Many thanks for those kind words Alan, I'm just glad I managed to find something to get those wheels buttoned up!
(No I can't believe I said that either!! )

Here's another of the major characters in the movie...

The character of ‘Skipper’ (his actual name is never given in the film) is one of the pivotal characters in the Battle of Britain movie. Confusingly, I’m sure it was him that was shot down by the ‘Hun in the Sun’ right after he lost contact with the rest of his flight and yet he appears later in the film when he orders the German prisoners to fill in the bomb craters they created with the comment “Give them a bloody shovel!” after which one of the aircraft fitters remarks “Skipper hates Jerries!”
Anyway, on with Skipper’s model figure. He was made up from a real mish-mash of parts with some scratch built additions as well. In Photo 1 we have the diagram of the Preiser kit spue (Pilots and Groundcrew, Luftwaffe, The German Reich 1935-45) or Art.Nr.72508. The parts I’ve used here are actually for one of the groundcrew but these tiny ‘multipose’ figures are great for conversion work. His legs were part numbers 23 and 24, torso part number 25 and the arms were 22 and 27. As you can see in the close up shot in Photo 2 the legs are clothed in loose fitting overalls over short boots, what I need for Skipper though are good old leather RAF flying boots. The solution to that was to dip into my collection of toy soldiers which, these days are no longer the target of matchstick firing artillery, but a very useful source of ‘bits and pieces’. In this case an Airfix German Infantryman kindly donated his jackboots! The Preiser legs look greatly overscale to the polythene figure (1/72 compared to OO/HO which I think is 1/76?) but since it’s only the boots being swapped it actually works quite well as you can see in Photo 3. Incidentally, considering just how old these Airfix figures are, the detail they had in the 'good old days' was superb! The Preiser legs were cut off at the boot top level and drilled out to accept a short length of brass rod, the sliced off boots were then also drilled and then pushed onto the protruding rod. Once in place, a drop of thin super glue was added to the join, it doesn’t really glue it as such, as super glue won’t stick polythene but it does sort of ‘seal’ the joint for better painting later. Skipper’s head came from another Airfix source, this time the new set of RAF Personnel (new as in bought recently, not new figures which probably everyone hoped Airfix would bring out for the anniversary!) I used the figure of the ‘at ease’ pilot to obtain a good flying helmeted head as shown in Photo 4. Again this was fixed using the brass rod method with the hole drilled down into the Preiser torso as seen in Photo 5. Note that Skipper was usually attired in his RAF white woollen sweater so most of any detail on the front of the torso was sanded away as seen here. Now the fun started!
Skipper would be wearing his Mae West life jacket over his sweater and this was going to be constructed from two materials – lead sheet and Milliput epoxy putty. The first task was to roll over a strip of the lead sheet to thin it down considerably to as near a scale thickness as possible. It was then trimmed down into a strip as wide as the Mae West was from top to bottom and carefully folded around the figure. This gave me the width of the strip needed to go around the torso like a waistcoat and with the excess cut off I could then put it back on the figure and mark where the arms would go. With the general position marked on in thin permanent marker I then used a multi-armed leather punch to punch out the holes as illustrated in Photo 6. You can just make out the remains of the ink mark on the top hole. This would then form the ‘jacket’ part of the Mae West. The next task then was to form the lead jacket back around the torso whilst trying to create the effect of the edges of the vest being proud of the plastic torso beneath, you can see this in Photo 7 around the bottom edge especially. As soon as the effect was just right I then glued on the arms as seen in this photo and applied a drop of glue inside the jacket to fix it in place, in hindsight I put them on too early as the next stage would have been far easier without them in place!
The lead part of the Mae West is essentially the cloth section, which holds the actual life vest in place, the inflatable life jacket (the yellow part) is a flattened rubber tube which runs around the neck and down the front on both sides of the jacket. This was formed out of Milliput epoxy putty (the tiniest amount I could mix up), formed into a thin sausage then wrapped around the neck and squashed into place down the front of the jacket (the white parts showing on Photo 7). As I said, this would probably have been much easier to form in place if those arms weren’t in the way! Once the putty was hardened off it was back to the lead strip again to finish off the jacket with seven very thin strips cut from the left-over flattened sheet used for the waistcoat. Four of these are represented by the blue lines in Photo 8, these being the tie-straps at the front of the Mae West, there are also two longer straps at the back which pass around the thighs when tied in place and the last one is incorporated into the fabric vest passing around the body of the vest, (there are actually two of these but I only made up the lower one, the top one was simply painted on instead.
The last four pics, Photos 9 to 12 show the finished figure in place on the diorama from various angles, about to clamber up the wing of his Spitfire. The paint scheme was as follows: Trousers – Revell RAF Blue, Sweater – Admiralty White, Flying Boots and Helmet – Vallejo Red Leather with white sheepskin trim on the boots, Skin – Admiralty Flesh, Mae West – Straps Vallejo Khaki, Jacket – Vallejo Khaki and white mix, Inflatable – Revell Luftwaffe Yellow.
So that’s Squadron Leader ‘Skipper’. He was the most complicated of the figure conversions, most of the others were much simpler, just a case of sticking the Preiser figures together in the way I needed and paint job conversions on top, so in the next instalment another half dozen or so figures to come!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Good job Kev posted, somehow missed the last update - amazing work as always Robin, keep it up


Steve

Carrying on from the Airfix figures in the last installment, we come to the first set of personnel constructed from the Preiser Luftwaffe Pilots and Groundcrew set. These are excellent little models with lovely detail and definition as you'll see below.

