Meeting Summary June 4, 2013

Hello again everyone,

This evenings meeting was a D-Day theme and it appears to be well received by everyone. I haven’t seen so many great kits in a while.

In attendance tonight were: Mike, Steve F., Steve R., Chris, Gary, Tony, Dave, Andy and myself.

Some of the kits we saw tonight:

Dave: two 35^th dios of German troops. One on motorbike with side car, and another walking the dog(s).

Mike: 48^th  Spitfire Vb in a diorama. (this one was awarded People’s Choice at our last show if I remember correctly). Nicely done Mike.

Tony: 48^th Mustang A

Steve F: 72^nd scale Sherman tank on LCM, Sherman Flail tank, DUKW, and 32^nd Hawker Typhoon.

Andy: 48^th Me 109 and 48^th Mustang P-51D

Chris: Jagdpanther

Gary: MG 48, 1941 Ford

Joe 48^th Mustang III, 35^th Sherman III, and Jagdpanther

Rather than talk about the kits, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. What was most interesting about the evening was the conversations that usually go on. A lot about D-Day, a lot about how all the equipment was used, a lot about modeling/painting/weathering techniques…

All this with a backdrop of D-Day movies playing on the wall. The room we use at the University for our meetings is set up for audio visual with projector/screen and speakers, so I took my laptop and showed Band of Brothers episode 2, and then ran Storming Juno (thanks Steve F for bringing in the DVD). Imagine the listening to the sounds of battle as we pour over equipment used that day that we modeled and talk about how the real thing operated.

Dave had an extra surprise for us that really gave it a special touch. Through contacts from the Canadian War Museum, Dave managed to get a hold of some reproduction documentation and maps associated with the battle to round out the mood. There were German war maps, propaganda leaflets, copies of orders and  flight logs, and other period papers. REALLY special Dave, thank you for that!

Because we are from Canada, and Steve F. has a passion for Canadian modeling content, he again regaled us with facts and trivia from the Canadian participation on D-Day. All his models are representing equipment used by Canadian Units by the way. 

Did you know that Canada had its own beach – Juno – yeah most people do. But did you know that all aspects of Juno were Canadian, and of the 24,000 Canadians participating, it included the Royal Canadian Navy with 110 ships and over 13,000 sailors? Steve represents an RCN landing craft with one of his pieces.

For more quick facts on Canada on D-Day, check this link.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/junobeach/Juno-quick-facts.htm

Thank you gentlemen for a thoroughly enjoyable evening and a successful theme night.

See you next month..

Keep Building!

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Pictures from tonight

Upcoming Meeting June 4, 2013

Hi everyone,

Our next meeting will be Tuesday June 4, (Yes I know I said June 6 in my email, but it is close enough to still have a D-Day theme :) ) This will be the 69th anniversary of that day and will prepare us for an even better 70th next year. As a persepctive, the youngest D-Day veterans are all at least 87/88 years old now, those that are left.

I pass along to you some comments by Steve F. as a retrospective of D-Day - from a Canadian perspective..

Re a DVD of "The Longest Day", I don't have that one, but I do have a copy of "Storming Juno" which is an account of the Canadian landings in Normandy. It might be as well to bring that forward as our participation has often been overlooked by our Allies. The Americans lump us in with the British and the latter seem quite content with that as we were under overall British command both in Italy and in Northwest Europe. Also If you believe the view presented in "The Longest Day" and other American films that deal with the events, Normandy was Omaha Beach. 

Several things should be noted at this point:

1.About 156000 men were landed on D-Day

2. Of these 73000 were American

3. 83000 were British

4. Of the British Total, 21300 were Canadian

For those with a mathematical bent, you will notice the Canadian commitment was almost 1/3 of the American, even though this country had and has only 1/10 th the  population. Further Canada suffered more casualties on D-Day than any other Allied units except the Americans at Omaha. They were 2 hours late getting ashore because Juno was the most difficult of all the landings. This was due to the presence  of offshore reefs which meant that our landing craft had to wait until the tide had risen high enough for them to clear the reefs. This was known before the beach was assaulted but its location was critical to the success of the landings. This meant that our guys were entering combat against a fully alerted enemy in a battle already 2 hours old. For all of that, our units advanced further inland than any other Allied units on D-Day and came the closest to achieving their assigned objectives. This is known as punching above your weight, which militarily, has been something of a Canadian specialty over the years. 

