15mm ACW Observation Balloon

[War In 15MM]

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.

[grant]

Great model!

[Totleben]

Fantastic! 

[War In 15MM]

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

[sebastosfig]

I had missed this post.

GReat job

[Belisarius]

Wonderful

[War In 15MM]

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