The first diagram in Photo 1 is a ‘cleaned up’ scan of the inside of the Preiser cardboard box which contains the Luftwaffe set Art. Nr. 72508. The original is printed on standard ‘cardboard brown’ so after scanning it into the Corel PrintHouse program I first carefully removed the box creases from the picture before then paint filling the background to turn it white, and then cleaned up the edges of the individual parts so they could be paint filled in black. Finally the part numbers which were a little indistinct in places were all removed as well and replaced with new added text ones. This took a little longer than anticipated as the ruddy graphics program crashed just as I was putting on the last couple of part numbers. Needless to say I hadn’t saved all that work during the process! Attempt number two was saved after every new addition!!
What I have done here is to illustrate the first four Preiser figures using the diagram with the relevant parts outlined in a coloured box which corresponds to the border around their photograph. If I remember rightly, I think Italierie used to employ the same system on their figure sets (this was at least thirty years ago mind!) I’ve had to space out the figures into two instalments, as you can see on the diagram, the ‘2x’ refers to the fact that there are two duplicate sprues in the set giving seven sprues in total (that 2x in the bottom right actually refers to the deck chair mini sprues which I’ve erased on the photo), some figures are built up from identical parts which makes the coloured boxes a little difficult so the second figure will come in the next instalment.
Photo 2 illustrates the Hurricane Armourer. The torso and legs (Part 73) is a dual purpose part which can be used either laid down as seen here or in a ‘leaning back’ pose which we’ll see next time. The one piece body is moulded in overalls, I chose the right arm (6) because it fitted nicely in the gap created by the open gun bay and the left arm (11) as it had a suitable tool – a large screwdriver! Of all the arms in this set, only three have any sort of tool, this one with the screwdriver, a right arm with a spanner (not bent enough unfortunately to fit in the gun bay) and the third one is holding a rag (see the next figure). The head may or may not be Part 49, to be honest almost all the forage capped heads look too similar to remember which one went where! No ‘surgery’ on this one, just a paint job to change him from Hans to Harry!
Photo 3 is the ‘Erk’ on paint duty. That rag holding right arm is used here, Part 10 and his legs are a two part assembly using Parts 23 and 24. Leg 24, the straight one will also fit to leg 15 as well to give a slightly different pose. The separate torso (58) is another one moulded in the loose overalls as you can see by the ‘baggy’ waist, others are moulded with tighter uniform tops and belts. The head is another of the standard forage cap types.
Photo 4 is Warrant Officer Warwick, seen a few times during the movie, usually using his well developed lungs to pass on helpful hints to the lower ranks (or to superior female officers about to light a calming ciggy whilst standing in the midst of bomb damaged gas mains!) Mr Warwick’s legs and torso are Part number 1, the only slight alteration being the use of a safety razor blade to accentuate the parting in the rear of the tunic bottom and a little more definition to the bottom of the tunic where it meets the trousers. His right arm is a standard bent position, Part 75, whilst his left arm (which I forgot to put in the photo) is Part 61, the arm holding a report pad (or something like that!) Mr Warwick’s head is Part 66 wearing the peaked Officers Cap (a part he shares with AVM Keith Park to whom he is chatting).
Photo 5 is Squadron Leader Skipper’s ground crewman, standing on the wingroot of his Spitfire readying his seat straps. His torso and legs are Part 40 (which he shares with Arnold in the hut) with arms 35 and 36, selected to hold the straps at a realistic position and another forage cap head, Part 44. I’m pretty sure this is 44 as its one of the few with a decided turn to the right in the neck!
Finally in Photo 6 we have the selection of chairs and table provided in the Preiser set. There is only one of these sprues (more’s the pity) so you only get the four chairs but they are marvellous little mouldings, very fine and delicate as you can see in the photo. There are two tables however, one on this sprue and another on it’s own little mini sprue. Three of the chairs were used here and the fourth is in the hut with Arnold. The table tops are moulded with a pack of cards spread around and a leather flying helmet but I sanded these down to give a flat surface onto which was stuck some papers and a couple of authentic Battle of Britain period newspapers, reduced to scale size and printed onto inkjet decal paper. The deckchairs are also great little mouldings themselves. They come in two versions, the ones I’ve used here are Parts 88 and 89 – the deckchair frame and the canvas seat. The only thing I changed was to cut away the extra armrests from the frame to make them more ‘Brighton Beach’ and less ‘French Riviera’. The other version requires Part 69, 70, 71 and 72 (bottom left sprue) – this is a pair of flying booted legs attached to another canvas seat with a separate torso, head and a pair of arms clasped behind his head. This assembly fits onto the same frame to create a pilot dozing in the deckchair.
In the next instalment, Keith Parks himself and some more Preiser ground crew figures.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!



Robin

Many thanks indeed to Alan, Kev and Stevie and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the members!

This should have gone up yesterday but after looking after Mum's raspy cough for a few days the ruddy bug finally sank it's teeth into me yesterday morning. By the time I got home my throat was on fire and my head felt like it was on a countdown to explode! Its a little better this morning thank goodness - I could just about swallow my luke warm tea!
Anyway, both this diary and the Victory have come to a temporary pause at the moment due to my SD memory card being chock full of two and a half thousand pics! The remaining figures to post up are all slightly out of focus as they weren't the subject of the photo they're in! There are probably fifty or so out of focus or unwanted flash photos in that number but most of them are at the beginning of the card and the camera will only display the images one at a time from the most recent backwards, on top of which the pc refuses to delete any of the rejects - it keeps telling me the card is write protected no matter how many times I change that setting in the properties!
Fortunately, (provided my brother has been listening to my hints) I should be back in business after they arrive for dinner! Until then, following Kevs excellent suggestion, here's the first of a few 'festive funnies) from the existing stock of photos - hope you all enjoy them too!

Merry Christmas to you All!


'Sniffle' Robin

Hi Robin.
just looked all the way trough your build diary.
what beautiful work you have done on the planes figures trucks and buildings Ian