Confessions of a Shameless Treadhead: Part Deux

[BlackWidowPilot]

Yup. Part Deux (and its a big 'un):  http://blackwidowpilot.blogspot.com/2015/05/confessions-of-shameless-treadhead-part.html








Enjoy!

[Gunbird]

Thank you again for the time taken to make all of the pictures.

[Anna Elizabeth]

Leland, thanx for posting, the photos are excellent.

[BlackWidowPilot]

Thank you again for the time taken to make all of the pictures.

My pleasure! There's some more to come covering AFVs and such from the Cold War era up to Gulf War I... 

[BlackWidowPilot]

Leland, thanx for posting, the photos are excellent.

My pleasure, ma'am! I posted the best of the best that I took with an eye towards what we hobbyists and fellow treadheads might want for our assorted model building projects... as it is, I've a pair of unbuilt Panthers and other assorted mischief in 1/72 scale I am debating as to what I'll actually do with them (and how they'll be finished)...


To kitbash or not to kitbash, that is the question!

[Anna Elizabeth]

Kitbash? Planning a Kugelblitz?

[BlackWidowPilot]

Kitbash? Planning a Kugelblitz?

No, more of a sci-fi tank or heavy APC or similar project. The Panther's sloped armor lines lend themselves rather well to conversion projects, while the turrets themselves can result in some fun creations all their own:

[Anna Elizabeth]

Cool idea!

Not quite the same, but I'm doing a Weird War "DUSTification" of a 1/48 Jagdtiger from Tamiya, adding a Laser so it can fight my Allied Walkers.

[BlackWidowPilot]

Cool idea!

Not quite the same, but I'm doing a Weird War "DUSTification" of a 1/48 Jagdtiger from Tamiya, adding a Laser so it can fight my Allied Walkers.

A Jagdtiger with a laser weapon is wrong. Make it a four or six legged walker and it is truly HEINOUS. 

The walker you see is a Ralnai "Leaping Beast" scout walker (Federation codename: Chickenfoot) from the classic Starguard! sci-fi skirmish game universe. Its a 1/72 scale model the master of which I kitbashed together over 30-odd years ago when I was still in high school. I built the thing out of two 1/72 scale Panther tank turrets, a 1/35 scale suspension unit from a Monogram Sdkfz 232 8-Rad armored car model, the split trails from a 1/35 scale 37mm anti-tank gun from the same company, and a pair of landing gear legs from a 1/32 scale P-47 Thunderbolt.

I brought the thing with me to a Bay Area convention in 1978, and John McEwan Himself took one look at it, and persuaded me to sell it to him so he could add it to the Starguard! game as an official war machine. Because it was all styrene plastic, John was able to break it down into manageable sections and lost wax it into bronze to create a master for moulding. He sculpted the three-toed feet to take into account the weight of a metal kit (the original was so light it balanced perfectly on the dirt spades of the original split trails I used for the lower legs and feet!), and there you have it, my first ever kitbash that went on to become a regular production model for a sci-fi miniatures game!

Amazing what one can do with some bits and a bit of an imagination... a 1/48 Jagdtiger and a laser cannon? Hmmmm... Mwaahahahahahahaaaaa!!!! I know, I can whip up a *MASER* cannon for a 1/35 scale Jagdtiger, then rescale the hatches and such into 1/48 scale for 28mm figures to feel right at home....

[Anna Elizabeth]

Excellent! I've seen Starguard stuffs in magazine ads and such. So cool!

I love that kind of kitbashing and chop-and-changing. My Jadgtiger is more a plausible "strap a Laser on this thing" mod, to try to keep some of the last Tanks useful in the Weird War.

Have you seen the DUST Tactics walkers? I'll be posting pix of mine after a few more finish-ups.

[The-closet-gamer]

One thing that amazes me about real and scale tanks is the fact that as modellers we apply the base coat colours and start with a very toy like look. We them add filters, pin washes, fading, streaking, chipping and all the rest to get it to look more 3D and in scale. But when compared to the real life counterpart that are sat in museums in a quite pristine parade ground finish without all the rust stains and mud and the like, they tend to have quite a 'toy like' look to them. More like a 1/1 scale toy. Or is it just me.

More pictures please.

[Ballardian]

Nice pics from a collection I'll sadly never get to see now, it's easy to forget the huge amount of folding required to keep collections like that going, makes me glad that Bovington isn't so financially vulnerable.
 Yes The-closet-gamer, it's not just you - though the paintjobs in that collection seem pretty accurate, you occasionally see some interesting 'interpretations' of colour schemes.

[BlackWidowPilot]

One thing that amazes me about real and scale tanks is the fact that as modellers we apply the base coat colours and start with a very toy like look. We them add filters, pin washes, fading, streaking, chipping and all the rest to get it to look more 3D and in scale. But when compared to the real life counterpart that are sat in museums in a quite pristine parade ground finish without all the rust stains and mud and the like, they tend to have quite a 'toy like' look to them. More like a 1/1 scale toy. Or is it just me.

More pictures please.

No, it's not just you. When I was attending SJSU waaay back in the day FMC was still in full operation, and the train stopped right beside the plant's parking area for the newly produced M113s and Amtracs. Every once in a while I got really lucky, as there was a vacant lot next to that parking area where the factory crew would take one of the newly produced AFVs out for a spin to test the running gears, etc. One day I saw an Amtrack roll out of the plant building and go straight into the vacant lot. There'd been a recent rain so the ground was moist but not exactly muddy. Within a minute of entering the lot the Amtrack's treads and running gear were splattered with muddy soil and grass. Keep in mind that more than a few times I also saw workers at the FMC plant hosing down some of the vehicles with a high pressure water spray nozzle, cleaning off the running gear and treads.

As for the Littlefield collection, I was told by one of the docents that some German panzer veterans who had served as crew members in Panthers were present for the dedication of the restored Panther tank. Their comments included the observation that the restoration was so thorough that the Panther leaked oil as profusely as the originals did (but the interior didn't smell as badly as the originals did). 

[BlackWidowPilot]

Excellent! I've seen Starguard stuffs in magazine ads and such. So cool!

I love that kind of kitbashing and chop-and-changing. My Jadgtiger is more a plausible "strap a Laser on this thing" mod, to try to keep some of the last Tanks useful in the Weird War.

Have you seen the DUST Tactics walkers? I'll be posting pix of mine after a few more finish-ups.

Starguard! is the granddaddy of all sci fi miniature combat games AFAIK. The game was first in print in *1974* and has gone through several iterations since. I actually designed a number of the vehicle kits produced for the game, in the case of the "Chickenfoot" and the Dreenoi "Cockroach" walking tank kitbashing the originals, although John accidentally blew up the Cockroach prototype while trying to lost wax the components, so he built up a new prototype from scratch in wax to produce a somewhat smaller, more compact iteration of my original prototype.

Yes, I have seen the DUST walkers; some very nice ones indeed. Perhaps some day I'll get my claws on a few, but for now I'll keep kitbashing my way along (and I have a large walker under construction right now in fact, a Lego toy for a chassis with a defunct computer mouse for the turret)...

[Anna Elizabeth]

That sounds like a cool walker, kind of 'Maschinen Krieger"-ish.

1974! XD How cool is that!

Oh, the thing about clean museum tanks and such: I heard that the Museum in the UK that has the running Tiger and Panther brought in an old Heer veteran to assist. They asked him what they had wrong, the Maybach engine lit on fire every time they started it?

He laughed and said something like: "Oh you didn't get it wrong, they did that in 1944, too." XD