Sunday Morning up with the lark...

Not early but probably earlier than most on a Sunday, I put the finishing touches to the two latest kits the Tiger II and Flakpanzer IV. They have been sitting around for a while as I concentrated on my terrain for the Eastern Front campaign, but in the last few days I have got to them and now they are complete.

The Tiger II was from Warlord and has been built as a vehicle from Heavy Tank Battalion 505 which was an army unit and served exclusively on the Eastern Front starting with Kursk in 1943 and ending the war in East Prussia in 1945. The paint pattern is called 'ambush' and there are several different variants of it. I can now put a little Kampfgruppe together from a heavy tank battalion with a Tiger I, Tiger II, and support from the PzIIIN and the Wirbelwind, now that would be a nice fight.

The second kit was of course the Wirbelwind and it was from Rubicon, a very nice kit and went together fine, do remember if you get it to paint the inside of the turret first also the inside of the top part, which I of course didn't think of until I had to put it together. The camouflage scheme is generic and the number a guess, actual photos show most without markings and the odd few with numbers.

With the tanks sorted I popped out to the supermarket for one item, got stuck behind a couple buying 'his and hers' and taking all morning as if the assistant was there merely to see to their wishes, then as I closed in on the till, an old dear butted in front and asked for her receipt which she had forgotten five minutes ago! To top it all as I put the Ghost into reverse I saw a woman standing behind me beckoning her husband to come through and pick her up while stopping me moving.

Back at Casa Anderson I started a batch of priming, new buildings and some hasty works. I had built the Sarrissa Russian windmill this morning before breakfast and it does look impressive, so much so that the little Dacha's beside it looked tiny and out of scale. I wondered if I had ordered the 20mm version or been sent them instead of the 28mm, I checked the size on the site and my buildings were short. I went back to the site but no, they were only available in 28mm, but they did not measure up, ah, the measurements include the slanted roof and are not for the ground taken up by the walls/floor, very strange. It will also be impossible to get a full Russian squad in the building, it really is small but has more windows than you can shake a stick at, a very nice kit but I felt it could have been a tad larger.

So in the coming week I will be painting the buildings and entrenchments, no big hurry as they are merely add ons for the terrain I have, I think I need some farm animals.

Before I go we had our annual club meal on Friday night, it was a really good evening and as ever with these guys a good laugh There are a bakers dozen regulars at the club and only three missed out. We all had to take a pencil as Julian had a little game for us involving sending Elves out to work to earn cash, think of Fagan as Santa Claus. Thankfully we played before large quantities of alcohol were consumed but even so I was completely lost, and didn't win.

 I almost forgot the most important news, a totally unexpected honour from the Post Office for twenty years of dedicated service and hard work, now before you all send cards in there is another Warton Post Office about forty miles away............