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!

The War & Peace Revival Show 2013 - Part 1 The Cold War

Well Saturday was my day to celebrate having survived my first 2 terms working in education and what an event to do it at! The War and Peace Revival is the renaming of the now famous massive military vehicle extravaganza that was War and Peace show and held at the Whitbread Hop Farm at Paddock Wood for the past 20 years. Due to various factors they moved the show to the recently closed Folkestone Race Course on the South Coast of Kent and even nearer to the continent which probably attracted more attendees. It is also a larger site and there are permanent buildings with excellent facilities. I took a huge amount of photo's so I will break them up into subject areas and post, also my ID on some of these vehicles is not very good so any comments on that front very welcome but they will hopefully act as useful references for modellers/wargamers out there.

 Fox Armoured Car

 Scorpion

 Stalwart (a favorite due to the Airfix 1/32nd model!)

 One of my Teaching Colleagues Husbands Ferret ! good to meet you David

Scimitar turret on FV432

 

 FV 432 Recovery or Ammo carrier?

 Rapier CVRT

 A Ferret mk2 with turret

 T62?

 Saracen

 Inside T62 Turret hatch showing the breach

 BMP type thing

 CVRT 'Striker'

 Scimitar

 CVRT family 'Spartan' ?

 Scorpion

 CVRT with some kind of missile affair? I admitted to being short on knowledge on this subject

 Scorpion again (picked up an Airfix model of one at the show)

 The Abbot Self Propelled Gun (Another Airfix1/32nd favorite!)

 FV 432

 A missile supply vehicle

 Abbot again

 a Czech BMP type Russian job answers please!

 FV432

 It was dusty!

 Chieftain

 Centurion at speed

 Saracen at speed

 The Centurion is for some reason my favorite tank and picked up 2 'cheap as chips' Airfix models at the show

 Engineers vehicle on Chieftain chassis

 A trio of Scorpions

Interesting armor detail

As a reward for making your way through all those pictures of cold war vehicles the shows 'poster girl' who was posing for pictures like a live piece of B17 'nose art', well it seemed rude not to take a  photo! Also I got a very rare Airfix Kit at the show which I don't think the vendor knew was worth more than £10 guess what it was? all will be revealed in tomorrows 100th blog posting!

German Pak 36 Finished Model & War & Peace 2013 Pak 36's

Pak 36 finished and based, I am going to get some razor blades today to get rid of the mold lines off the next figures I do, Revel DAK infantry. Although the PAK 36 was the main infantry anti tank gun at the outbreak of war it soon became outmoded by 1942 and struggled against increasing armor thickness eg Matilda II and T34's. Some were mounted on Hanomag's (ESCI did a kit of this). Now its the school holidays hopefully some more modelling will get done (amongst all the other jobs!)

I have also got to catch up on posting about Manston Airshow, the battle of Britain commemoration and now the War & Peace Revival show....but relevant to this post are a couple of PAK 36's from the War and Peace show.

Both were spotted in the living history area where there were hundreds in German uniform (but very few Brits/Commonwealth, something I find very sad, plenty of 'Yanks' tho')

Battle of Britain Memorial Day at Capel Le Ferne Today 14th July

 

Memorial Day is held on the Sunday closest to the first day of the Battle, 10 July. It is taking place this year today July 14th, of particular note to my family as we look after Pilot Officer Michael Mudies grave in Molesey, Surrey. He was shot down on the 14th July 1940 73 years ago. It also marks the 20th anniversary of the unveiling of the Memorial at Capel Le Ferne which is between Dover and Folkestone.

I took these pictures in 2010 on the 70th Anniversary, camera is recharged for today and I hope to see a couple of veterans there. Sadly their numbers are dwindling on an annual basis.