Posts made by DMcLaren

Hmm… can’t find the edit post icon. I forgot to mention that the 6 sided dice by each flight stand is there to show the airspeed of the aircraft it sits behind.

Not a true A&A variant, but I came across a game called “Check Your 6!” while researching paint schemes for our AA aircraft and quickly realized we could use our A&A aircraft pieces (we’d already painted & added magnets to them for the aircraft carriers) for the game if we could get suitable flight stands. I googled flight stands for the game and found easy to make Lego stands made from clear round pieces and a radar dish with an acorn nut superglued on top to allow the aircraft to show flight attitude as well as altitude (banking, climbing, diving). The first picture of our test scenario doesn’t have the later added numbers and arrows on the bases to more easily determine which piece goes with each aircraft’s movement & score sheet. The second picture has the better view of the numbered stands. Pictured on the stands in the 2nd picture are, from left to right, a Historical Board Gaming Me-109E (air intake painted in) with some 109E’s from Shapeways that came too small, but some MiscMini decals made them look good. I used the yellow number sheet from I-94 and the tank insignia for the direction arrow. I bought a 4ft x 6ft hex map with 1.5 inch hexes from HotzMats and it was game on. White pipe cleaners represent airftame damage and black represent engine damage. We played a game over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and we all had a lot of fun.

Ok, this is odd. Today at work, not signed in, I could see everything. Here at home I’m signed in on my desktop PC and can’t see the pictures…

@djensen THANK YOU so much! For both the compliment and getting the pictures to show. I saw your post about adding something to a line of code, and I’m not ashamed to admit I had no idea what you were talking about. I like the way this new forum displays the photos, too. Much larger and easier to see.

In the Customizations section, thread titled “Custom carriers from OOB’s and painted pieces”. There should be a lot of pictures in the post and I don’t see them.

Is that why I can’t see the pictures I’ve uploaded? Will they eventually migrate here?

Finished the last 2 Mosquitoes to make 10 for the UK.  We rarely build more than that with the UK, so I’m hoping 10 will be enough.  With 2 exceptions, they’re all painted to resemble aircraft that really flew.  The desert camo isn’t historically accurate and carries my initials.

Since the transports are done, I wanted shots of them separated into two groups based on which sculpt they started as to see the mods easier.  Here they are- the group based on the Pacific sculpts with an un-modded, primed red sculpt, and the group based on the 1941 sculpts with a black plastic piece I got on sale from HBG for a dime or 15 cents.  Edit to add:  I almost forgot to mention- one painted sculpt in each picture is not modded.

I don’t recall what the name of this first ship is, but I do know it’s another merchant raider.  Edit to add: the top of the center house is from a German cruiser.  If I get the right name I’ll edit the post later.  The second group is a set of transports to go with the Fleet of Fog camo set.

This one is loosely based on the Yasukuni Maru and is sort of a kit bash piece.  It’s got the top of a Baltic timber Ship (French transport) sculpt for the pilot house and deck guns taken from the same French sculpt.  Taller smoke stack and the 2 pillar crane are also added.  Pretty close to the base ship.

The transports are all done and I was able to get some pictures together, so here they are.  This one is labeled Heian Maru, but I’m not sure the name is right.  It’s a sister ship to the Hokoku Maru shown earlier, and a merchant raider as well.  It started as a '41 sculpt, with cranes from a first edition transport, German tank barrel for a smoke stack, and some vents made of putty to round out the putty built pilot house.

These look incredible!

If you’re willing to settle for 1/600 scale rather than the proper 500 scale, this is a pretty amazing site that has everything (link to page w/ Chinese roundels): https://www.flightdeckdecals2400.com/1-600asia-australia

http://www.i-94enterprises.com/products/decals-setting-solution/decal-scans/

Scroll down to “MI Series” and look for MI 106 - that sheet has the Chinese markers for the AVG you’re looking for.

Back on June 9, FJO and I drove from the Detroit area down to Dayton, Ohio for some gaming with Check Your 6! Gaming, where we met some great people and painters, and played “Check Your 6!” with Dave Winfree, owner of I-94 Enterprises (my rookie Me-109 pilot shot down two of his RAF Defiants  :-D).  Dave also brought a lot of merchandise for sale, and FJO picked up some more tiny aircraft from GHQ, and a cool transport sculpt called the Aden Maru. It’s 1/2400 scale, same as the transports and subs in this game.  One neat thing about GHQ stuff like ships is that if they have separate pieces that need to be glued in, they come with extras of those pieces.  So of course FJO had to use them, and the Karishima Maru was the perfect fit.  It has extensive mods just about everywhere- smokestack with funnel vents (whatever those are called) on a built up stern, French transport guns on the bow, deck guns fore and aft of the boathouse, depth charges on the stern, and if I recall, a Liberty ship boathouse modded up in the middle.  The extra GHQ large and small cranes in the rear and FJO’s built crane in front finish up the mods.

I’ve been re-doing some German aircraft I originally did 4-5 years ago or so, and just finished putting magnets in the Desert Luftwaffe, so I thought I’d share some pictures.  For the desert Me-109’s machine guns, I drew them with the .005 pen on a section of a Dom’s Decal sheet that didn’t have decal printed on it so I could get them uniform, then cut them and applied them after the ink had dried, giving liberal applications of MicroSol to finish.  I hate the tail wings on the sculpt so I took a file to them and shaped them correctly before I painted them.  You can see their shape better in the top pic, right middle (yellow flaps).  I also wanted the desert planes to look more like Me-109E’s so I squared off the wing tips.

A few more from Combined Fleet- the IJN Bangkok Maru and the IJN Shinyo Maru.  These have too many mods to mention:

The Hokoku Maru was a merchant raider with a very interesting history available here: http://www.combinedfleet.com/Hokoku_t.htm.  We were looking for camo patterns to go with the IJN camo fleet pieces and this was the first we came across.  After reading it’s history, FJO had to do it.  The camo pattern posed a bit of a challenge while painting, and there are extensive modifications to the piece.  Comparing the finished piece to the references, I think he nailed it.

I think there are now 12-14 Japanese transports done, some as submarine tenders and oilers.  They’re all from Combinedfleet.com, a great history site with old pictures and tabular records of movement of each ship in the IJN.  These two received some Me-109 landing gear as vent/funnels and putty mods.  The San Pedro Maru started as a '41 sculpt I got from HBG and got a smoke stack on the aft deck with the funnels along with fore deck guns from a french transport, and the Santos Maru started as a Pacific '40 2nd Ed piece.  The '41 sculpt has the molded-in windows filled with putty to make a better painting canvas for a more accurate depiction of the San Pedro Maru.  The Santos Maru has an extensively modified deck and pilot house with a smoke stack and funnel vents.

If you use Testor’s enamel, no need to prime.  I’ve got sets of Hawker Hurricanes, Spitfire Mk 1a’s, and ME-109E’s painted up with enamels and dull coated.  No problems at all.