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!

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!

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...

Hectic life

Last week, we started refurbishing the kitchen and this has cut heavily into the time (and motivation) I can spare for miniatures. Last night, I got to do the first bit of miniature-related activity in a week, when I slapped the second belly-coat onto the Dorniers. For all I know, it might be another week before I can get anything else done! Additionally, a side project is sneaking time away from the Dorniers. A separate thread is being updated on this and will be posted once the project is complete.

Just prior to starting work on the kitchen, I posted the BtH2 Lite after action report to the Lardies Yahoo Group, and found response pretty positive. Unfortuneately, I have not been able to spare the time to reply there yet - though I hope to get it done before the weekend.

Belly up: Given the second coat, Vallejo 906 Pale Blue. Next will be the first top coat.

Activity will likely be low for the next month or so, until the kitchen is completed.

Tally Ho!

Finally, an opportunity to playtest Bag the Hun 2 Lite: Battle of Britain presented itself! Packing all the required components, I drove over to one of my friends and played a simple scenario. This was a test of both the scenario and the revised "Lite" rules and game aids.

The scenario was set early in the morning, with the sun coming out of the upper left side of the hexes. Playing the Luftwaffe, Tor set up the red bogeys while I played the RAF with the blue bogeys.

The Do17z is starting the game with a damaged engine and trying to exit the far edge of the table.

Six Luftwaffe bogeys make up three rottes on the far end of the table. One of these rottes is made up out of dummies (the image is wrong, the red bogeys were rearranged into three rottes before game start).

Six RAF bogeys make up two Vics heading to locate and intercept the bomber. One of the Vics have lost a man due to "engine trouble" before game start, this formation has a dummy marker to complete the Vic.

On a bright, sunny morning over the green fields of south east England, five Hurricanes head east to locate and shoot down a Dornier that got separated from its squadron during a dawn raid. It should be a milk run. Unknown to the RAF pilots, however, the bomber is not alone - watch out for the "Hun in the Sun"...

   

After a rules introduction, the first turn went so smoothly that I forgot to take pictures! At the start of turn 3, we decided to auto-reveal the bomber and dummy bomber as chasing and spotting them turned out to be very hard for the RAF. In future versions of the scenario, the bomber will start revealed in the middle of the table.

The Dornier made a beeline for the table edge, with Red Section trying to catch up. Suddenly the radio crackled to life, as two Me109Es were spotted just before passing the section. "We've got company, boys!" Blue Section responded by going into an easy left turn, positioning it to intercept the just spotted German fighters. Gelb Rotte moved to retain its position in the sun and remained undetected by the RAF fighters.

"Red Leader to Red Two. Blue Section will handle enemy fighters. Stay on my wing - we are going for the bomber. Tally Ho!" As red section firewalled the throttle, they fell in on the Do17zs tail. Red leader opened up on the bomber, damaging one of its wings just as tracers shot over his canopy from the bogeys on his tail.

Meanwhile, the Grün Rotte leader called "Indianer!" over the radio and in a series of sharp turns got onto Blue Leader's tail. Realizing he was outmatched, Blue Leader pulled into a loop to shake the pursuers - unfortuneately, the only planes he managed to loose were his wingmen. Loosing sight of their leader, they moved straight ahead.

Red Leader panicked and overshot the bomber, while cannon fire from the tailing bogeys poured into his and his wingman's aircraft. Sparks and glass flew everywhere as the canopy and cockpit of Red Leader exploded around him, miraculously leaving him unhurt. As the tracers caught up with Red Two, smoke began to pour from its engine. The Dornier front gunner opened fire on the Hurricanes, only to have the machine gun jam.

In desperation, Blue Leader managed to complete his loop while the experienced Grün Rotte leader easily stayed on his tail and fired long bursts of accurate cannon fire into the Hurricane. A ruptured fuel line caused a fine mist to trail the aircraft as Blue Leader's luck finally ran out. Wounded by machine gun fire, the strain of the sustained gees from the loop became too much for him and he blacked out. Slumped over the stick, his unconcious body forced the plane into a diving turn.

