king derelict

Thank you Lou. I have all the Philip Marlowe books and they have been read many times. I always liked "down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero" Alan

Its starting to look really good OC. Fine work indeed. Sid really brings home how small but well detailed the paravanes and rafts are - and they are separate parts not moulded on Great Alan

A little more progress today. I added another layer of the Krystal Klear to the headlights and while that was drying I thought about the load for the rear deck. I think a line of four petrol cans and a tarped pile of gear. The wartime British petrol can for aircraft and vehicles was the square "flimsy" These were considered disposable and were also capable of leaking a significant part of the contents. On rough desert crossings such as the Khufra convoys cans were damaged and would lose half their contents. They were packed for transit in wooden crates with cardboard dividers. The discarded containers were used as route markers for the convoys and there are stacked cans filled with sand acting as pillars. They were also used as markers for the desert air strips. The arrow points to the landing strip of "8 Bells" which is just south of the Gilf Kebir The airstrip is identified with more cans although its difficult to read from ground level With the British army running on tea several of the cans can be found that were used as desert stoves. A side of the can was cut out and the can was filled with sand and petrol poured in and lit. If a kettle wasn't available a second can was cut in half and used to hold teh water These cans were found well away from the convoy route so are probably from a Long Range Desert Group brew up. I have read that the flimsies were painted green in Europe and Sand in the desert but all the ones I have seen have no sign of ever being painted. They just have the typical patina of desert rust on bare metal as seen above This photo of a soldier in the desert refuelling a Crusader tank shows a bare metal can too. I will use a dull metal paint for them The flimsies were four gallon containers 15 inches high and 9 x 9. That scales out at about 5 x3 x 3 mm. I planned to make a strip of four cans from two pieces of plastic strip glued together to give me the appropriate dimensions. I made a cardboard base to carry teh load thinking it would be easier to build and paint it up off the model and drop it in when completed. The load is a foam offcut glued to teh base and a square of toilet paper acts as a tarp. The toilet paper was glued down with diluted white glue and the plastic strip was scored and filed to represent the individual cans, The strip of cans is not as neat as I hoped but may look better when tidied up and painted. The detail of the top of the cans is too small to attempt I think. I have ordered some 1/8 square plastic rod to make individual cans if this doesn't work out. The load will be painted when the glue mix dries and rope added. I checked the forward vertical piece of the rear wheel arch and I didn't like the way it leans back and it was also too close to the rear wheel so i clipped 2 mm off the running board and I think it looks better. Thanks for looking in Alan

Thank you very much Popeye. Its a fun build so far I thought I had the running boards sorted out by pushing them further forward to match the photos of the real thing. Unfortunately they are still too long and had to be clipped a little. I think the rear wheels are going to need to be mounted on the end of the hubs rather than the rim sitting around the hub which is the way the front wheels will mount. I think I have some plastic tube that I can use inside the rim to make a better glued joint. Alan

It adds an extra dimension and is thought provoking Alan

Thanks Ken Hopefully I will stay interesting Alan

Thank you Lou. I enjoy delving into the more obscure parts of history rather than reiterating a summary of a well-trodden route. Hopefully this won't turn out to be a turkey 😄 Thank you also for introducing me to Travis McGee Alan

Mike I think the diorama potential with armoured vehicles is great. I have a couple of WW1 scenes that I want to attempt. My problem is that dioramas take up more space than the model placed in a case but I really like the challenges of making them along with the diverse techniques that are possible. Alan

Thanks Mark, I agree with you. This is one of the forgotten corners of the desert war. Alan

Thank you very much Roger. I realise I have done a poor job of relating exactly where the focus of this back story is located. It is the meeting point of Egypt to the North, Sudan to the South and Libya to the West. Its deep desert several days drive from any oasis in any direction and with very few sources of water. A massif called the Gilf Kebir lies just withing Egypt and a mountain called Jebel Uweinat lies just inside Sudan. The Kufra convoys travelled to the west of the Gilf. This is a long way south of the main drama of the desert war which was mainly fought close to the Mediterranean coast so there are no wrecked tanks or battle wreckage down there. The route of the convoys is marked by discarded petrol cans and food containers along with a few trucks but they tried to reuse anything they could so a lot of damaged vehicles were hauled back to Wadi Halfa on the empty returning trucks. Those left were gradually completely stripped Alan

