The hobby week - 15-21January 2022

Here's what I've been up to this week.

Painting/modelling

  • The first part of the week I was finishing off the regiment of 24 20mm EIC Sepoys from Newline Designs for my Sikh Wars project.  You can see about them in more detail here.  

  • I've been trying to decide on the colours to repaint the bases of the figures I'm going to use as proxies for Algerian ALN fighters.  This will also determine how I paint the terrain I'm planning to build so it's important to spend time on it. 

Research

  • I've been reading Black Earth by Timothy Snyder.  I read Bloodlands years ago and it's one of the best and worst books I've ever read.  Best in that it's so well written, absorbing and interesting and worst in that it's about one of the bleakest periods of history.  Black Earth is similar.  It's not light reading.  However, if you don't read about these subjects I think that you are never going to understand the principle drivers of the Nazis and the Soviet Union and therefore why World War 2 happened.
  • I spent some time going through my Militaria magazine collection finding the Algeria articles.  Militaria is the finest magazine going.  I hope to get over to Paris at some stage and visit H&C again and stock up.  It's been far too long.  

Purchases

  • I picked up another couple of helicopters from a local chap via eBay.  We did a deal and I also saved £10 on p&p so very happy with that.  I got another 1/72 Amercom H-21 Helicopter and a S-58 which will serve as a Pirate gunship.  For all those 'Nam heads out there it was the French in Algeria that truly pioneered helicopter warfare.  
  • I also picked up a pack of EPA foam (in between the helicopters in the photo), with a view to see what terrain items can be made out of it.

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