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Topics - ripley

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1
General Discussions / Reply to a FB post re GAZ Quad MG
« on: March 13, 2023, 11:19:47 pm »
Sorry about posting this here but FB and I don't seem to get along , I can read the posts but for some reason FB just refuses to let me respond or comment on anything .
  Sorry John that you found the Quad MG kit to such a PIA . For my part , I found it to be well designed , minimal to zero flash and great instructions  , a whole lot better than most other companies metal kits .  I have to ask , is this your first metal kit ? If so I can understand your frustration , it is not a shake the box kit , you have to test fit and visualize how something that goes on sideways , moves over a couple of things and then turns 180 degrees is going end up looking , But if you take your time it all comes together and looks great






 I ended up mounting the gun on a spare  GAZ truck bed floor so I can remove it to use the truck as transport if needed . Further research , which I always seem to do after the kit is built  ::)  I've found pictures of these guns on building roofs in Russian cities , so I'll have to get another one to mount on one of my 4ground Stalingrad apartments

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General Discussions / Bedford Truck Decals
« on: January 12, 2023, 06:30:16 am »
Anybody have either of the Bedford truck decal sets  ? If so, could you post a picture of them , I want a couple of trucks for my troops but want to be sure it comes with the decals I need .  Its difficult to find aftermarket decals in 1/56 unlike the larger scales

3
General Discussions / Tank Museum Tour UK / Europe
« on: August 20, 2022, 03:51:42 am »
 I planning on going to Europe in the summer of 2023 and want to see / tour the tank museums in Bovington , Saumur , Munster and hopefully Kubinka , as well as the Normandy beaches  before I get too old to travel and walk around a lot asking dumb questions like most tourists . My question , does anyone on the forums know of a good UK travel agent who could arrange this type of tour ? Thank you

4
General Discussions / Otter in resin ?
« on: June 21, 2020, 11:44:05 pm »
 The company who Rubicon got the molds for their French tanks and Citron also had a very nice model of the Otter . Does anyone know if the molds were purchased by someone ? Or does anyone remember the Company name so I can try and find one on E bay . I used to have all the info saved but doing a "spring cleaning " of my saved files , I seem to have deleted it

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Showcase & Gallery / Guilty Pleasures - The Lock Down Version
« on: April 13, 2020, 02:27:12 pm »
Been at home just over 2 weeks now and haven't really got as much hobby done as I thought I would . Might be that there's too much of a good thing going on  ,what  with the ability to sit at the hobby bench  for hours except for meals and naps . But I do find myself being drawn away from time to time by other things that I enjoy . For example , I've found a you tube channel that has a couple of Terry Pratchett Disc World books as   audio plays . Hmm , that might be nice to listen to as I hobby  I think . But no , I get so caught up in the story , the paint goes dry on my brush as I sit entranced , so there's an  afternoon gone . And then a few bands I like have released full concert videos or  copies of special DVDs that were bonus content on certain album releases , so there's a couple more  hours gone watching /listening to Babymetal . And then I go and find someone who's unloaded a dozen and a half of the British ' Carry On' movies from the 70s , I watched 6 of them today , oh well as the tag line goes for the Comedy channel , Time Well Wasted . What has caught your eye and diverted you from the hobby ?

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Showcase & Gallery / You know your getting stir crazy when -
« on: April 06, 2020, 10:30:07 pm »
With all the kits I have in the stash as well as all the Blu Ray/DVDs  in my collection , you would think I would have lots to keep my busy in week 2 of my "holiday" , but no , I'm bored . Sooo , I decided to go over my built kits and tweak them a little . Always fun trying to fix / up grade a kit that's glued together , painted , weathered and covered in stowage and tank riders , lots of things to break . Anyway I thought I would start by  fixing the crappy spare track piece Warlord gives you with their T-34 kits , make it look more like Rubicon's .

Quite easy to trim the track teeth , and cut the 5 link piece into 2 two link pieces ( red) , Then using a narrow file trim away the unwanted plastic on the track ends , the result doesn't look too bad . Now to do that to the built kits .
So what are you guys getting up to ?

