Building a Rapid Fire! Finnish Army HQ - Part 4

Designing the HQ formation
I am a visual sort of guy, so I sketched out this unit organisational chart to help me get my head around exactly what I need to do to build my Finnish HQ...

This isn't a complete inventory of what you could collect to make a Finnish HQ under the Rapid Fire! rule set, simply my preference for this unit.

Building a Rapid Fire! Finnish Army HQ - Part 3

Supply truck conversion - cheap Ford-Werke V3000 (Pt.2)
OK, got the basic surgery done! It’s a bit rough and ready and so some filing and filling will have to be done, but I expected that…

The good news is that the Pegasus cab fits the Valiant bonnet (or hood if you are one of our colonial friends) quite well. I am going to have to shorten the doors just a bit and I may still have to work on the underneath of the resin front end to allow the Pegasus chassis to fit.

Worth mentioning is a new web resource I have found called Pala Suomen Historiaa, it is a Finnish web site so you may need Google’s translation feature to navigate it but it have loads of original photos showing the Finn’s endeavours during the war.

There are lots of nice shots of the V3000 "Hävittäjä" (or the ‘fighter’ as it was nicknamed by the Finns) that show just how important this truck was.

Photo source: www.palasuomenhistoriaa.net

NEXT: FITTING THE CAB, INSTALLING THE INTERIOR

Feature dilema - a medley of models

Usually I feature just one particular work, but there's a lot of fantastic stuff out there are at the moment so I've decided to do a medley of featured models today.

Let's start with Özgür Aydın from MiniAFV - I do feature MiniAFV work a lot I know, but that's because these guys make a lot of the same models that interest me and they do go through thier build process in detail so you learn a lot from reading thier posts (great for a noob like myself). Today they have posted up a very nice Zvezda T-34 (1943)...

MiniAFV - Zvezda 1/72 T-34/76 / Mod.1943 (by Özgür Aydın)

One of the things I like about this is Özgür's Russian Green. Something I found out recently is that the original WW2 Soviet green paint - 4BO - had a a fair amount of yellow in it and Özgür's paint mix reflects this nicely. I wish I had an airbrush as my 'green out a can' approach is never quite right.

Next is Darkbirk's 'what if' Sturmhaubitze StuH 45. I like Pegasus Model's series of paper panzers - well, some are paper (drawing board) designs and some are late war prototypes. Once again, aside from the nice model making, it is Darkbirk's diorama and photographic skills that I enjoy...

Are We Not Men blog - Battlegroup Oder #3 (StuH 45)

Finally, I couldn't resist featuring this wonderful competition piece from Rob Ferreira. Rob's 'Egyptian JS-3 Stalin' really recreates the desolate scene of carnage that followed one of the Middle East wars. I believe the Israeli's had a hard time with the Egyptian JS-3s at first, finding that the thick frontal armour bounced many of their standard weapons. But the Israelis persevered and eventually the Egyptians lost a large proportion of their JS-3s...

Scale Model Addicts 2011 Spring Contest

The weathering on this model is just amazing and I would love to recreate a 'dead tank' like this at some point. The bare metal with it's slight sheen of surface rust to the burned engine deck are realistically done. Simply amazing.

Building a Rapid Fire! Finnish Army HQ - Part 2

Supply truck conversion - cheap Ford-Werke V3000 (Pt.1)
I know this is a bit of a complex post, being as it is documenting my HQ build and detailing the construction of each model in this unit, but I wanted to keep everything together. Today I am starting my cheap and cheerful V3000 truck build.

To recap, the idea here is to produce a cheap(ish) German Ford 3 ton truck suitable for wargaming. But wanting something that would match the rest of my plastic kits I have chosen to chop up a resin V3000 and stick the cab onto the chassis of a Pegasus truck model.

First off (in case you decide to try this yourself) please ensure you work in a well ventilated area and wear a dust mask. I am not sure about the chemical make up of resin, but cutting and sanding it produced a very fine dust which can't be healthy!

I used my trusty Dremmel and it's cutting wheel to, first of all, chop the resin cab off the rest of the truck model and then to sand down the remaining base and wheels.

In the above picture you can see my chopped down resin cab and placed it next to the two likely chassis donors  On the left is the Pegasus 'US Army Truck' and on the right is their 'German Army Truck', although I had planned to mate the cab to the Opel Blitz look-alike I now think the US truck is a better size and shape. Remember, I am using the cab roof of the plastic kit and mating it to the resin lower cab - the German cab is a bit too large and square-shaped.

The real challenge is where to cut the resin cab roof off. Obviously if I can find a convenient natural join - like the door seam - that would hide my hack'n'slash surgery.

Again, I think the Pegasus US Army Truck has the most compatible cab and I think I see where I shall make my cut - down the door seam and up through the roof supports.

The down side of using the US Army Truck kit is that it is a 6x2 (3 axle) chassis and the flat bed is the wrong shape, so a little bit of scratch building will be needed at the back. But as I wanted a specific shape of flat bed anyway - what's called a 'stake bed' - I knew I would be getting the plastic card out eventually anyway.

Sorry if this is a lot of post for not much action, but the cutting and sanding of the resin cab was enough for today (and it took me ages to dust down the kitchen)!