Thank you very much Mike, I have been having the same problem with aircraft models. So many interesting subjects out there but I have a growing pile of ships and now armour too. There is a growing problem with storing the unbuilt kits and a bigger problem with real estate for the finished ones. Alan

Egilman; I agree and this is a somewhat obscure bit of history and within it are ties to the pre war desert explorations and the search for Zerzura, the Long Range Desert Group, Operation Salaam (the mission to place German spies in Cairo) and evidence of ancient history found in the many cave shelters.. I find it all fascinating stuff Alan

Thank you Richard. I will continue to add notes and photos of what I know about the operations around Kufra and the associated convoys Alan

Thank you OC. Getting to the interesting part, details and weathering Alan

Slow progress while I have been thinking out the background to the model. I airbrushed the sand colour onto the assemblies and loose parts. I am beginning to realise that last year I had started out with limited / poor advice for using the airbrush and the maxim that you should use a fixed dilution for a given paint is not correct. I am starting to work with more dilute mixes and thin coats to allow shadowing from the primer to come through. Thank you to the masters here that have given me the insight. I really like how this is coming out as I attempt it. I am horrible at hand painting the tyres on a rim so this time I tried masking the rims with blue tack and air brushed the tyres with German Gray. Tyres would be dusty and sun damaged and not a glossy black. I will wash the treads to bring them up a little They came out better than I could manage by hand. The lights have been painted with Mig Bright metal and will be filled with window maker. The main assemblies have been fitted together ready for a gloss coat and washes and detail. The fit looks good. It looked okay at teh time but now the Scarff ring looks out of scale. I will see if a wire version will work Thank you for looking in Alan

Slow progress; I had my nose in books working out background, as I try to work out a scenario for a SDF RR car. The SDF were busy before the war in all areas with the Italians in Libya in the North and Italian Somaliland in the south and east. I found some of the SDF logs for the occupation of Karkhur Murr (in the north close to the Libyan border) in 1934 and it looks like the vehicles were all Thorneycroft cars. The IWM photos of the Rolls-Royce SDF cars is dated 1941 in Omdurman so they had them then in possibly a sand and brown paint scheme In the south the Italian threat was removed as the British Gideon Force pushed the Italians out of Ethiopia in 1941. The camel corps of the SDF were part of Gideon Force but the country was not conducive to vehicle patrols. In March 1941 Kufra Oasis (in southern Libya) was captured by the Free French and became a base for the British Long Range Desert Group and was garrisoned by the SDF. The SDF also had responsibility for running the Kufra convoys to supply the oasis from Wadi Halfa 1200 kms away on the Nile. My reading shows that the convoys were lightly escorted, they were far from the fighting and petrol was an issue. Typically a convoy would use thirty trucks with twenty carrying supplies and ten carrying petrol for the convoy. As fuel was used trucks were left behind to be reclaimed on the way back The sand is quite firm in this area with a thin crust on top. Once broken the crust doesn't easily reform and so the convoy tracks are still there 80 years later. So my location for the Rolls-Royce cars is on garrison duty at Kufra in 1942. My colour scheme is plain sand which seemed to be the dominant scheme for SDF trucks and cars on convoy duty. They are all seen as light and single colour. Abandoned SDF trucks from teh convoys are all single colour Even the evidence of lunch is still there too I may be completely wrong but it fits what I want to do and none of my neighbours appear to be ex-SDF. I have decided not to try to bulge the tyres. My book notes that too low a tyre pressure resulted in punctures and too high a pressure got you stuck. As experience developed they generally used 30 psi in the sand. the tyres are nothing like modern sand tyres and the photos hardly show any deformation. I will probably just flat them a little. If the historical interludes are boring please let me know and I will desist. I find this area hugely interesting and can get a bit out of hand. Thanks for looking in Alan

Egilman, many thanks for the great photos and extensive research. The camouflage patterns are very varied and this may be expected given the huge size of the country. Sudan ranges from very arid desert in the north passing through the scrub of the Sahal into the grasslands and forest of the south where possibly your third photograph was taken.. It looks quite green there. I spent most of Sunday working through my material and found a lot of information suggesting where the SDF cars were NOT. Many Thanks again Alan

Many Thanks Patrick and for the great reference material. I may be verging on fantasy now but I think I'm going to stick with the SDF plan - just because I thought it sounded fascinating to have been a young officer patrolling out in the vast open deserts (assuming you didn't get posted to the southern part of the country Alan