7
General Discussions / Truck wheels on T-26 sprue ?
« on: February 25, 2020, 01:38:18 am »
Finally got my T-26 kit out to start work on it and noticed the GAZ wheels . Cool I thought , guess there will be some T-26 turret / hull  parts in either the GAZ truck or BA armored car kits . But no , so Rubicon , why the strange sprue layout ? Not that I'm knocking a bunch of spare wheels , can always use those

8
Showcase & Gallery / My 1st Rubicon T-34/85
« on: December 18, 2019, 09:12:39 am »
After building 9 of Warlords T-34s and 3 of Rubicon's Su-85 / 122 s , I'm finally getting around to building my 1st Rubicon T-34/85 . As usual I just can't build it straight out of the box . First off I decided to give it a couple of the older style dish wheels . These were left overs  from the Rubicon T-34/76 kit which I got from a buddy .

I had thought to just add the visible wheel gluing it to the perforated rear wheel part , unfortunately the wheel sets don't fit together ( plugs are different sizes ) so I added  a rear dish wheel and it fits fine . I also want to depict this tank with an open driver's hatch , so I drilled the area in order to remove the unwanted plastic


9
Wish Lists / Artillery - with horse drawn limbers please
« on: September 30, 2019, 04:15:43 am »
Both the Germans and Russians had a majority of their artillery drawn by horses , and since Rubicon has got horses in the list of things to release and they mention further releases of artillery , I thought they might combine the two and give us some Russian 45mm ,  57mm or 76mm guns , limbers  and the teams to go with them . And a German 105mm or 150mm howitzer with a 8 horse team would look pretty cool . The Russians also used their limbers with vehicles , so multi version kit could be possible ( different wheels and shaft length )





Really wish I could get a clearer version of this to be able to figure out what these Russian limbers were attached to gun wise

Here's one I bashed up from various bits ( GW box , Tamiya 1/48 wheels ) to go with my PSC 76mm Infantry gun ( the half track is just a stand in till I get the M3 Scout car )

10
Wish Lists / More tank crews please .....
« on: August 23, 2019, 11:33:17 am »
After building a few kits to represent  damaged and knocked out tanks , I find myself not being able to find suitable  crew  figures . Lots of soldiers in full gear  with their hands in the  air , but no tank crew types . I'm looking for guys surrendering / hand raised  , maybe one crewman helping / dragging a fellow crewman out of a turret side hatch ( Pzr III & IV ) or the drivers hatch ( Sherman / T-34 ) .  There are lots of examples in both plastic and resin from various 1/35 scale companies to give you some ideas .   I would also like some crew doing repairs on their tank , maybe a couple of guys kneeling / bending over checking the  road wheels or track for  damage. And we're  going to need a mechanic or two working on the engine in your full interior Tiger II , no sense hiding all that detail with closed hatches , right ?

11
General Discussions / 1/56 - getting popular with scale modellers ?
« on: June 30, 2019, 10:48:28 pm »
After seeing a new items announcement from ABER , a large photo etch and scale metal barrel company , I would say , hell yes . Among the news release about  metal barrels for the usual suspects , Tamiya Tigers ,  Takom Leopards , etc  and brass machine gun ammo for 1/16 scale modelers  , was a turned barrel for the 1/56 Italeri KV II (56 L-03 ) . It seems the big after market companies are starting to take notice of our  favorite scale . I wonder what other goodies could be released in the future ?
edit - upon further investigation , it seems they have already released a 75mm barrel for the M4 Sherman ( 56 L-01 ) and a short 76mm barrel for the KV kit ( 56 L-02 ) .

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General Discussions / RAM TANK ! - wrong scale
« on: April 04, 2019, 09:01:12 pm »
Just an FYI , Bronco has released this picture on their face book page  . True it's in 1/35 and it will probably be over engineered with lots of little PE parts with no plastic option for those to whom PE is the Devil . But knowing Bronco , they'll probably end up releasing a late Mk II as well as Mk I and probably both versions of the Kangaroo , they really love to get mileage out of their common kit parts  . As with most exciting releases in this scale I expect to see a couple of other companies jump on the band wagon and  show pre production  CAD or release Ram based kits in the next year . Hopefully this will trickle down into smaller scales , 1/48 , 1/72 & 1/56. We can hope can't we ?


