Arado Ar 196

 Back to the hey days

After I found a Revell Arado for 2 euro at a flea market in Milano I could not resist and I went back to what I got involved in some 50 years ago, that is 1:72 aircraft. I am not very skilled but I like the outcome and the seaplane is now hanging from the roof next to my pc screens...

 

 Additions to my Revell Sdkfz11 are basic but camo is convincing 

I just added few little items to slightly improve the German half-track: I lowered the windscreen and glued two rear mirrors. I added a couple of gear levers and a dashboard. I attached the two width signals on fenders and a couple of handles on the rear.

The nice part was loading different items on the vehicle, such as cases, drums, tools, a camo tarp, an helmet, etc. I tend not to create a colletion of very different camo pattern for my models as I think in reality each group of vehicles shared more or less the same kind of approach but the pattern I painted was very attractive indeed so I went for it 

Some more pics of recenlty posted stuff

Here we have  my converted M35 pulling an 17 pdr by Revell built OOB

Some houses I use for my war game:

An M7 Priest converted into a Kangaroo by Matchbox with the help of a Matador conv set (476 E-16)

Here we have an M33 Prime Mover (from a Milicast UK2) adapting an M3 Grant, an ARV Sherman using an Airfix with Matador conv set

M35 Prime Mover

Long time ago I had bought some Aifix Sherman at cheap price and I wanted to convert them as I like service and support vehicles and also I had already a pretty good chunk of regular tanks. So first I went for a couple of recovery tanks and a fascine layer although this was only used in Italy and maybe by the Polish Armd Div in The Netherlands. This was the turn of a challenging work: the conversion into an M35 Prime Mover.

This is the most difficult stuff I have done and I recognize the outcome is far from perfect but I am not particularly skilled and my eyes do not support me as in the past. Furthermore and more importantly I use my models to play solo war game and the aim is to have better models than the basic ones.

I kept only the lower part of the hull and built the rest from scratch. For the front side I downsized slightly the one manufactured by Esci for their Sherman or M12. Then I had to figure out the right angle of the sloping front and side plates. The rest was kind of straightforward. I used a good load of spare parts like towing cables, tracks, jerry cans, etc. I looked for info and pics on the web. Apparently there is no 1:72 or 1:76 kits available. I found some very interesting sources and some very helpful drawings