Blue Leader's plane remained in its wobbling dive while Blue 2 belatedly attempted to engage the Huns. A hard turn moved him around the Germans. Grün Schwarm calmly let go of its prey and pulled into an extremely tight turn with slats deployed, turning the tables on Blue 2.

As Blue 3 moved to relieve the battered Red Section, things looked very bleak for the RAF fighters. The Dornier had gotten away. Blue Leader was dead or dying, his aircraft damaged and heading for the ground. Blue 2 was completely outclassed by the German veteran Rottenfürer of Grün Rotte, and barring a miracle it would only be a question of time before he was shot down too. Red Section was chased by an as-yet unseen enemy, which mercilessly poured cannon fire into their Hurricanes. Red 2's engine could seize at any moment, and Red Leader's aircraft was limping home with a shattered cockpit - easy prey.

Expecting the rookie pilot in Blue 3 to single-handedly get the RAF back into the fight against four able Luftwaffe pilots seemed a tall order. Yes, things looked very bleak for the RAF pilots - very bleak indeed!

At this point, we called the game due to time. A thoroughly enjoyable scrap! The game aids and revised Bag the Hun Lite: Battle of Britain-rules made the flow very smooth, despite Tor never having seen or read the rules before and this being only the second game of Bag the Hun i have ever played.

Tor is a delight to game with, and has extensive experience with both a multitude of board games and designing his own games. This made his feedback on the "Lite" rules invaluable. Several suggestions were recorded, many of them detailing the design of the game aids.

All in all, this game gave me both more input to refine the "Lite" version of BtH even further as well as the motivation to do so. Bag the Hun 2 seems to me fundamentally right in its mechanics, probabilities and feel, though as they stand I found them pretty hard to game with.

The difference between my first game (using the regular BtH2 rules) and this game (using BtH2 Lite: BoB) was enormous - the first game was very difficult to play at all, while in the second game the self-made game aids and revised shooting and damage mechanisms made playing the game a breeze.

 It would feel fabulous if my version and game aids can make this excellent game accesible to the more, er, casual crowd of miniature wargamers - and I will as previously suggested by Laffe certainly make sure to contact the game designers with this in mind once I feel game testing and refining of the "Lite" rules is complete.

Now I feel like I can safely invest some more time into the project, though the "Lite" rules certainly seem more than good enough to get some more games in as they currently stand.

Forging ahead

So, after the previous day, I had a bowl full of Dorniers with magnets attached. The bowl is one of my trusty tools of the trade - I use it to store miniatures and bits during assembly.

 Step 5: Add water and a drop of dishwashing detergent. A quick scrub with an old toothbrush later, the planes no longer have that slightly oily feel to them any more, they feel smooth and dry.

 Step 6: Primer. Using the Vallejo 601 Grey Primer, I gave all the planes a quick coat on the belly. After finishing the last one, the first ones had dried and I could flip them over and paint the top on all as well. The rudders have not been painted, the result of experience from my prototype run - they will be used as handholds and only painted once the rest of the aircraft is completely done.

Close-up of the primer coat. The painting technique that I have adopted over the years uses a minimum of three coats - the primer, the base coat and the highlighting coat. Each coat is applied just once, and will not give a solid, uniform colour - yet the layers of this effect give a quite pleasant "weathering" in my opinion. Plus it goes fast!

Step 6: Colour re-enters the blog! Ah, so it's greyblue, what did you expect? Belly base coat, Vallejo 943 Grey Blue.

As you can see, the emphasis is on speed, not achieving a uniform coat. The final coat will combine with this one to give the desired effect.

That is it for today! Due to the number and size of the aircraft, each step takes a while to complete. In addition, I have started work on a side project to the Battle of Britain and keep photos of this filed - these will be posted later.



