I experimented with a video - not sure that I want to do it every month but here goes:
Peter gave out information about the first club show of the year - Southern Expo in Hornchurch -. Unfortunately, the passes for club members hadn't arrived but wear your Clacton polo shirt and you will get in fine. Once this was sorted, we started round the table.
Firstly, a little bit of an apology. There was so much of interest on the table that I ran out of time to do my usual photographic stunt of taking 5 images of each model, all with a difference focus point, and then merging the five into on image where the whole model is in focus. This takes a lot of time but I had to revert to taking a single image of each model. I hope to revert back to the high quality method next month.
The Table
Colin comes first with his nice little Airfix 1/72nd scale Spitfire F24. The kit is actually an F22 but Colin has made the conversion. You can check out the way he did this by looking at his new "Member's Article" on the web site.
Newcomer (at least to me) Les Airey was up next which is where the "rave from the grave" comes in. Les has indulged himself by making up two kits that have been in his stash for many years. First up is a Frog kit that he bought in 1963 for 6/- (that is six shillings or 30p in new money). This is a 1/500th scale model of an old favourite - H.M.S. Exeter (of Battle of the River Plate fame). He is proud of this but admits that he should have used white covered wire for the rigging as the black stands out a bit too much.
His other offering is quite new by the above standards - a Revell kit from 1993 of a Vosper MTB in 1/72nd scale.
JIm Smetherham has moved on from modelling Skoda car keys (bad joke from a few years ago). His two efforts today were very different. One was a sturdy Airfix 1/72nd DeHavilland Vampire (which I think is a T11) in bare metal.
The other was quite dramatic. It is a Meng F102 Delta Dagger. Jim had some trouble with the undercarriage and the pitot tube on the nose. He solved one with a piece of cocktail stick and the other with some fluffed up cotton wool!
Bill Banks continues he great efforts on 1/72nd scale aircraft. This time we have a Frog/Novo BAC Lightning F6. Bill says that he doesn't like painting all over silver so will be doing a couple more of these in other finishes.
Bill's second effort raised a few jocular remarks - along the lines of "we don't want any Argy stuff here". Of course, this isn't the case as we are pleased to a see aircraft of record on the table of all types and finishes. The aircraft involved was an Airfix 1/72nd scale Dassault Super Etendard of the Argentine Navy.
Arthur Banyard is still working away at the Royal Air Force from his time there. This time we had two of very different sizes - but both Hawker Hunters. First was a 1/48th scale Academy F6 which Arthur had modified with an Aeroclub cockpit, tail cone and undercarriage.
The second couldn't be any different. It was a full camo FGA9 but from Revell in 1/144th scale. I have quite a little collection of 1/144th but have never made one of these. I must get one!
Crispen Block, as usual, was beavering away all night on a new kit of his that I hadn't seen before. The box was huge so goodness knows how big the model is going to be. Welcome here to a Trumpeter 1/48th scale U-Boot! This is U552 - a Type VIIC type boat. All I got in the way of images were two pages of the manual. Hopefully, we will see more of the model in months to come.
JohnOvenden was up next with an extremely well presented diorama for France 1944/45. This was based on a Great North Road diorama base with an AFVClub Churchill AVRE and some Masterbox infantry. Very nice! He did explain that he had to make a new barrel for the Churchill as the Carpet Monster got the kit one!
I was amazed when John Rose arrived with only a small box in his hands. John normally fills the table with something spectacular. However, he had restrained himself this month and had brought along a nice little piece of work in progress (WIP). The kit in question was a Takon M3 CDL. What is a CDL? This is a standard M3 with a new turret. The turret contains some extremely bright lights and the intention was to kill the night vision of the enemy when opposing a river crossing, for instance. The kit version was only used for practice so never had any real action.
To general agreement, he complained about the complexity in new armour kits. As an example, he showed one suspension unit which had 21 parts! It did move very nicely, though.
Peter Carlo had a pair of Soviet era hardware. One was a (excuse me if I get these old codes wrong) 9K37 M1 BUK. Evidently, when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine told Russia that they were keeping the equipment on their soil so this one is for the Ukrainian Air Defence.
The second was an Russian SA4 GANEF 2K11 KRUG! Please note that both of these stretch my photo booth to its limits!
Geoff Woods tells me that he has recently retired so we can see him most months and that he is back to making figurines on a regular basis now. Only to the good for the club! He brought along three Young Miniatures busts - all 1/10th. I have done a lot of these so know how good they are.
Firstly, we have an "Arabian Knight" (no pun there then!).
Secondly, a Roman Officer
Thirdly, a vicious looking pirate captain called Edward Leach.
His last figure is a pike man from the English Civil war - "Long Road To Naseby"! There was some discussion about the length of the pike (I couldn't get it all in the photo). It must have been terrifying to be confronted with such a weapon.
Lastly, we have two armoured vehicles by the master - Jeff Adams. He won two golds at the MAFVA show last year and not only got medals but also two kits where is where these came from. Firstly, there is a Dragon 1/35th scale VorPanzer - an up-armoured Panzer IV made specially for the Russian front. This is nicely presented in winter camouflage.
There was a short discussion about the current pricing of kits when Jeff pointed out that the Panzer IV is currently in excess of £50 on EBay whilst the other kit is on Hannants at £29.99! The other kit is an Italeri SturmTiger. Jeff's opinion is that there is little to choose between the two kits (but the Dragon box is still full when you have finished!). He also acquired an etched brass mask from "Ushi Van Rosten" which is used to create random colour changes on the body of the tank. It came out very nicely on this one. I think that I prefer the Italeri kit. I liked it so much that I used it as the featured kit on my turntable later in the blog.
Lastly, there are my two contributions. I didn't get time to photograph these at the club so they were taken afterwards. Gobsaki is a resin Goblin from a kit by Dark Star. I painted some of this a couple of years ago and then was told by my wife to "get on and finish it". I had to buy a set of Andrea green paints to get the shadows right but there it is. The tartan on the handles was quite difficult to do but I have done Scottish Napoleonics before now so I have some experience.
The other item was a sole example on the table - a Revell 1/25th scale Chevrolet Corvette C7 in full racing trim. This was a nice kit to make and was painted up using Zero One paints. The problem with these is that they cannot be painted using a brush so it is impossible to touch up using this range. I did mention that this was the Revell Germany version. Evidently, the US Revell packaging had inferior decals - strange.
Lastly, this time I managed to find my turntable in time so, picking a random model from the table, here is the result.
Finally, can I remind you that all images here and on the web site can be enlarged by double clicking on them. Secondly, for a better mobile phone experience, instead of going to the Clacton Web Site, you should point your browser at http://www.ipmsclactonmobile.co.uk
