Photography Practice

I went to the Tadcaster Airshow at the weekend with a couple of old friends (they're my age, so they are old friends....) to commemorate the increasingly mundane fact that I have survived another 365 days (I'm not complaining).  The airshow is at the former RAF Church Fenton, which was still (just) a fast jet training flying station when I first climbed into a FV4201.

If you look on the interwebs for it, it's under "Yorkshire Airshow".

Anyway, this is the same camera and same lens as I photograph minis with.  So considering that some of the picts of minis are okish, I'm really quite pleased with this as an exercise in photography.

There was any amount of fast moving cloud scudding about, but it was all much higher than the flying displays.

The displays were all very low, mostly around 200 to 300 meters, at a rough estimate.

The yellow here contrasts nicely, it also shows up better against the clouds where that's what's in the frame; this scheme is for the 'Yellow Jacks' the forerunners of the Red Arrows.  Now you know that, you should be able to identify this aeroplane; I'm anticipating that if you read this blog regularly, the other three are EPLS.

You can see how this would be harder to see at a greater distance, against a pale sky.

These were all taken in the 'sport' setting, so I was able to shoot almost 800 picts in a couple of hours. I'm showing you four.  Actually more than 0.5% are ok; there are some sequences of the Vulcan making passes.  From an easy 400m away, it made the ground shake.  What a kool toy.

Anyway, back to 40K next.

The last Flekkies

So trawling the bits box I found the very last stock of Wargames Factory head that I have used for the 'flekkie' iggies. So these will be the very last 'flekkies'.

The obvious thing (to me) seemed to be to get the FW vets with shotguns and give the flekkies even more interest.

There's a mixture of Vicky Lamb, GW and Anvil Industry legs.  There are also two sets of arms (probably maxmini) with the spare shotguns as well as the obligatory sergeant with a plasma pistol.

All with belt kit and a gentle sprinkling of shotgun cartridges. Also there is this guy on his own:

Cadian body and legs with scion arms and hellgun and a FW Cadian hat.  He'll go with the Cadian Straken (there's one more built the same) and the two hellgun toting dudes will be Straken's homies.

Blood Pact on Friday...

Blood Pact 2

So Siege Studios are doing seven squad leaders - they have the bits (I hope) and we should see them soon (I hope).

The first tranche of Blood Pact appeared here.  In the comments, Slovak said "I want to see thousands of them. Thousands."  So I've done some more.

 Etogaur (roughly 'Colonel'); he's a FW Alpha Legion head, which although does not have an Oni mask like most of the other Blood Pact 'grotesque' heads, the mask is suitably leering.  The Scion Officer's body being suitably high status and officer-y.

Bodyguard with scion arms, Wargames Factory body and assorted belt kit.  The heads here are curious constructs renegades.  Which are lovely and will break up the existing sea of maxmini heads.

Etogaur's personal assistant.  Scion comms stuff.  And the other bodyguard.

More Blood Pact next Friday. But more flekkies next....

Funky furniture

The guy who made this will make one for you too.

http://www.tomspinadesigns.com/custom-themed-furniture-millennium-falcon-asteroid-coffee-table.html

Is this Hugo Weaving ?

Found here.

 

Not that I care.  I gotta have this guy !

Investment Appraisal

I need some air support - painted in just some-buggers-airforce colours so that is can either cover the separatists or repressive Imperium, depending on who needs it.

There's this:



Which would be available for less than $20SA each (£10.24).  So that'd be plus postage and tax.  Still sounds good and I've no shortage of Iggie Heavy Weapons to stick on them.

But I really like this:



Epic conversion job by Chris over at 22 Vostroyan Royal Regiment.   Kirton Games will sell you one of these for less than £25.00.

So ~ £100 will get either four fast jets or possibly eight gunships.  Or two Helldrakes.  I could plasticard a nest and give them a cadbury creme egg to hatch...

It's a toughie.  Eight gunships wins on the table top; four fast jets wins the rule of kool.  Wadda ya think ?  No, really, what would you do ?

Those LCC deals have always looked good and as I write this, they are offering world wide shipping for $1.00SA.

Anyway, moving on to current affairs, this is one of the answers to the little quiz I put out a couple of weeks ago.

Pushing eastwards across the Prairie

Having been landed in a clandestine manner, the Blood Pact forces do not initially appear to be shoring up the PDF, rather they deploy skirmishers in a series of screens across a wide front. Obviously they are trying to increase the amount of verifiable intel.  72 AGs response is to slow their advance to the point where rough riders (animal and mechanical) can act as DRs carrying written orders; the airwaves fall silent, denying the enemy valuable SIGINT.

72 AG recce assets, including airborne forces as well as terrestrial elements, are widely deployed to hunt down Blood Pact recce teams.  Here a troop of autocannon armed sentinels chase down a five man Blood Pact detachment.

Generally, 72 AG scales its response to be able to overwhelm the small Blood Pact detachments where they find them.  SOPs are developed where elements are to make initial contact and then stay in contact without trying to force an outcome until other nearby assets were moved up to support a planned prosecution.

An assured outcome is what this SOP is designed to achieve.  Once in contact, radio silence is lifted, allowing calls for fire (ie artillery support) to be made and requests for air support to be made.  Unfortunately, all too quickly, the Blood Pact have discerned  what is happening and appear to be as comfortable as the DKK are when it comes to using themselves as bait.

A separatist T-65 strike fighter appears at an extreme low level.  Repeated instances of this effectively prove that the Blood Pact and remnants of the PDF are cooperating on a tactical level at least.

The prevalence of Imerial Navy Thunderbolt fighterbombers over the battlefront means that any appearance by a T-65 is going to be limited to one attack run, if he wants to fly another day.