the aircraft used in the April 9th scenario I am planning.

Whether I can finish the Bf110Cs in time to run an anniversary game this year remains to be seen, there are 11 unfinished Do17z in queue before them... and for the scenario I would really like to have a squadron of He111s available as well, which looks kind of unrealistic at the moment, really.

It has been a quiet period, blogwise, as my updates have been bundled into this post and my spare time consumed by refurbishing. It looks like this migh hopefully be done soon, though, so look forward to some -hopefully more regular - updates on the Dorniers in the near future!