Kevin The spool holder is very nice; looks like a big improvement over hanging the spool off the printer. Yes I think resin looks like the way to get the best detail but with my natural clumsiness and two inquisitive long haired cats I'm not sure I should be handling resin.😄 I need to try different nozzle sizes; so far I have stuck with 0.4 mm. I feel a bit better about the whole printing business now that I seem to have the levelling and feed under better control. I am using the Creality coated glass bed top and so far haven't used glue sticks or hairspray. As I said earlier repeat prints still occasionally fail for no obvious reason. I guess it keeps me humble. Alan

Beautiful PE work. Looks very tidy Alan

OC. That looks great with the dramatic lighting. My favourite log too Alan

Many Thanks Gregg I put an order in for those two filters and a few other items from Mig and AK (no sense in wasting postage). I look forward to trying them. I have another Hunt class destroyer and another simple tank that will make good practice pieces to try them out. Not much investment in build time to get to the painting. Thanks again for the technique. Have a great weekend Alan

Moving along; now the four main assemblies are complete leaving a few parts that are better painted separately and also three pieces that complete the rear section that need to wait until everything is together to get a good fit - at least that is my thinking. I dry fitted the forward and rear sections onto the chassis which saved me from a mistake in waiting. There is a board that goes across the lower section of the rear compartment (at left)'fitting onto the two lower vertical pieces. However, the board needs to be fitted low enough to allow the rear of the chassis to pass over the top and allow the rear section to sit up against the rear of the turret. That board is one of the three pieces that will be fitted after the major parts are installed I am deferring doing anything about the rear wheels until it rear is built up. First look suggests that the wheels need to sit on the outer edge of the hub to be the correct width under the body. Everything got a coat of Vallejo black primer ready for the sand colour as the first part of the paint scheme. I am assuming the darker colour in the photos is the British Army green. Thanks for looking in Have a great weekend all Alan

Glad to see you Patrick Alan

Hi Kevin Thank you for the very informative comments. Very helpful and some useful new tip and ideas to try In response to your note. 1 - I calibrated the filament feed by just measuring the length consumed versus the amount commanded. That found the worn gear and the estep needed changing for the new gear. I just looked at pronterface. Thank you very much for that; I have made a note to use it for printer checks in the future. 2 -I have the coated Creality glass bed and it seems a little higher in the middle sloping to the edges 3 - I just received a length of Capricorn tubing so; after your comments I am very interested to see the improvement when its fitted. The OEM Bowden tube may be a big contributor to the under extrusion and gear damage 4 - Filament. I think there is quite a difference between PLA brands. I have used Overture brand mainly so far (As does Yves I believe) but the Creality sample that came with the printer seems much softer. I have just received a spool of their PLA to see if that is true of their filament in general. So far I have only used PLA 5 - Yes I think the drying helps with print quality. If I had more room I would like to try feeding directly from the dryer to the printer. 6 - I would like to see a better spool holder. There is quite high drag on the original set up sometimes and may explain a filament break I had. Many Thanks 7 - For levelling I tend to use the paper check as a rough start and then I run a print file that runs a series of layers around the edges of the bed and generates the square pads at corners and centre. While its running it is easy to see whether the nozzle is too near or too far from teh bed and adjust accordingly. It can actually be done while its running with care. I will try a new nozzle too. I bought a pack of ten recently. The wisp removal with a heat gun sounds good. I have been using a slow speed for the initial layer along with a hotter bed temperature and nozzle temperature. The speed is increased and the temperatures are reduced for subsequent layers. I think it helps bed adhesion and quality but it may just be my voodoo I routinely use a brim to prevent corners lifting and other warping. The change in temperature is also supposed to help there too. The mouse ear brims are a bit hit and miss. I tend to use them when its a big print and its going to use a lot of time and filament to run a full brim. Every now and then the mouse ear won't stick and the nozzle will push it around and ruin the print. The variability is a constant frustration. It irritates me to make a print and need a second, identical piece. Same file, same starting temperatures and same filament. The first print was perfect so start the second one. return an hour later to find the nozzle pushing a ball of filament around the bed. Arrgh. I think I am going to try new rollers. I feel a slight hesitation when I move the x axis by hand and I notice some bearing material furring up in the roller. Th etension seemed good but maybe I have too high. I just need to sort out a decent set of rollers. There are a lot out there with very mixed reviews. Any experience there? Thank you again for the very helpful comments. You have given me more solutions for the road to good prints. Have a great weekend Alan