Fallen off the face of the earth...

Good, old real life got me good and has kept me away from the keyboard for the past two weeks. First a bout of illness, then a business trip. The most sad result was that the scheduled game was cancelled due to illness, so no after action report for now - better luck next time!

With RL matters resolved, I finally got back on the horse over the past few days. Here is an update on progress on the Dorniers! The poor buggers have really been neglected lately, as most of my available time has been spent finishing the rules revision and preparing game aids.

Bagged: The Dorniners arrived from Museum Miniatures in individual ziplock bags, all contained in a single, large bag of the same kind. 

 Ziplock bags seems like an industry standard, and is all the protection the miniatures get. Or need, really.

 Step 1: After unpacking the beauts, they were brought over to a friend's house where the evening was spent watching Live at the Apollo stand-up comedy with some pals and removing molding lines with a file. The molding lines on these miniatures were very small and neat - still, the painter in me has to smooth them over. Molding lines showing through the paint of a finished model still gives me the creeps. Earlier in my modelling career, I used to trim off lines using a scalpel - some years ago I purchased a file to use instead and never looked back. A file is faster, cleaner and offers less risk of inadvertent bloodshed.

 Step 2: Drilling the guiding hole for the magnet, using a pin vise and a 1 mm drill bit. The magnets are 3 mm in diameter, and I have found that whenever drilling holes with a diameter over 1 mm a guiding hole is more or less required to avoid completely mangling the miniature or misaligning the hole.

 As I wrote previously, the center of gravity was smack bang in the middle of the bomb bay doors, so that's where the hole went. If nothing else, it made lining up the drill bit very easy.

Seriously?

 Step 3: Seriously! My decrepit Einhell of Bavaria fitted with a 3 mm drill bit may look more like a torture implement than a miniature tool, yet it gets the job done - quickly. The guide hole is absoultely essential to avoid the drill bit dancing all over the miniature, making horrible marks in the process (been there, done that, as it were). In later posts, you will invariably see me vainly referring to this yellow monstrosity as my "Dremel."

Step 4: A 3mm super magnet is superglued into the hole. These magnets are from Supermagneten and measure, if I recall correctly, 3 mm in diameter and 1 mm in height. They have enough power to keep at the least a Do17z attached to its flying base. After some mishaps using my standard, metal modelling tools when trying to fit these magnets, I finally started using the (wooden) handle of an old paint brush instead - which put an end to the annoyance of having tiny super magnets soaked with super glue flying out of their holes all the time.

Comments on Supermagneten will come in a later post, for now suffice to say that I am very pleased with both their products and service.

The most exciting bit (or terrifying) is ensuring that the magnets are all lined up correctly. These babies are small, and having the stack attached to an already correctly aligned magnet does wonders for my peace of mind. Still, I never quite trust that I got them right until I have tested the magnets once the glue has dried completely. One of these days, I will likely manage to glue a magnet in upside down, and I keep wondering what I will do to get it back out...

Imagine these puppies on flight stands bombing your dudes! Next step will be a quick rinse in soap water to remove mold release agents before undercoating.

A lot of grey pictures, which is precisely the reason why preparing the miniatures for painting is the part I enjoy the least about the hobby... Thankfully, I enjoy painting quite a bit, so finishing this stage is always rewarding.

Do17z palette

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Well, Christmas weekend has passed, and so has the bout of fever that kept me from the keyboard the 23rd.

After finishing the prototype Dornier, I realized that the two-tone camo scheme was not sufficiently, uh, two-tone. Particularily after applying varnish, the two colurs I had chosen (Vallejo 894 Russian Green and 896 Extra Dark Green) were almost impossible to discern from one another. Sulking over and denying this for the first few days, I had already realised that I had to re-paint one of the colours on top of the varnish. Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down and do something about it.

