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

All about the wood!

Well here at WMD HQ its been all about the wood for the last few days! My last great project still sees me battering pieces of wood together but progress is being made. Three more pieces to put on the last of the two end boards and that is the main sub baseboard constructed to stage one. Stage two involves a lot of sander work and some filler to hide the blemishes (a nice word for my poor workmanship) and then a final coat of paint to seal the wood and hopefully keep the structure sound and free of moisture.

It was a glorious day to be outside too so it despite the war of Woody and the wood going on I did enjoy it! Several people walking by must be wondering 'What is he up to???'. Certainly looks like a strange shelving unit. Looking at the weather forecast for next week and I see predictions of temperatures of 2C - I will be heading inside then.

Dealing with wood of another sort, the narrow gauge layout need some trees. I should be making them myself but on this occasion I have splashed out on some Woodlands Scenic trees about 4 to 5 inches high. I have placed them on the layout temporarily just to get a feel for where they look best. From my enforced gardening activities I am told plants and shrubs always look best with three and to be truthful even my eye can see that. Luckily that is how many trees come in the pack - they must watch Gardener's World at Woodlands Scenic too! As the baseboard to the layout is thinnish hardboard, mounting the trees was always going to be an issue. However they do come with a base into which the trunk plugs into. The base is not exactly fashioned by someone with an eye for nature but I think I can use the base and hide it so that the trees will stand without holes in the baseboard. More of that adventure another time - possibly next week when it is 2C outside! In the meantime lets have a look at the current temporary placement.

On the T80 tank front, all I can say is that the tracks are testing! I will get there but it is not a quick job and when a kit fights you like this you have to be in the right mood to make progress.

Testing Tracks!

 

In my last post I ended by saying the tracks were not playing ball. The photo above shows what I am dealing with - very small pieces that are fragile and awkward to handle. The tracks are what is termed as 'workable'. That is they should click together and be free to move just like real tracks. Whilst there is no doubt someone at MiniArt who can put these together blindfolded and then use them as some form of towrope to rescue a real tank stuck in mud, for me, the reality is that they just don't work. Might be my ineptness at putting these together but an internet search does show I am not unique in having problems with these particular tracks. You need to be very careful how you remove them from the sprue as you can end up with the hole that is supposed to receive the peg on the joining track link being compromised. Use too much force and the link snaps in two. I have reverted to my old dodge in this situation of building up short lengths of track on a strip of masking tape and then running that around the running gear on the tank itself and lightly gluing the track links once in position so that they in effect become one track. I do this in sections so that I am at least gluing a loose length of track to a solid length to give me some chance of getting it all to sit right on the tanks running gear. It takes days to do as you need to await the glue drying for each section but it does at least allow you to maintain your sanity. Certainly a testing time!

The pictures below show the progress on the rest of the tank. Note that the upper hull part does have a bit of a fit issue at the back but nothing that some elastic bands at the gluing stage can't sort out - hopefully! You might note the magnify glass in the background which has come in very handy with this kit. 

MiniArt T80 Russian Light Tank - The build begins

 I do not know a great deal about MiniArt but they are a model kit manufacturer who are producing new models almost on a weekly basis. They have a good reputation, from what I have read, in making accurate and highly detailed kits. On the basis of this and a good price on two kits I purchased the USA Bulldozer and the T80 Light Tank - not to be confused with the current T80 Main Battle Tank. You may recall the last time the kit was seen in this blog, Sammy the cat was eyeing up the boxes as a potential food container.

Having eventually managed to distract him and some of his fellow feline friends that live at WMD HQ by putting actual food in their bowls, it was time to open the box and have a look at what was actually in it.

First impressions were that the box was certainly well made and if it actually contained cat food would most probably resist feline attack to get into it for some time. It was also nice to see the sprues bagged which means if any components have come loose they are safely contained in the bag I recall in my earlier days of modelling Airfix kits where you opened a somewhat flimsy box to find many of the parts loose and making a dash for the carpet as you struggled to keep the box upright and in one piece. Taking the contents out this is what you get plus an instruction sheet which is not shown.

The molding quality is certainly good. I can not comment on accuracy as I am no expert in Russian WW2 tanks and there are better people out there in the World of Internet Forums who will no doubt highlight their thoughts and observations on that matter if you want to search them out. Here at WMD HQ, the general rule is if it looks right it must be right! This kit looks like the photos I have seen on the internet so that's good enough for me. Anyway, by the time I throw some weathering at it no one will be able to tell if the bolt holding the shovel on is the correct shape or not.

I was keen to see whether the quality molding translated into a pleasant build. The last thing you need is a kit that fights you - modelling is supposed to be relaxing after all. The first thing that you find out once you start building this kit is that the sprues have no part numbers next to the components. This means that you have to cross reference to the sprue diagram in the instructions each time you need to identify a part. Given that there are also a number of parts that are not used in this kit, the whole process of going backwards and forwards in the instructions as you build the kit becomes a bit tiring and something that you could do without. However that is just my experience and view.

Moving onto the kit itself, there is a basic hull and turret complete including some of the etched parts. There are some etched locker fasteners on that etch which I cannot see clearly even under a magnifier so those wont' be used. Luckily the plastic molding for the locker does have the fastener molded on so that will do me. As this kit is based upon an existing kit for a similar variant of the tank you do have to make a few alterations including cutting a large hole in the hull roof and taking the side out of a louvre. Anyway here are a few photos of what I have done so far which may explain matters beter than my words.

The brass etch louvres for the engine are fitted in the hole you have to make in the hull. I had to add some plastic strip to the inside of the hull to provide a mounting point for the louvres. There is a etched grill to go over the top which still needs to be made up. I really need to get some paint on that shiny brass before putting the grill over otherwise it could end up shining through the grill.

At the moment I am struggling to make the workable track links. More on that another time but they are not playing ball!