Simmerit's build of the R.A. crossing over wooden bridges into Tunisia in 1943 - West Desert Build

[giatttt]

The Matador was the first military vehicle I ever encountered. The RA TA deployment in Kirkwall had them and AA guns. The half door behind the cab on the passenger side was a bit weird, anyone know why it was there?

 

[Simmerit]

Having finally finished lugging sodding furniture around, I thought ‘time to check the quality of of the figures.

Tamiya ones are not the best as they are old. Mini Art jeep crew - very good. British Armoured car crew from MiniArt. Hmm

looks promising

looking a bit suspect

German pants I thinks to myself

British on the front, red army title on the back and jawmans inside.....

I suppose they are covering all bases.......

I got two Brits out of five.

shitty email about to be sent to MiniArt

 

[Teeblerone]

So this was the donor kit. It’s one of the first ones released which gives you a clue to when I started this. There was no aftermarket available for it at the time or there would be a shed load of etch on mine.

View attachment 540321
What I did to mine was the same thing the lads did in North Africa all those years ago which was saw the roof off.

some quite fascinating figures available. Photographers were taken from this kit.

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As I said, I put it down as I wasn’t happy with some of the figures and I never got back to it. There not much effort required to finish the wagon. The gun is done apart from sticking down the mount. It’s the blokes that need sorting and the weathering. Not all the figures are bin material and those I do scrap I can pinch the heads from.

What I plan to do is sculpt my own figures using various bits of blokes as donors.

These are the figures I’ve picked up.

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and

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and this is the stuff I’ve picked up for sculpting.

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I don’t plan to make hands and heads. I’ll. be using hornet heads for the new blokes.

first step is to unbox the little fellas and work out what bits I can use. Then it’s a dremel to take the detail off. Next is to assemble the figures using copper wide as joints to get the pose right.

Ah, I was going to ask how the hell you managed to get the blokes in the same poses (honest, I scrolled through and couldn't tell the difference between photo & model. very impressive, you modelling types!)

 

[putteesinmyhands]

Yes well spotted to all those smarty pants who spotted the tyres. The need swopping round.

If it's any consolation, I spent a little while looking for photos to show you the error of your ways only to discover that there are quite a few photos showing the tyres the "wrong" way round.

Why this should be, I don't know. Maybe some drivers thought that by reversing the front tyres they'd be better able to reverse out of a sticky situation?

 

[exspy]

Gen question.

Why are vehicles scaled at 1/35 while aircraft are scaled at 1/32?

It's the same with the smaller ones. Vehicles are 1/76 while aircraft are 1/72.

 

[Mike Barton]

If it's any consolation, I spent a little while looking for photos to show you the error of your ways only to discover that there are quite a few photos showing the tyres the "wrong" way round.

Why this should be, I don't know. Maybe some drivers thought that by reversing the front tyres they'd be better able to reverse out of a sticky situation?

Even in the original pic, the Vs are going up on the driver's side front wheel, down on the offside rear wheel and they are British Rail symbols on the offside front. So it appears they weren't fussy either way.

 

[Mike Barton]

I started this a few years ago but put it down as I was not happy with a couple of the figures. Time to resurrect it and run it in parallel to the Wokka.

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This is an absolutely classic picture of British troops crossing into Tunisia.


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and where I got to.

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I wanted to make this a little different so here is Sgt. Lansdoen taking the picture

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More to follow after I’ve got back with the hounds!!

It actually seems (to the non-perfectionists among us) that you've pretty much done it all, what extra work do you plan on doing? And will it keep us going through the lockdown like your magnificent Skyraider thread?

 

[jagman2]

There was a pretty heated debate on this subject on the Military Modelling web site a few years ago and quiet a few people got themselves quite worked up about it. They refused to accept photographic evidence. Proper rivet counters. Kept me amused for a week or three

Matadors often left the factory with mis-matched tyres.
AEC simply put on whatever tyres were availalble and they didn't always have matching sets.

 

[jagman2]

If it's any consolation, I spent a little while looking for photos to show you the error of your ways only to discover that there are quite a few photos showing the tyres the "wrong" way round.

Why this should be, I don't know. Maybe some drivers thought that by reversing the front tyres they'd be better able to reverse out of a sticky situation?

As I understand it they just put whatever wheel/tyre combination on that was available.

If a wheel with a directional tyres was put on nobody worried about having it going in the right direction.
Many drivers reckoned it didn't make any difference and some thought they worked better the wrong way round.

 

[jagman2]

The Matador was the first military vehicle I ever encountered. The RA TA deployment in Kirkwall had them and AA guns. The half door behind the cab on the passenger side was a bit weird, anyone know why it was there?

