Back to reality!

Well what can you say other than the England Team did us proud in the Euros! Penalty shoot outs are not my favoured way of  dealing with a draw and for what its worth a points system of some sorts might actually be better. If it included a recognition for sporting behavior it might actually discourage some of the almost rugby type activities that go on in football today. 

Enough of my thoughts and back to reality! Reality today is that back at WMD HQ we are again sticking bits of plastic together! Yes a kit is underway! I have had a growing itch for some weeks now to actually start building models again after what seems an eternity of garden and similar type activities. Looking back through the blog (which was part of the reason I started this blog in the first place so I could put dates to things and events and it works - Wow!) I see it was the end of March that I last progressed with a kit - the T85 from Miniart. I could have gone back to this kit but if you recall I had almost stalled with the tracks which have some issues. Since moving most of my modelling stuff from within the house to my man cave AKA the Room of Gloom that kit has sat in a box and to be honest I thought about starting it again, I even looked through the box but at the moment its just not doing it for me. So with another breaking of my New Years Resolution of not buying any more kits, I bought the  Zvezda Russian K5350 Mustang 3-Axle Truck in 1/35 scale. The Kamaz Мустанг (Mustang) is a family of general military utility trucks with numerous variants which is based on the 1st generation KamAZ family launched in the early 1980s. A three-person cab is standard across the Mustang range. It has a sleeping berth and tilts forward for engine access. The cab can be fitted with an add-on armour kit. I have wanted to build a Kamaz truck for a long time. They are typical Russian in that they are simple but very robust. If you have ever watched Ice Road Truckers you know that in Canada and Alaska they run trucks on ice roads in the winter. It is also the same in Russia but having watched some videos on the conditions they have to deal with I have to say they do need a really tough truck - have a look at this short You Tube Video to see or just put in Russian Ice Road Truckers into YouTubes search engine.  

First time with a Zvezda kit and looking through the box it looks stunning. Will it look as stunning once my hands have been on it or will it end up a glue bomb once completed? We'll have to wait and see! The kit itself comes in a stout cardboard box which is sleeved by an outer cover with the illustrations showing the truck in action. Inside the parts are all in plastic bags so no loose, flying off into oblivion never to be seen again as the box is opened parts. I like that! The instructions and painting guide look as though some one has actually thought about what to illustrate and hopefully will actually aid building this kit rather than becoming a cryptic set of clues which have several differing answers according to how you look at them! I like that too! Looking at the parts themselves the detail is stunning and having built a few 1/25th truck kits in my time I just wish those larger kits had this sort of level of detail. You guessed it I like that as well! So far the guys at Zvezda have struck a chord with me.

Starting the actual build the first stages centre around the engine. For something that will probably end up mostly hidden the detail is remarkable. There is also something else I like about this kit. So far all the parts for the engine are on the same sprue and amazingly just about all the parts follow on from each other. I have started with Sprue G and it starts at the bottom with part G1 and G2 is next to it and so on. There are a couple of exceptions to fit the part into the overall sprue where a part number does not follow on but its close. If you have never built a kit you may wonder why the excitement of  what probably sounds a logical way of doing things. Logical it maybe but I have never come across a sprue laid out like this. Normally you end up with the parts for something like an engine over two or more sprues and the parts are laid out randomly to minimise the number of sprues. You end up spending ages looking over the sprue trying to find the part that you want. Zvezda make it so simple to find the part. G65 is between G64 and G66! 

Moving on from my overstated joy about this kit, an hour and a half got the first three stages of the engine done.

How do I know that it took me an hour and a half to reach this stage? Well here at WMD HQ we do like our music and have done so for many, many years. Before the advent of new technology, MP 3 files,  downloading, streaming and probably a whole host of other things I don't and probably never will know about we had vinyl, cassettes and CDs. WMD HQ still has a large collection of them all and facilities in the Room of Gloom include a cassette player on which both sides ('You mean you had to physically turn it over?' will probably be the reaction of some) of a favorite cassette purchased in the early 90s was playing whilst I built the engine. Roughly 45 minutes a side which gives me 90 minutes and unlike the football yesterday I didn't go into extra time!

A great easy listening album full of fantastic music which if you are interested is: -

A1	Eagles–	One Of These Nights
A2	The Doobie Brothers–	Long Train Runnin'
A3	Fleetwood Mac–	Little Lies
A4	Hall & Oates*–	I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)
A5	Greg Kihn Band–	Jeopardy
A6	Starship (2)–	Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
A7	Christopher Cross–	Ride Like The Wind
A8	Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers*–	Breakdown
A9	The Cars–	Drive
B1	R.E.M.–	The One I Love
B2	Lynyrd Skynyrd–	Sweet Home Alabama
B3	Allman Brothers Band*–	Jessica
B4	Rickie Lee Jones–	Chuck E's In Love
B5	Joe Walsh–	Rocky Mountain Way
B6	J. J. Cale*–	Hold On Baby
B7	Timbuk 3–	The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
B8	Steve Earle–	Copperhead Road
B9	America (2)–	Horse With No Name