It took some experimenting with tones of green, I finally settled on changing out the 894 Russian Green for 830 German Fieldgrey WW2. The entire top half of the model was then re-varnished.

When painting the 830 on top of the 894, I knew I was right to re-paint - I had to pull up an image with the camo pattern, as I could hardly see the pattern on the model! Now, the miniature looks more like the on-line reference images I found and the camo patern is clearly visible. Much better!

With this detail out of the way, I was able to start working on the remaining 11 models in earnest, and am currently cleaning them of moulding lines.

The final palette for Battle of Britain Luftwaffe bombers (all Vallejo):

• 943 Grey Blue - Belly base coat
• 906 Pale Blue - Belly top coat
• 979 German Camo Dark Green - Top base coat
• 830 German Field Grey WWII - Top, well, top coat
• 896 Extra Dark Green - Camo pattern
• 907 Pale Greyblue - Canopy

For the Do17z, I also decided on white propeller spinners, using 907 Pale Greyblue.

Vallejo is currently my paint manufacturer of choice, I'll come back to the reasons why in a later post.
http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/gb/index.html

Dornier prototype done

Yesterday, I was able to sit down for a while in the evening and add decals and varnish to my prototype Do17z. Painting of this was done parallell to applying decals and varnish to the previously posted Spitfires. The plane was first undercoated with grey primer.

There are always some snags to be worked out whenever painting a new kind of miniature, so I find it valuable to paint up a prototype before embarking on the entire uit. This allows me to test the colours and streamline the process - nothing is worse than having started on, say, ten models and gotten halfway through when you realise that the level of detail you have settled on is far to high, resulting in the models being ready to game in months rather than days or weeks. Or at all, for that matter... The prototype also serves as a sort of "master copy" when painting the rest, being referenced to for details, camo pattern, decal positions, etc.

In a field of flowers... Belly up, you can see the rear gun position between the engines. When painting my aircraft, I use a technique where I paint the first coat in a darker colour than intended, then add a second layer with the actual colour I desire. This has the effect of adding some depth and variation to the colour. The belly was painted Saturday evening.

End status saturday, having also finished the base colour and canopy. Painting this size of aircraft was a new challenge. For the single-engine fighters, the magnet for the flying base has been sufficiently strong to keep the model in position while painting. As you can see, the Do17z was neatly perched in a level position on its magnet, though holding it sideways or upside down, as I could do with the fighters, was out of the question. As a result, I had to retain a hold of some part of the model while painting, which is why the rudders are rubbed bare. These were completed only after all other painting was done, including the camouflage pattern. Using the rudders as a handle was combined with a lot of nervous handling of the bare paintwork, something with which I have never become comfortable. This begets the question "So, how does one paint a bomber?"

Very, very carefully.

Sunday, I got to finish the camo pattern. This was done without much research, as several model aircraft and colour schematics that turned up on Google image search sported this pattern. As a very practical-minded fellow in a forum once said of painting historical miniatures, "If you think it looks good and it bears even a passing resemblance to any reference material, you should not accept criticism from anyone". The argument did run deeper than that, yet I'll probably make that the subject of a later post!

There are a couple of notes to this stage. First, you might have noticed that I have filled in one pane on the canopy. This was because images showed that this pane was actually a panel where (probably) the radio antenna was attached. When painting the canopy, I did have some trouble matching the model up with images from the web, although I decided that at 1/300 who is gonna notice? Or care? :)

Second, the pattern was simplified somewhat. The area around the canopy is rather fiddly to paint, so I decided to avoid painting the pattern in this area. The same goes for the engine cowlings. Seeing as the rudders were painted on after the camo pattern was completed, there is no pattern on them either. At this scale, I found that I could hardly justify the extra work on these fiddly bits and I honestly think it does not detract from the model at all.

Wednesday, model done! Decals and varnish applied. Low-viz balkenkreuz on top, high-viz on flanks and below. I wound up aligning the flank decals by eye (sigh) and the top ones using the shaft of my scalpel for side-to-side positioning (measured from wingtips) as well as a highly visible line in the wing for front-to-back positioning.