This is not intended to belittle the American contribution, a lot went wrong for the guys on Omaha that day. Due to vile weather and tricky currents they missed the beach they were supposed to hit and landed where no preliminary bombardment or demolition had taken place. For all of that, they prevailed taking more casualties than all other Allied  units combined.

Re: Models, I hope someone has a 1/35  Tiger or Panther to show, as those were the one most commonly encountered by our troops in the first counter attacks and in the run up to the breakout from Juno. Just finished a book titled "Breakout from Juno" by Mark Zuelke in which he recounts our troops' adventures with elements of the 1st, 9th and 12th SS Panzer Divisions during this period. I intend to bring the 1/32 Typhoon I completed a few years back and a few other things reflecting Army, Navy and Air Force involvement.

Thank you Steve,  very interesting facts I was not aware of..

The Typhoon is one of my favorites, Can't wait to see it.

I myself will be bringing my Sherman III "Sherbrooke Fusiliers", my Japgdpather G, and Mustang III 315 Sqn - Polish, with invasion stripes.

I hope to see a number of club member collections.

For the Photogs amongst us, onsider bringing your cameras to capture what I hope will be a very fine display of work.

Joe

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Meeting Summary May 7, 2013

Hello everyone,

Well, it was an exciting meeting Tuesday. We had three new faces with us tonight.

Like most, if not all, of us chaps who had been in the hobby in their teens, but migrated away as they entered adulthood, only to return later in life to pick it up again.

A big welcome to Andy, Don and Darryl..

And a welcome back to John, who can only get to see us a few times a year, since he has to come in from Carbonear.  Good seeing you guys.

Also on hand was Steve R, Steve F, Dave, Mike, Chris, Gary and myself.

This must be the largest showing we have had in a few years for sure.

There were a number of displays of in-progress and completed work tonight, and we had some demonstrations of hobby related techniques to boot.

If you were to call it a “theme” night, you would call it Paint Night.

Steve F. gave us a demonstration of decanting rattle can spray paint to an airbrush paint jar. I had tried this before, but not as slick as Steve did. The rattle can spray consistency is perfect for airbrushing, no thinning required. Steve swears by the Krylon brand of paint. It creates excellent results, but more importantly in order to get paint match, Krylon confirms to the FS paint standards!

Check out a shot of Steve decanting.

Taking a straw tube, connect to the nozzle on the spray button. Most nozzles have an indentation to hold the straw (like the ones you get with WD40), so no taping, etc is required. The part I had never saw was to use a Badger 200 paint jar top with the lead to the internal mix chamber. Just put a couple of turns of tape on the tip of the straw for a snug fit, and press away. It is OK if you see some mist coming from the small air hole in the top of the jar lid. The excess air needs to be expelled, otherwise it won’t work.

Steve also demonstrated some of his results on two Canadian F5 Freedom Fighters. The blue fighter is standard model paint (Tamiya I believe) and the tan/brown was decanted Krylon. I couldn’t see the difference in person.

John showed us the difference in color of various model paints, even though they are supposed to be the same color. He used the plastic fuselage and wing panels of a Revell/Monogram 48 scale B-29 Super Fortress (HUGE plane). You can see the various greens and grays. The point would be to test the color before you spray to ensure it looks the way you want.

John also had a panel sprayed using the Alclad Aluminum product line, using the lite, white, dark aluminum along with Duralumin. Appropriately enough, he painted the forward fuselage of the B-29 (No picture). I had tried Alclad once before and was impressed. It takes a bit of preparation on the model to get the appropriate finish before using, but the finish is superb when done right. AND very durable - scrape and scratch resistant, as John demonstrated, and sets up very quickly, meaning you can get many different color sessions done in a short period of time (30-60 minute between coats? Wow.

John also brought back his lineup of P-40 aircraft. They depict the evolution of the model line from the early inspiration - the P-36, right up to the P-40N.

Also tonight, Chris showed us the progress of his next piece, his Jagdpanther Late G model, Interesting camo patterm, can’t wait to see his weathering job when its finished.

Dave brought in his Hetzer. 

Gary brought in his progress piece, his Lamborghini..

So Andy was a new friend to us tonight, and with my prompting, he brought in a work in progress for us to see. It is the Tamiya P-51D Mustang, a sweet piece, and Andy looks like he is well on the way to creating a very fine representation. We await his completion. Well done Andy.
 

So that was it for this month.

If anyone has pictures of their works in progress or completions that they had not brought in, please send them along to me and I will put them up on the website and Facebook page.

So long for now, see you next month.

Keep Building!!

Joe

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