ACE 1/72 BA-20 Armoured Car Pt. 1 - Unboxing

I was very excited as I cracked open the lid of this kit - I really like the look of this little armoured car. At first everything looked good, all sprues were encased in a sealed plastic bag (a good sign I thought) and inside this the tiny etched parts and decals were given their own separate plastic bag. On opening up the main bag this is what I got...

Notable among these are the two light grey sprues on the left - one is the small railway diorama (which I won't be needing, but thanks anyway) and the other is the railway wheels set. Obviously these will both be assigned to my spares box, but I am glad they are separates - it tells me that ACE added these to a basic BA-20 that they must've done. But more importantly...

The normal road wheels come on their own sprue. These are solid plastic wheels and tyres, but I do like both the level of detail and the fact they come with optional domed hub caps.

Now, I won't go through every sprue individually, but I do want to show you this one - the chassis sprue - in some detail. Now do bear in mind that out of the two armoured car kits I bought - this one and the UM BA-10 - this kit was the more expensive (£10.70) so the quality of this main component is interesting to say the least...

Just in case you can't make out what I am trying to get at, here is the same sprue photographed from a more side-on angle...

The phrase 'rough round the edges' comes to mind. Practically all parts in this kit, in fact, come with a fine film of flash around the seams and in this case the edges of the chassis are in need of a good sanding and the roughness has ruined the little lip which runs around this component. I shall have to do a bit of repairing here to smooth things out.

The above photo shows the quality of some of the panel line detail - they aren't the sharpest lines in the world, just OK. But maybe I am being too picky, I am sure they will be serviceable enough and will be picked up nicely at the painting stage.

Instructions are clear enough, but while test fitting some of the parts I did find that ACE have left you to try and figure out the best place to glue some of the parts. The suspension in particular has a noticeable lack of pilot holes to guide your assembly.

Edit: Nearly forgot an important issue. While the instruction sheet clearly numbers each component ACE neglected to add these numbers to the sprues themselves! Common sense helps you identify parts, but in some cases - like the suspension springs - there can be some confusion.

One thing to note is that you have to make the 'clothes line' antenna yourself out of some spare thin wire, not a big problem but the war gamer may chose to skip this fiddly step (some BA-20s were not equipped with this option anyway). And the last parts are the etched ones, four tiny brass tow hooks, a indication, to my mind, that ACE is not up to moulding more delicate parts in plastic.

Finally, there are the decals - well, this particular version only comes with one set, some German crosses. I suppose my hope that they might have included some Soviet or Finnish decals to make the alternative road car was asking too much!

Above: A lovely built example of this kit by Neil Lyall. Photo
source: Henk of Holland's ACE WW2 models review section.

Overall I don't really think I am getting my ten quids worth here, but there again it is a relatively rare subject for 1/72 and I couldn't find any alternative, so beggars can't be choosers in my case. The quality of parts are mediocre, reminiscent of some of the older Airfix kits and I really did expect more.

It will be interesting to compare the quality of this to the UM BA-10 I have bought to accompany this BA-20. Both are Ukrainian made kits, I believe, but the UM armoured car was priced at a rather more palatable £7 (though do remember that you get TWO Pegasus BA-6 armoured cars for £9). It all depends wether, like me, you especially wanted this particular armoured car or not.

eBay Coup - Crescent 5.5 field gun

Dipping my toe in the whole eBay auction shenanigans - and I managed to get what I think is a good deal. I won the following item for just £2 plus postage...

It's a die cast Crescent 5.5 gun (No. 1251), which I believe may be roughly compatible with 1/32 figures (?). While being a modern artillery piece (based on the WW2 British 5.5 inch gun) I have bought it as a bit of a poor man's Britain's 4.7 inch gun. It is designed to fire projectiles and is - according to the eBay description - in working order.

Now Crescent was a British manufacturer that shut shop in 1980, although I can't seem to remember them from when I was a kid (Corgi, Dinky and Britains were the ones I can recall). But they seem to be  fairly well sought after on eBay so I was glad to grab this one at such a reasonable price.

As for use, I intend to 'Victorianize' it by adding a (removable) shield and some period looking wheel covers (like those on the Britain's 4.7). Nothing irreparable, all of which I could remove to get it back to it's original configuration should I want to. Painting is another thing - do I or don't I?

Hopefully it will look OK with my AIP Egyptians.