Here are some more corners that I decided to cut for the benefit of my sanity. The engine cowlings are, from all reference I have found, really supposed to have the belly colour on their lower half. This solution, however, looks quite all right and saves me those horrible dreams at night to boot. The same goes for the bottom of the rudders.

Balkenkreuz positioning was fairly straightforward - no clearly visible lines to assist in placement, so the distance from the engine to the decal was found using my square file whereas the front-to-back alignment was done by eye.

Again, the alluring profile of "der Fliegender Bleistift"... mm-hmm!

One down, one bag to go (good grief!). Eleven Dorniers later, I will either be bombing England or spend a few days in my happy place before being fit to speak with other human beings again. Yes, kids, miniature painting brings its own set of occupational hazards. Small wonder it feels so great when one finishes a model :)

Once the unit is finished, I will dig out my digital camera (as opposed to my cell phone camera) and try to get some high-quality shots.

Delivery from Canada - HOTZ gaming mat

Today's post was originally going to be on something dreary, like the flat, drab colour collection used for my daylight RAF aircraft. Instead, fortune (or the mailman) ensured that it will instead be on something rather exciting - the flat, drab felt mat mailed to me from Canada!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you want this. HOTZ mats - brand of excellence.

HOTZ mats has a friendly if somewhat quirky web page (http://www.hotzmats.com/), and while navigating it and getting the information I needed was easy, it kind of lacks that comforting pat-on-the-back-feel. Both times I have ordered there, I have collected my information from the site, located the correct product and felt confident that I have everything set up right - and yet, just before hitting the purchase-button, I got that "You'd  better be sure about this one, you only have one chance to get it right you know"-feeling. That being said, the order confirmation contained the right product both times (which made me feel a whole lot better).

At the least one U. S. supplier's web site complained bitterly of the delivery problems they had with this manufacturer, that is, Eric Hotz. What they have been experiencing I cannot really say, perhaps Hotz prioritizes direct orders to his website over orders from other stores. In any case, this is my second HOTZ mat, and in both instances ordrering has been painless and delivery quick.

In this particular case, the ordrer was placed November 24th (a Thursday), order confirmation came November 27th (a Sunday!) and delivery was yesterday, December 20th. Considering that the order listed five weeks expected delivery time, that this is (as far as I have gathered) a hand-made product from a one-man operation and that the product has been shipped overseas from Canada to Norway (we're not even in the EU), I cannot be anything but delighted with the way this purchase turned out.

It is huge! The thing makes a mockery of our five-stone dinner table. WIP Do17z placed for scale.

This particular mat is a so-called "full-size" (72 x 42 inches) with the European Fields pattern and a 1.5 inch hex grid, and it looks beautiful. Having gamed on a similar though smaller mat before, I can certainly support Hotz's claim that the grid is very functional yet subtle enough to not interfere with the visual impression. Price, including air mail, came to just below 70 USD. While that is certainly an investment, it is certainly not enough to have me worried. With regards to value for money, it just cannot be beat as far as I am concerned. 70 bucks for (more or less) all the terrain you are ever going to need for the game? Count me in.

All that remains now is to iron it to remove the creases and then find a permanent storage solution. The plan is to get a short, wooden staff - the kind used for curtains - and roll the mat around it, then stuff it into a cloth bag that I will ask my wife (very nicely) to make for me. That should protect it from wrinkles, nicks and abrasion, while at the same time being an easy format to store and transport - particularily if I add a sling to the bag. Some sort of storage will be required at any rate, and I will make certain to post once it is ready.

Well, that certainly is a motivation to finish the quick-reference sheets and other game-aids for BTH2! Christmas coming up fast, so I'll have to see if I cannot manage to squeeze in a visit to a book store and get a hold of some coloured cardboard before the weekend...