20mm Rhodesians

[ulverston]

Perfect thank you Ash that is really useful advice. 20mm is growing on me again, I am sort of rediscovering the scale and will be trying this using the Spectre rules.

[juergen c. olk]

great tutorial.

[ErikB]

Just discovered this.  Fantastic job!!!  I am working on my ZANLA guys right now and trying to get the kids interested in Rhodesia.

[Ash]

Just discovered this.  Fantastic job!!!  I am working on my ZANLA guys right now and trying to get the kids interested in Rhodesia.

Thanks very much.
Which ZANLA minis are you using (Under Fire)?

[Ash]

Not looked in here for rather a long time. Ran out of 28mm things to chuck paint at, so finally succumbed to digging out a long ignored pack of 20mm.
Under Fire miniatures pack 'Selous Scouts 3'. They look a tad 'regular army' to me compaired to the 'armpits with eyeballs' look of the Scouts, but definitly work for early '70's RLI etc.

[CapnJim]

Nice job!  Well Done!

My eyes made me move from 20mm to 28mm.  But 20mm used to be my "one true scale"...

[juergen c. olk]

SUPER.

[bluewillow]

Excellent work on those Ash, my new regular wargamer spent time in the RLI and has some hairy stories to tell.

Cheers
Matt

[CPT Shanks]

Wow. What an incredible resource. Thanks your first post alone just answered tons of questions I had. Started working some old 20mm and 1/72 kits again over the holiday turning some Vietnamese into ZANLA and cross border SAS/ Sealous Scouts. Now I'll have to try the Heller Alouettes again. The first ones I got were the blue brittle plastic. Right pain to work on.

[Ash]

Not looked in here for a bit, cheers for the replies.

Excellent work on those Ash, my new regular wargamer spent time in the RLI and has some hairy stories to tell.

Cheers
Matt

When I was in my teens a lot of the blokes a few years older had been in the RLI, those older than them PATU. Some very intense experiences had by some very young people. Friend I was working with in the late '80's served in 3 Co, made over 30 operational jumps, ontop of all the G-car insertions, all whilst under the age of 21.
With hindsight, I just wish I'd been better at scrounging old kit back then as so much stuff got burned in the early '80's. I do however recall a certain irrigation dam, at the base of which there is probably still a rather well rusted heap of old weapons languishing...

Wow. What an incredible resource. Thanks your first post alone just answered tons of questions I had. Started working some old 20mm and 1/72 kits again over the holiday turning some Vietnamese into ZANLA and cross border SAS/ Sealous Scouts. Now I'll have to try the Heller Alouettes again. The first ones I got were the blue brittle plastic. Right pain to work on.

Thanks, glad it's all of some use.
I found the first Alouette kits on ebay, at that time the kit had been out of production for several years/decades, the ones I found were quite old, and as you noted the plastic was/is rather brittle.
Just harsh language alone was enough to make the wheels snap off. I believe the kit has since been re-released, hopefully 'new' kits should be a tad more resilient.

[CPT Shanks]

Ash I have the Cessna Lynx from a civilian kit, where did you source the guns from or are they scratch built? I looked through the thread but may have missed it if it's in there. Also do you have any tutorial for how you do the brushstroke camo?  Insanely good work. Thanks again.

[Ash]

Ash I have the Cessna Lynx from a civilian kit, where did you source the guns from or are they scratch built? I looked through the thread but may have missed it if it's in there. Also do you have any tutorial for how you do the brushstroke camo?  Insanely good work. Thanks again.

I used a couple of these kits, again ebay finds and old and brittle...


The guns on top of the wing were made from styrene tube, little bit of sheet styrene for the mount, GS for the cone shape at the back & gun barrels chopped off some .30 cals from Elhiem.

Re the camo pattern; The shapes in the pattern are quite large and tend to repeat fairly regularly. At this scale I just picked a few of the more stand out shapes from the pattern and plonk them in prominent places. Use reference pics to get the scale right ('ish).



Base colour: I think I used 'Dark sand' or 'Iraqi sand' (that'll get knocked back a bit by a green wash later), the brown bits 'chocolate brown', then the green bits a mix of 'olive green' & 'luftwaffer green'.
Once dry I tend to go over camo with a thin wash/filter layer, then a light drybrush of a sandy beige.

[Ash]

Here's a few pics of wepon mounts:

All the options; the mounted pods are for SNEB rockets, the cone over the front breaks away on firing.



37mm on the left, 68mm on the right.



Twin .303 Browning



Frantan (Napalm)



Golf (ANFO) & Frantan (Napalm)

[CPT Shanks]

Excellent reference photos thanks. I don't think I ever looked at the under wing armaments. Not sure my fingers are nimble enough for scratch building those .303s. Great stuff

[Ash]

Excellent reference photos thanks. I don't think I ever looked at the under wing armaments. Not sure my fingers are nimble enough for scratch building those .303s. Great stuff

At this scale they don't need to be too pretty, I think they do however make the Cessna look like a 'Lynx', even if just basically executed like the ones I did.

I used a piece of plastic tube (might even have been a piece from a Q-tip/cotton bud on the first). A rough little cone shape of green stuff, squished into place with fingers for the back end, same for the front with a gun barrel pushed into the end. Not too taxing, and if it looks crap have another go..! Last bit was just a little rectangle of plasticard to raise the gunpod slightly above the wing.

Mk 1  gun pods are quite thin, pretty sure that was a q-tip or one of those plastic bristle protecting tubes from a paint brush.


Mk 2 gun pod, proper syrene tube (Evergreen type stuff), bit bigger, hopefully looks a little better, resin gun barrels (look for 1/72 Lancaster guns).