NEXT: I WILL CUT THE RESIN CAB TO SHAPE AND MATE THE PLASTIC CAB ROOF TO  IT...

Featured work - Erhan's desert Stalin

While I wait for some upgrade parts to arrive for my Airfix JS3 Stalin project I am keeping an eye out for good examples of this tank in Braille Scale to motivate me. Erhan - from the enjoyable MiniAFV blog - has put together a Trumpeter JS-3 in Egyptian colours and it looks great...

The Egyptians used the Stalin 3 from 1956-67 and this is a period and theatre of war that is increasingly gaining my interest. Whenever I finally do manage to get my Finnish WW2 army completed I would like to start working on models from the Middle East wars, particularly ex-Soviet AFVs.

Check out Erhan's desert Stalin here: MiniAFV - Trumpeter 1/72 Egyptian JS-3 Tank (by Erhan)

Lucky day! Academy Opel Blitz bargain

It must have been my lucky day today. Having posted my intention to put together my 'cut and shut' V3000 truck model I found a very nice 1/72 Academy Opel Blitz model at my local discount store for just £4.25!

I had a quick look over the components and it looks pretty slick, it should match my Model Trans V3000 resin cab upgrade really well.

Additionally, the same store was selling off it's Armourfast models at just £3.95 each! So I couldn't resist picking up some T-34s at the same time.

Building a Rapid Fire! Finnish Army HQ - Part 1

As some of the more unique models are still on the way (some from abroad) I am starting my HQ build with what I have handy. The transport. My organisational inventory includes three trucks in my HQ formation – two medium (up to 3 tons) and one light (a 1.5 ton).

Above: A Finnish army Ford-Werke V8 1940 V3000 3-ton, 4x2 cargo truck. Some 24,110 V3000 trucks were produced by the German Ford factories at Cologne and Berlin between 1941 and 1946. Photo source: Wikipeda

Historically, WW2 Finnish army transport provision was eclectic. Ever short of transport vehicles the Finnish army took into use many commercial vehicles, but there were a few makes that were especially purchased for military use. Perhaps the truck which is most associated with the Finns – among war gamers at least – is the German made Ford-Werke’s V3000 3 tonner, and this is were I am starting my fleet.

The V3000 is reasonably easy to get hold of in Braille Scale form, mainly because it was also a pretty common vehicle in the Wehrmacht as well, and there are versions available whatever your budget might be.

Although you can buy an ‘out of the box’ model of this truck - from Hunor (#HUNO72024) for example, pictured above – these are quite niche and therefore quite expensive and so probably not appropriate for the average war gamer. However, there are a few more modestly priced options designed for the gamer that won’t break the bank.

Let’s start at the bottom (cost wise), if you go onto the Rapid Fire! web site and check out their own range of ‘ready to roll’ resin vehicles you will find a very nicely priced one-piece V3000 in ‘1/72’. At just £5.95 you can get a very good looking representation of the German Ford, but this is not a kit and has filled in windows and a rather unattractive central resin support joining the base to the chassis.

Above: This is the one-piece Rapid Fire! V3000, and it looks very neat for a solid resin moulding. When I received this I noticed that it was marked as being made by Valiant Models (although you will not find these for sale on the Valiant web store). Were it not for the fact that this ‘solid’ format model doesn’t match the rest of my multi-part plastic kits I would be very happy with the look of this model. 

If, like me, you are building you army from plastic kits then you may not appreciated the solid one-piece make up of this model, you’ll maybe want something that matches the rest of your kits. To get round this I am trying out the idea of chopping off the distinctive front end of the resin V3000 and mating it to one of my cheap Pegasus ‘German Army Trucks’.

It may sound a bit of a convoluted exercise, but if I do this I get the best of both worlds and it will just cost £10.45 – but, if you are clever and can make resin moulds you can copy your V3000 front end and create a small fleet of mock versions for a budget price.

Finally, my other option for making a (relatively) cheaper V3000 is to buy the Model Trans resin cab kit (6.10 Euro). This is actually a better-conceived take on the ‘cut and shut’ idea mentioned above. The cab kit is designed to fit onto the front end of the Roden or Italeri Opel Blitz, with a combined price of about £16+ this is still a little pricey but still cheaper than the Hunor kit.

Above: Here is the Model Trans Ford V3000 cab kit. I was a little disappointed that both of the cab roof supports were broken off and missing. I opted to buy the Italeri Opel Blitz (as it was on sale) to use as the chassis for this conversion kit and that means I will have to do some chopping about to make it fit.

So there you have it, three price options for the V3000. I can’t wait to compare my budget build idea to the more expensive Model Trans hybrid model.

This icon of the Finnish army should look great – hopefully – and provide the mainstay of my medium truck fleet. But aside from this I can build up my fleet with models of Citroen 45 and some Opel Blitz for the medium haulage and captured Soviet Gaz AA or Zil 12 trucks for the light transport. But for variety I can throw in some less well known commercial models, like the Citroen 25, Chevrolet or Dodge. But I will discuss my choices for additional trucks in a later post.

NEXT: In part two I will try putting together my cheap 'cut and shut' V3000. Fingers crossed!