Wednesday 13 January 2010

VSF British Air Boat

Good evening,

A while back Andy Gorman gave me his excellent VSF 20mm army, including this splendid scratch built Air Boat. Balsa, card and cleverness. Brilliant, in fact!




Well, seeing as HaT have brought out a naval Gardener Gun, complete with deck mount, I thought 'Cool. I'll add a couple of them to the Air Boat'.

I picked up a box from Stan last night (any Kiwi gamers who are after 20mm plastics at a great price, contact him!) and have started to pull some things together...



First up, I had to crew the gun, so I grabbed a left over sprue of the HaT Colonial Artillery and swapped their heads for the spare naval heads that come with the Gardener Gun (the result of which looks a little odd close up, but I'm hoping they'll look a little more natural with a coat of paint), along with the Heliograph Operator from the Gattling Gun sprue. I'm going to put him in a crow's nest on the forward mast. Cool idea, thanks Stan!

The Gardener Gunners also had their heads swapped. It is interesting to note that the mount is not quite tall enough for the gun's crank handle to meet the gunners hand, so I've mounted the mounts on some spare crew bases. The guns themselves will be mounted atop the bridge, to which I will add a solid railing.


I'm also thinking of mounting one of the officers with a telescope atop the bridge as well. I'll have to see how crowded it becomes first.

Isn't it funny how easily wargamers are distracted from one item to the next, before the former is completed! :-)

Nick

9 comments:

  1. Totally agree with comments relating to project progression...I am subject to this as well. Nice comment about Stan too, he does a great service.

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  2. Yeah, he's a good bloke! Have you seen his dolly room? Packed to the rafters with plastic goodness!

    Nick

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  3. Hey Nick. :-) Glad to see you're chilling and getting to do your rainy day stuff (sigh at the rain). These machines look fantastic - seems like the planning and sourcing is more fun than painting! Hope you're getting some games in too. Anyhow - just wanted to say hi, happy new year n stuff, TP :-)

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  4. Hi Tracie,

    Thanks for the message. I keep procrastinating with the steam tank - I've got some delicate surgery to do on the deck that could end badly if my blade slips!

    Back to work next week - Syndicate Meeting on Monday, a seminar thingie Wednesday Thursday and staff meeting on Friday. Ho humm.

    Still, I've got the tables set out. Not as easy as it might seem, these ones are octagonal - I had to very carefully measure where I wanted the centre one to go before putting the rest about it!

    Still got five computers in the room, still got to figure out how to hook the listening post up to one of them (I've run out of power points!) and I have even set up a new class blog. room2ola.blogspot.com.

    Sorry to say that I won't be teaching Phoebe reading this year, but I'm trying to get to take the Year 2's for maths (otherwise I won't see 2/3rds of my class for 2/3rds of each day!), so...we'll see.

    We may even be reducing the number of browsing boxes to one per reading group, so that'll cut down the number of books to sort out when it comes time to put them away. Indeed, if I can get into the routine of putting the spares away each day, I might even be able to keep on top of it all. Maybe.

    See you next Tuesday week. I'll even bring in the tank if I've got it finished!

    Nick

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  5. Sounds good. I can't beleive it's all over - summer could have at least turned up. That's a great idea to have group boxes - on so many levels! I plan to help with maths instead this term anyway - it's earlier in the day and an area "someone" might need some extra support Definitely bring in the tank! Had a giggle about you measuring the centre of the desks - perfect symetry and juniors - really? lol. I hope this week (tomorrow!!!) is not too painful returning to work for you! I'm not going back to work til after Tuesday AND I haven't done the next grant applications yet - eek. It's just I'm so GOOD at the holidays! I would make such a good lotto winner... See you soon :-)

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  6. Ah, grants.

    Room 2 needs an interactive white board!

    Nick

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  7. Bringing Victorian SciFi to 1/72? Excellent!

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  8. Well, I'm trying! It's very slow work when one is so easily distracte...squirrel!

    Nick

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