100 Blog Posts - Airfix Sam 2 Missile Set

To celebrate actually having written 100 blog entries ...only taken 5 years! as slow as one of Geoffrey Boycotts England innings! I am posting two pics for your amazement and wonderment of the Airfix Sam-2 Guideline Missile set.This I purchased at the weekend at the War & Peace Revival much to my amazement. There were hundreds of stalls selling everything from jeep and tank spare parts-kits-1940's underwear - Bren guns (£640 if you are wondering) etc etc. One stall was selling kits, the purveyors were from deepest darkest Cornwall and were jolly enough but their kits were priced at £15 for series 1 Airfix & Novo (bagged & plastic/card ) and almost went up by size of box with no relevance to rarity of the kit. I almost turned away thinking 'all a bit rich for me' when I noticed stacked with series 2 &3 1970's boxed Airfix kits one of my 'holy grails' an almost mint Sam 2 set, only marred by an ancient Woolworths price sticker.

Now as any collector and follower of the Airfix brand knows this is one of the kits which along with the Ferguson Tractor, SS France, Original Spitfire, the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 will not re appear as its mold was damaged or lost. Its price £10 I rapidly invested! (it seems to go for anything between £15 - £70 on e bay or at auction, with about £30-£35 being the norm) The original 1973 Airfix Catalogue description ' 19 No A303V SAM-2 Guideline Missile. This Russian defensive surface-to-air missile is currently deployed in North Vietnam and Egypt. This new 124 piece kit provides cab and trailer together with launching platform.'

 To celebrate the Sam -2 I also succumbed to the original Airfix Provost with Rocket rails in RAF Training Command colours, love the box art too. I remember my dad making this kit in the 1970's.

 Also at War & Peace Revival were some model displays and trading area but outside the racecourse main stand near the Battle of Britain exhibition with no clear signposting was a tent which contained this fantastic model collection of RAF aircraft involved with intercepting the V1 menace and late war fighter operations

 It looks like a lifetimes work sadly there ws not anyone present to quiz over how long it took to build this lot, but what a collection and shows how effective building to a theme can be.

 Below is a superb model of a V1 launch site. The whole display was well 'labelled' with information sheets

 At the back of the tent was a wargame display by the guys from 'Crush The Kaiser' who write fast play wargames rules for the Western Front. They also have a blog crushthekaiser.blogspot a set of WW1 aerial combat rules will be out by Christmas a sneak preview I have saw last autumn it uses telescopic stands adapted from a product bought from Tesco for 99p to give the 1/72 model planes different height levels. I hope to get a game with them sometime as they are East Kent based.

 

 The game at War & Peace depicted an early engagement of the battle of the Marne, the poppies a nice touch.

Will post a few pics of models from the MAFVA stand plus WW2 vehicles soon,  anyway on with house maintenance for the rest of the day in between thunder storms!