Historicon 2017 Purchases I – Sarissa Waco Glider

As in my previous post where I’ve told myself that after every convention I’m going to write a report, I also promise myself that I’m going to finish everything I acquired before I move on to something else. This too has never happened, however I’m going to try very hard to make that happen this time. Considering my relative minimum purchases, this should be an achievable goal.

Here’s the first build/paint from my Historicon haul – the 28mm Waco Glider from Sarissa Precision. This was a pretty straight forward build, although I should have paid attention to lessons from the past and scored some of the paper parts before folding them. I added some card stock in a few locations to cover up some of the slots and tabs.

The paint job consisted of an overall color of olive drab and hand painted invasion stripes on the wings and rear fuselage. The orders for pre-Overlord invasion stripes didn’t come to troop carrying units until June 3rd, so needless to say many of these jobs were rushed. I’ve seen photographs of varying quality of these, so I marked mine out and painted them by hand to give the effect of an “average” job. Decals are from my stash.

Warlord Anti-Tank Obstacles

A few years ago my friend John asked me to be his ringer – a back up player in case of an odd number of participants – for a Bolt Action tournament he was running at either Fall In or Cold Wars…I don’t remember. Anyway I ended up playing and for my participation I was given this very cool Warlord Anti-Tank Obstacles box. Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I finally finished it up. The Dragon’s Teeth are mounted on 40mm squares to make them “modular”.

Sarissa Precision Radar Station Build

After reading these posts on the Too Fat Lardies blog here and here, I decided to take some inspiration (steal ideas) and build my Sarissa Radar Station. Here’s what I came up with.

The Lardies mounted their station on a hexagonal base that was made of carved foam. Knowing how bad I am with foam work, I decided to design my base using Tinkercad and print it using my Printrbot Play. It’s hard to see in this picture, but this print has some very bad horizontal banding (for those that know anything about 3D printing it was caused by a sinusoidal heat fluctuation in the hot end) however it ended up being a happy accident as it kinda gives the effect of marks left by a concrete form.

I mounted the hex to a rectangular base and covered the horizontal surfaces with sand.

Prior to assembly, I traced the outer ring of the dish and the roof of the shack onto some card stock to use to cover the seams where some of the parts join.

Construction of the building was straight forward. Before adding the roof, I painted the interior and added a map, propaganda poster and a calendar to the walls. In hindsight this was a waste as you really can’t see into the building.

After the framework of the dish was built I added some mesh using some sort of nylon that probably came from a bag of mints from a wedding. I don’t know what it’s called, but the material is pretty common.

To complete the dish I glued some styrene strips along the interior frames and capped the outside with the trimmed card stock ring.

Before mounting the building I wanted to finish the base so I added a few things from the parts bin – a box, drum and a bicycle from Dixon.

Here are a few shots of the finished base.

And here’s the finished piece. The voltage warning signs are printed images from online, mounted on the scrap pieces that came out of the window panes and the railing is a bent paperclip (both ideas stolen from the Lardies). The steps are from Grandt Line.

This was a fun little build of a unique subject and I’m really happy with the results. I’d highly recommend the Sarissa kit if you’re in the market for an interesting objective.

German DAK Vehicles – Part II

Took advantage of a gloomy rainy day to put the finishing touches on a Sd.Kfz. 251/1 Ausf. C for my Afrika Korps. This is the Warlord plastic kit that I received for my birthday a few years ago. Markings are from Archer and Warlord.

German DAK Vehicles – Part I

A few weeks ago we started our Mediterranean Bolt Action League at Huzzah. Instead of being smart and playing Americans, an army I can field with zero work, I decided to run DAK, an army I hadn’t even started.

Here are the first group of vehicles I completed. A motorcycle/sidecar combo from Warlord, a Panzer III from Rubicon and Rommel’s 250/3 Greif from Perry. The markings on the 250/3 are from Company B.