If I remember rightly the rear half of the loadspace was usually filled with ammunition and the front accomadated the gun crew. Hence the door.
When I had mine years ago it has been converted to a timber tractor so the body was missing and an A frame crane fitted

 

[putteesinmyhands]

As I understand it they just put whatever wheel/tyre combination on that was available.

If a wheel with a directional tyres was put on nobody worried about having it going in the right direction.
Many drivers reckoned it didn't make any difference and some thought they worked better the wrong way round.

The tyres weren't directional in the sense of modern high-performance cars. V up or V down could be changed by reversing the tyre on the rim, so it wasn't an issue of availability - unless the driver had a complete spare wheel and needed to change it quickly.

Looking at photos, either-way-round tread patterns made an appearance which should have relieved the drivers' frustration.

 

[jagman2]

The tyres weren't directional in the sense of modern high-performance cars. V up or V down could be changed by reversing the tyre on the rim, so it wasn't an issue of availability - unless the driver had a complete spare wheel and needed to change it quickly.

Looking at photos, either-way-round tread patterns made an appearance which should have relieved the drivers' frustration.

From the factory apparently nobody was really concerned. Mismatched tyres and tread in the wrong direction quite common
Get your point on directionality, if they had a wheel with the tyre fitted for OS running and needed one for NS they just put it on and weren't concerned about tread direction

 

[Simmerit]

Gen question.

Why are vehicles scaled at 1/35 while aircraft are scaled at 1/32?

It's the same with the smaller ones. Vehicles are 1/76 while aircraft are 1/72.

It’s all the fault of Tamiya. Armour used to be in 1/32 until a Japanese manufacturer entered the market in the early 1960s manufacturing in 1/35. They grabbed market share as the kits were excellent and all other manufacturers eventually fell into line. You do still get armour in 1/32, but it’s like rocking horse shit.

it really pisses me off as well if it’s any consolation

 

[Simmerit]

It actually seems (to the non-perfectionists among us) that you've pretty much done it all, what extra work do you plan on doing? And will it keep us going through the lockdown like your magnificent Skyraider thread?

thank you tw the Skyraider and I’m glad you enjoyed the build. You must have thought WTF when I binned one.....

Anyway. It needs weathering first of all and it’s got no decals on. That’s not too much work.

I bodged some of the figures. I need to replace pretty much all of them as they are not good enough. That’s why I stopped at the base coat of paint on the greatcoats- one applied, it showed there they were not good enough.

some of the poses are wrong also.

 

[Simmerit]

If it's any consolation, I spent a little while looking for photos to show you the error of your ways only to discover that there are quite a few photos showing the tyres the "wrong" way round.

Why this should be, I don't know. Maybe some drivers thought that by reversing the front tyres they'd be better able to reverse out of a sticky situation?

Tyres are addictive - I did exactly the same thing.

I have a photo somewhere of row after row of Mat (there must be 200 of them) ready to leave manufacturing and every single one of them has the front tyres reversed and the rear tyres the correct way.

 

[Bubbles_Barker]

It’s all the fault of Tamiya. Armour used to be in 1/32 until a Japanese manufacturer entered the market in the early 1960s manufacturing in 1/35. They grabbed market share as the kits were excellent and all other manufacturers eventually fell into line. You do still get armour in 1/32, but it’s like rocking horse shit.

it really pisses me off as well if it’s any consolation

I think the only 1/32 armour I can remember is the old Airfix stuff?

 

[Simmerit]

I think the only 1/32 armour I can remember is the old Airfix stuff?

Monogram used to do 1/32nd. Not sure about Revell

 

[Daz]

Monogram used to do 1/32nd. Not sure about Revell

They did at one stage, such as this item edit to add, don't forget at one stage there was the Revell/Monogram tie-up, thus Revell was releasing all sorts of Monogram kits under either their brand name or listed as Revell/Monogram

 

[Bubbles_Barker]

They did at one stage, such as this item edit to add, don't forget at one stage there was the Revell/Monogram tie-up, thus Revell was releasing all sorts of Monogram kits under either their brand name or listed as Revell/Monogram
View attachment 540520

Interesting, I think the Airfix 1:32 range were originally Monogram too...

 

[Daz]

Interesting, I think the Airfix 1:32 range were originally Monogram too...

No, they were Airfix from the start, however, Airfix did start releasing Max Peerless kits around the same time frame, oddly enough, they were scaled as 1/35 so they ended up supplying both scales at the same time more or less

One of the oddballs that was released by the look of it, only once was the Saladin Armoured Car in 1/32 scale