Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Age of the Big Battalions => Topic started by: War In 15MM on 31 December 2013, 02:57:50 AM
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Attached is a picture of a 15mm Civil War observation balloon I built more than a dozen years ago. The balloon and its support equipment are scratch built and include the two mobile tanks and the cooling and purifying boxes. While I am very happy that I did the balloon project and I love the way it came out, it has, nonetheless, never been used. I based it on drawings from a Life Magazine of the 1960’s. The only thing I did not include from the drawings was the name Intrepid on the balloon itself. The balloon bag is made from a broken souvenir of the first French balloon flight. I found it at my local swap meet. In building the observation balloon, I scrapped everything but the bag itself. I made the observer’s box from Evergreen plastic and painted it red and white vertical stripes with a blue horizontal band at the top serving as a field for small white stars. The figures I used as the guides on the ground are modified Old Glory ACW standard bearers and the observer is an Essex ACW officer. I filed out his back with a round rasp in order to have him fit in the box along with the support pole; the pole was necessary because unfortunately my balloon cannot fly. I came upon it in one of my storage cabinets the other day and was pleased to see it again and thought it still looked pretty good. Hope you enjoy it.(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j366/rgarretson/get-attachmentaspx_zps96d4b46a.jpeg) (http://s1082.photobucket.com/user/rgarretson/media/get-attachmentaspx_zps96d4b46a.jpeg.html)
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Great model!
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Fantastic! :-*
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Thank you for taking the time to write and for the very kind words. This balloon has been hidden away in the back of a cabinet for the better part of a decade. I came upon it while searching for something else, and I really enjoyed seeing it again. Because posting of observation balloons is rather rare, I thought it was worth sharing. Thanks again for the comments. Richard
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I had missed this post.
GReat job :o
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Wonderful
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Thanks so much for the kind words. This was one of the first significant conversions/modification/scratch builds I had ever done, and having left it hidden in a cabinet for a decade and finding it again by accident, I must say that I am very proud that to my eye it is still a really good looking piece of work… it's kind of a proud daddy thing. So please pardon the moment of vanity. Thanks again. Richard