WIP1 Hungarian 1st armoured field division

Hi guys 

I need a break from the 21st PD project, so I’m going to reset by doing some vehicles for my Hungarian project, one of my major projects is Stalingrad, with sub projects being the Hungarians, Romanians and 24th Pz Div on the axis side, assault engineers, marines, and an armoured unit (yet to be decided) on the Soviet side. 

So over the last couple of days I printed these for the Hungarian 1st armoured field division, this unit was equipped with 38ts, Pz IV F1s and Gs, and some Pz III Ms, all these tanks were panzer grey, except the PzIIIs, which were in German camo, which is good as I enjoy painting Panzer grey, the soft skins will be the Hungarian 3 tone camo, now I have to do a search to see how many Hungarian decals I have, I may need to source some more. For tank crews I’ll convert various Italian tankers, I have ABs and Orions Italian tankers to work with. 

The PzIV is from Counlane models, I opened some hatches using CAD, some of the Rabas and 38ts are from Wingham Graves, I added some tools to the Raba, and I opened the commanders hatch and replaced the running gear on the 38ts, one of the Rabas is from wargame3D, which is a nice model, but doesn’t have an option for the rear canvas to be down, Windhams is almost as good and they mix well if you adjust the dimensions a little. The Daimler Benz G5 is from thingyverse. 

WIP PzGren Regt 125 halftracks.

 Hi guys

A WIP update on the current 21st PD vehicles on the work bench, hand painted the halftracks camo added decals, chipping and painted tyres and tracks, next up I’ll do a filter, pin wash and dry brush. 

Adding planes to my ground projects

Hi guys  

I bought a thing, most people in hobby circles know me as a builder/collector of WWII ground vehicles and figures, and I haven’t built a plane in 35-40 years, but I have been playing with the idea of adding a couple of planes, 1 fighter and 1 ground attack aircraft to each of my projects, unfortunately this side of the hobby is a whole new knowledge and skill set, so I am on a steep learning curve.

I took a stock take of most of my aircraft kits, half bought over the last few years, the other half bought recently, they have mostly been impulse buys with my ground projects in the back of my mind, but without much research, I’ll undoubtedly pay for this later with planes that don’t quite match their ground units in time periods or AOs, so I’m going to have to be flexible in my accuracy expectations. I need to add more British and US aircraft, but I want to research them a bit more to get the right ones, I only want Brit planes for 1940, North Africa and the far east, and US planes for Normandy and the far east, I’m going to find it tough to gain the knowledge, then source the required decals and paint jobs for specific units, so I’ve decided to stick with the paint jobs/decals supplied in the kits, I’m also going to try and reduce the work load by painting the canopies rather than keeping them clear, which I’m sure in aviation modelling is  taboo but quite common in wargaming.

I’ve started building the first few kits, a mix of French and German, even though they have half the parts as a 1/72 AFV kit, they are taking me longer to put together, and they are a lot more fragile, I’m finding I’m breaking a lot of small parts with my clumsy fingers, I’m wondering if I should replace antennas and such with wire, some of the kits are only designed to be built with wheels down, I’m making all of mine in flight and stowing the wheels can take work, so far I’m less than pleased with my results, but I’ll press on and take pics once the construction is done.