Modelmaking Misadventures: The Ascenscion Island Chronicles.

[Andy in Germany]

I'm (rather slowly) building up a stock of buildings and props for 28mm Skirmish games, mostly based around the 1920's/30s and using "Pulp Alley" rules or similar.



I tend to use card in bulk quantities, and "found" or "Strategically relocated" bits and pieces...



This is partly because for work related reasons, I spend weekdays in a tiny apartment near Freiburg, some 200km away from the family in Stuttgart. As a result the modelmaking bench needs to be fairly small and uncomplicated.

Recently Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) were enthusiastically digging up the railway line between these cities, leaving my stranded. In search of a quick project I dug up a rather battered "models of Yesteryear" Rolls Royce for an upcoming project with the Elder Son...



After some use of a powered drill on the rivets, this fell apart...



...and a fter a fair amount of indecision and a few disasters I'll gloss over here, I finally panted it in a less respectable style:



Most of my tabletop games are set in 1937 on the Island of Ascension, in a slightly different timeline from our own, so this car will have certainly seen better days, hence the moderately heavy weathering.



There will be some further modificaitons added, but that's good for now. I can use it on the table and get on with the next project on the list. A few years back I built a "control tower" for the airfield;



And I think it's high time this was joined by an aeroplane...

[beefcake]

Very nice. Love the seating on the car.

[Tom Dulski]

 The control tower looks great.

[has.been]

And I think it's high time this was joined by an aeroplane...

Nah!
Just lay lots of cotton wool out & say it's too foggy. 

Great work by the way.

[Andy in Germany]

Thanks for the comments...

Nah!
Just lay lots of cotton wool out & say it's too foggy. 

Great work by the way.

Thanks.

I've wanted to try and make a plane from card since I saw the one built by @tin shed gamer a few years back, so it's on the "to do" list.

The control tower looks great.

Thanks. It's one of the most fun in a game because it has an interior so I can use it for all kinds of stories.

Very nice. Love the seating on the car.

It's been described as "Bordello Crimson" elsewhere...

[Andy in Germany]

Time to get on and actually build the plane...



I decided first to make a fairly freelance model just to try out some methods. For example, to see if it’s really possible to make something that is mostly curves out of flat material like card.

It turns out that with lots of sanding, filler, more sanding, enough superglue to disable a small battleship, shellac and more sanding, it is possible to make a basic form that looks passable, although I’m sure anyone who actually knows anything about designing aeroplanes is either laughing or throwing things at the screen, and it has to be said I’d have taken a lot less time if I hadn’t gone and added all those awkward angles in the fuselage which, of course, also needed sanding.

I now need to figure out how to build something that looks like an engine out of card, and also the whole complicated mix that is the undercarriage. Now, I could also make that part static; many people advocate making a base for the model to sit on so it won’t get damaged easily, but I want to have the plane as a freestanding model. In fact, I’d really like to make the wheels turnable.

This is of course to see if it can be done and is absolutely not so that I can push it along the board during tabletop games making “whoosh whoosh” noises…

[flatpack]

That’ll fly….

[has.been]

Well, I'm liking it so far.

[snitcythedog]

Very cool and you have sooo much patience.  I would have thrown my hands up early on. 

[Daeothar]

That looks awesome!

Especially the first picture immediately brought me back to playing the Mafia! PC-game back in the early 2K's. The sandbox world in that game is fantastic, and all twenties art-deco buildings.

A wonderful project; I'll be watching this with much interest

+++EDIT+++ Also; the plane you're building is reminding me heavily of the de Havilland Dragon Rapide, a plane I used in my pulp RPG games years ago

[Andy in Germany]

The Biplane of indeterminate heritage has been getting all kinds of details in an attempt to make it look more like a miniature flying machine and less like a collection of pulped wood products.

I wanted a rugged looking transport plane, that could reasonably be imagined to carry about five people, plus additional luggage. It’s probably obvious by now that my entire knowledge of aeroplane design is that it’s considered important to include wings, so to try and make a convincing form I’d collected pictures of 1930s era aircraft and made a sketch based on features I liked.



The result has settled down as the fuselage reminiscent of an Anotov AN2 transport plane with wings based on a Fiat Aviazone Cr42 Falco. This is a somewhat unlikely combination given that the Anotov was a Soviet design* while the Fiat was created in Mussolini’s Italy and first flown in support of the nationalists in the Spanish Civil war.

However, in my alternative history with a shortened World War 1, it’s possible the Russian Revolution ended with the abdication of the Tsar, and an independent Ukraine back in the 1930s. Meanwhile, without a war in 1918 the British Secret Service wouldn’t have funded Mussolini and given him his start in politics.

I rather like the idea that instead of competing on the battlefield, aircraft designers would have been attending large air shows to show off their concepts, and late one night in a bar during one such event, a designer from Anotov turned to a designer from Fiat and said “You know, we really should work together sometime…”

*And built in 1947, I know; shush.

[Spinal Tap]

Oh my goodness.

As someone who glues cardboard together at times I'm in awe of the level of your work.

Thanks for sharing.

[snitcythedog]

Very impressive!

[marianas_gamer]

You should be very happy with that Andy! Nice work.

[has.been]

Good job.