13
Showcase & Gallery / 234/3 WIP
« on: November 06, 2018, 10:56:39 am »
Seeing all the 234/1 kit bashes  got me inspired  to dig out my Puma kit and start work  my 234/3 conversion. I'm  using the 75mm parts from the Rubicon 250/8-251/9 Expansion set and the main vehicle from those other guys .





Depending on how much room there is in the interior ( and how much can be seen ) I might add both front and rear drivers seats and steering wheels .( extra parts from the 250 kit & parts box  ) , as well I need to add the inside details and shape of both side hull escape doors . So far not much luck getting them the right shape , maybe a crew will hide the fact they are missing . The way it usually works is you think you need to add all this interior stuff and it bugs you that its not in there , and  when you finish the vehicle you realize you can't really see it anyway  ::)

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General Discussions / Epic Hobby Fails
« on: March 06, 2018, 11:35:34 am »
I'm sure we've all had our moments when things go a little pear shaped in the  build . How about that special moment when you realize that decals on your tank turret aren't a mirror image  , one is off center and not level  ( seems like every 2nd build these days  ::) ) And then there's the , just a little bit more weathering should make this tank look fantastic , instead of a dusty panzer yellow you end up with a nice brown tank . (  :-[ me too ) . But today's epic fail  is my best one yet . Last night  I mixed up some RTV rubber make a master mold to cast some track pieces and a few bits for my Type 97 Japanese tank . Well somewhere along the way I screwed up on the ratio of catalyst to base . This morning , imagine my surprise to find I have a box of pudding  instead of a rubber mold .                                                                                                                                                                              None of the pieces to be cast where damaged , just coated in a thick gooey , sticks to everything coat of liquid rubber  . It took the best part of 4 hours to clean all the parts using turps , dish soap , bathroom cleaner and Goo Gone in various combinations , as well , my room mate's tooth brush was sacrificed to help scrub  the parts ( why would I use mine ? ) .  I had to keep reminding myself that I enjoy this hobby , because for  a while there I didn't  :D , oh well I think I'll try it again tomorrow , give myself a bit of a break and watch some TV tonight  instead . And finish scrubbing the remaining goo of my hobby bench . So , what's your epic fail or hobby disaster ?

Vanilla pudding / RTV mold

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Showcase & Gallery / Hey , have you seen this book ?
« on: February 23, 2018, 10:57:56 am »
I love Military In Detail  books . I love Osprey / Vanguard , I love Squadron Signal , and all the other easy to find , every modeller in North America and Western Europe  has them on his book shelf , kind of book . But there are some out there that not everybody knows about . So lets share those interesting books dealing with WW2 model subjects . For example : there is a line of books about Canadian use of tanks and armored cars / artillery from Service Publications , Ottawa , Ontario , Canada . They have books on the Ram , Sherman, 17-Pounder , as well as newer tanks like the Leopard in Canadian Service  ( I think about 25 published so far ). Most are small soft cover books , with a picture on each page , I have The Churchill book , 24 pages , and that cost me $11 . IRC they were going to publish , or have published a hard cover book on the Ram tank . Any way this just an example of a local ( Canadian ) book series that you guys might not know about . I'm sure some of you have publications like that where you are from . Please share them if you will . Always on the look out for more books .  ;D That being said I just received today 3 more books from Wings & Wheels Publications ( Czech Republic )  The one I want to hi light today is Soviet WWII Anti - Tank Guns .

The perfect book to use in detailing your 28mm PSC 45mm AT guns or their 76mm Model 43  . As well it covers the 57mm ZIS -2 and every bodies favorite the 76mm ZIS-3 . Lots of detail pictures of every part of the gun and trail you could ever hope for . 60 pages , with up to 5 close up pictures per page as well as large full page photos . This little beauty cost me about $ 17 on sale .  W&W P have a variety of books on WW2 Artillery , Tanks and Soft Skin Vehicles as well as Modern gear ( the DANA SPG ! ) and Wingy Things ,  Wish I knew about this company before I built my PSC gun kit , oh well I still have 2 more to build

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