jeaton01 wrote:

Did you intend that a picture be in the post, Dan?

ahem, err..... yes. I kinda did, hard to make comments

darson wrote:

Good luck on the Evil Bay bidding Chris, I hope you get the kit for a good price .

 Evil is an understatement for the a$@ that out bid me with one second left.  So now I have to wait for another one for a good price.  Only other ebay kit is 60 plus shipping to start.  What a rip off.

Dostacos: Looks very good so far, Are you going to add any figures?

Kg4kpg: E-bay has frustrated me aswell many of times. Sorry to hear you were out bid, better luck next time.

Chris,

Townsy11 wrote:

Kg4kpg: E-bay has frustrated me aswell many of times. Sorry to hear you were out bid, better luck next time. Chris,

Appreciate it.  No worries, i figure I should find one with plenty of time to spare and still come out with a nice build.  I'm still digging out all the photos from mt howitzer in germany for the proper paint and markings.

Well I've got basically all the construction done on the T-72, I'm just having some trouble scratchbuilding some parts for the replacement of some of the poorer quality ones (such as the canvas mantlet cover) I'm thinking I'm going to have to make it out of aluminum foil, and it doesn't look fun...

Chris,

Townsy11 wrote:

Dostacos: Looks very good so far, Are you going to add any figures? Kg4kpg: E-bay has frustrated me aswell many of times. Sorry to hear you were out bid, better luck next time.   Chris,

Well guys, to be honest, from the start I haven't been all that satisfied with the Ships badge, so I decided to try again with a different photo and I would like your honest opinions as to which you like better, here they both are full size so you can see them better:

Opinions?

Well, to be honest the new proposed badge does look cool and impressive, but I'm a bit surprised that you chose a battleship as a symbol of Cold War at sea.

Battleships were already obsolete by the time of WWII, and by the time of the Cold War, their role shrink even further as they were confined to costal gunfire support. Other than that, they were pretty useless fossils, especially at sea. By then, naval doctrine called ships to be attacked from a certain distance, either by ship-to-ship missiles, by aircrafts or by submarines - but not by direct fire from massive 16in guns (or maybe just for the "coup de grace", preferably with some TV crews around to get some nice images for the evening news). Moreover, in the event of Cold War, the belligerents would have extensively used tactical nuclear warheads against ships, making the armour of a battleship pretty useless... So appart from its psychological role (and amphibious gunfire support), I question the utility of a battleship in modern naval warfare (for more info, I refer to the excellent explanations recently posted in this thread).

I know that battleships have been used in various theaters until the 90s, but the true masters of the seas were and still are carriers, subs and ASW vessels. I'm sorry to be a little harsh there, but battleships, even though they look majestic, mighty and undestructible, and give a feeling of brute power to a nation, are basically useless naval dinosaurs. So IMHO, using a battleship as naval Cold War symbol/badge would be like using a triplan for a WWII GB.

I can understand the fascination though.

PS: the second picture didn't come through...

PS 2: due to various rigging problems on the USS United States, I will only be able to start working on the kits of this GB in May or so... 

I was looking around for some reference pictures for my Centurion, there doesn't seem too many out there on the model 5/2 or 6 in Europe in the early to mid 1960's.  Then I remembered something. There is a scene in the old Beatles movie "Help!" where they are being guarded by some tanks. The movie was produced at the time the versions 5/2 and 6 were being used. I'll take a closer look at the scene for ideas on the paint schemes. From the looks of the barrels they are the NATO 105's.

Mike T. 

re: ship GB . I agree with I-Rex, as he eloquently explained in his previous post. We ALL love the majestic lines of the BB, but they had become obsolete by the end of WW2.

What is "the" Ship that comes to mind when I think "Cold War"?

The nuclear sub......   SSBNs particularly; their main (and only mission most of the time) was Cold War/WW3 specific.

I have no clue how to do a GB Badge, but I found this picture of the Kirov with some "company" that I think would be good??....

Here's my progress on the Thud

I'm doing a cross-over build in "Heavy Lifters" with the Roden AN-12 Cub. I figured that the Heavy Lifter would need something, well, heavy to lift. So I found a nice little 1/72 Russian gas truck that'll be backing up the ramp into the AN-12 Cub which is the main subject.

This was a very nice kit. it probably had 100 parts: the whole 6x6 drive, cab interior. I had to do the decals with trim film as the kit originals were shattered.

This was a very nice build that took me a couple of weekends. It would sit pretty on a 3 x 5 index card.

The Cub is waiting to be started, so I wanted to show my commitment. I ordered all of the Humbrol colors, which I could not otherwise match to Roden's color charts.

More soon,

Bill

Raptor: Keep the pics coming. I love the lines of the 105.

Bill: The truck looks great so far. That's got to be pretty small...any chance of borrowing Marc's "Giant Penny" for the photo?

Some excellent progress so far!

Raptordriver: The F-105 is looking pretty sweet, if I ever start building aircraft, I will definently have one of those on my shelf.

Bondoman: Nice work on the tanker truck, that sounds like one cool diorama you got in the works there.

Thanks for the feedback on the badge guys, you made some excellent points and I understand the whole "battlefield dinosaur" take on the battleship, and I have made some more progress with a different badge, what do you guys think?:

Any positive/negative feedback is welcome, just an idea. It's the Soviet Kiev Class Aircraft Carrier "Novorossiysk" in service from '78-'93.

Chris,

Allow me to respond to your group build badge in one word: BINGO!!!

Of course, I may be biased, since I'm building her sister ship Minsk.   Seriously though, that says "Cold War" in a big way.

raptordriver - nice start! Looking forward to seeing the full grown thud...

bondoman - nice little kit... ZV the Zvezda precursor?

chris - Yep, thats a great badge! Wish we could "photoshop" a SSN periscope off the bow (inaccurate as hell i know!). As mentioned, this one says "cold war".

cdclukey  - Look forward to your build! not enough soviet ship kits available, Dragon has released some last couple years. A nice break from modern US/JMSDF/UK warships.

I'm glad that the new badge has gone over well! but me being pretty computer inept I don't know how to shrink it to 90 pixels in height, if someone could please possibly shrink it down and re-post it that would be much appreciated.

and Kg4kpg, glad to hear you picked up the kit! sounds like a cool build.

Chris,

Awesome! thanks Kg4kpg, it worked to perfection.

Chris,

I just finished my "in my stash" GB ELCO and am starting on the XF-85.  Gotta tell you guys.  I have not built a model with that few parts in a very long time.  I'm sort of adicted to the BIG models.  I mean I like it when the part count is over 500.  Allows one to "bond" with the project.   Just so you see what I mean... here it is.