Link: Crescent die cast guns, tanks & trucks at Planet Die Cast

Eduard 1/144 Me 109 G-6 - Complete

Conclusion
Phew! I finished a model guys...Yay!

1/144 is a challenge, I found trying to directly scale down painting techniques I have been learning in 1/72 didn't always work. I also had to fudge the decals as I couldn't find suitable small numerals or the correct emblems in this size. Still, I kept reminding myself that I was building a war game model and not a historically exact display replica.

Featured work - Panzerguy's Finnish BA-20

No prizes for the reason that I'm featuring this particular model! And although this is a 1/35 scale version of a vehicle I'm making next myself it's very interesting for me to look at how the painting has been handled. Panzerguy's has taken a series of very nice photos that give me some useful reference...

The BA-20 reminds me a little of the contemporary British Rolls Royce armoured car, although while the Roller was deemed obsolete early in World War 2 the Finns continued to use the BA-20 well into 1944.

You can see more of Panzerguy's lovely model here: Finnish Army Ba 20 Armored Car 1/35 Alan kit.

Stash Update - Finnish Army Armoured Car Company

Seeing as I am a knat's whisker away from finishing my very first Rapid Fire! army unit - my Finnish Air Group (must call it something else, LOL) - I thought I best prepare my next project in this series. I am working on the HQ unit between the major fighting units so I can get onto more exciting AFVs, so next I decided to get on with my Armoured Car Company.

Under the Rapid Fire! ruleset the armoured car company for the Finns is made up of two units each comprising on one vehicle each. There's a HQ unit and the main company unit and these should be made up with one Soviet BA-20 (HQ) and one BA-10.

Left: Soviet BA-20 armored car, in Finnish markings, , displayed in Finnish Tank Museum (Panssarimuseo) in Parola. Source: Wikipedia

You can read all about the historical usage of captured Soviet armoured cars by the Finns here: Jaeger Platoon - Finnish Armoured Cars of WW2

The smaller BA-20 armoured car is a bit of a chew to get hold of in 1/72 plastic (though there are plenty of examples in 20mm resin), and the only one I could find which is readily available here in the UK is the BA-20 Railroad version from Ace. As the name suggests this is a version of the vehicle which comes with railway wheels so that it could ride on the tracks, but it does come with the ordinary road wheels too.

The bigger BA-10 is a lot easier to procure and there are nice versions by Pegasus (lovely 2 vehicle war game quality box set) and, for example, UniModels. It was the Unimodels version I decided to go for after reading a very positive review over at the SquadPainter blog.

Now I really like the look of this pair of armoured cars, they are sort of quaint in their way and yet I can see how in a war game senario they could be very useful despite their somewhat limited armament. Although the BA-10's 45mm gun would be very handy against infantry, light gun positions and soft vehicles it's as reconnaissance vehicles where I see this pair excelling.

Left: Soviet BA-10 armored car, displayed in Finnish Tank Museum (Panssarimuseo) in Parola. Source: Wikipedia

I haven't even opened the boxes yet so the next post will be the unboxing and will be followed by the building of the BA-20 first of all.

The BA20 was bought from Model Hobbies for £10.32 (yikes!) and I got the BA-10 from Hannants for £7.40.

Minicraft 1/144 JU-88 Pt. 5 – Base coats complete

Not as much model time this weekend as I would have liked (where does the time go?) but at least I got all the base coat and touching up done on my JU-88. I thought I'd picture the underside as it's quite colourful what with the theatre colours...

I haven't attached the bombs as I think they might hinder my plans for weathering the underside. Same with the machine guns and aerials, these will all be attached once all the major weathering has been completed.

Well, I've hit a bit of a speed bump now as the Finnish decals I have are not quite big enough for this bomber and I've had to order another set (this time a 1/72 scale sheet which has small Finnish decals which might do the job). So, time to finish up my two other aircraft in this project.  

Featured work - Darkbirk's KV-1

Wonderful Trumpeter KV-1 over at the 'Are We Not Men?' blog. By complete co-incidence I was at the point of buying this model yesterday for my Finnish army's heavy tank company, but at the last minute purchased something else...Now I'm kicking myself, the KV-1 is such a terrific looking beast.

As usual Darkbirk has done a lovely little photo vignette of this tank - the flamethrower version - tackling an enemy bunker (which is similarly excellent). There are more photos of this little diorama here: AWNM? - The guild - build up 2012 (9)