Paint It Black!

SdKfz 250/1 Ausf D from D-Day to Berlin

"Taxi of Dad" duties are putting a serious crimp in my hobby time (and back!). Five and half hours last night driving son and heir to various music lessons and then three hours this morning to his UCAS seminar.

Sitting in the car waiting for him to finish doesn't allow for much other than reading and playing FIFA 13 on the iPad (SD Ponferradina won La Liga this morning and Valencia CF poached me at lunchtime to lead their new campaign!)

During my lunch hour yesterday I did manage substantial progress on my Grenadier Zug's transport, sticking together the three PSC SdKfz 251/1 D's for the grenadiers and converting one of the Armourfast 251/1 C's into a 251/10 by using the spare bits from the PSC set.



I must say the PSC kit is are not only an absolute joy to make and beautifully detailed, but also  intelligently designed to make construction a breeze. The Armourfast kit was by contrast more work and had some illogical bits to glue (such as the vision slits). Whilst the Armourfast kit is not bad (and based on experiences of youth much better than Airfix or Matchbox), PSC have definietly raised the bar when it comes to easy build AFV kits. I'm really looking forward to making the T34's and PzIV's now!

Aside from the easy of construction what I really like about the PSC model is the inclusion of kit to hang off the sides of the vehicle, as well as the inclusion of (wait for it...) crew figures! Yes, an open top vehicle kit with passengers and crew, blimey!

I managed to undercoat them at lunch today and have taken a quick photo to show progress but am unlikely to be able to start painting proper until Thursday as work demand a trip to the "Big Smog" tomorrow. In the meantime I have dug out my trusty old copy of Terry Wise's D-Day to Berlin to look at paint schemes for the half-tracks.

Making the half-tracks up caused me to remember that my Soviet infantry platoon had no transport so after a bit of investigation into various kits and models I have opted for three resin ZIS-5V trucks from Frontline. They look decent enough and were a lot cheaper than any kits I could find and without the hassle of sticking them together.