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Greetings!

'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Stopped in my tracks?

not at all! Spurred on by blogs like Plastic Warriors, I decided to crack on with a quick project to keep me on wargaming/modelling track:


A second-hand Hasegawa PzIV flakvierling (donated by my son). No box top, but all the bits present. Running gear and body of the sharp end completed. I should be able to really push on tomorrow with this interesting bit of kit. I remembered reading an article in Airfix Magazine in the early 1970s in which some enterprising fellow used the then new Airfix Panzer IVF1/2 as the basis for a variety of flakpanzers, so I dug around in the shed and found these:


The November 1971 edition was the first copy I bought, as an 11 year old. I can remember quite clearly standing outside 'Raymond's' in the small town I lived in, peering at all the bizarre oddities that he sold (it was the sort of bucket shop that just doesn't exist now, in the age of sky high rents, niche markets, and the triumph of the glossy), and there was this copy of Airfix Magazine. I cadged the 15p from my mother, and I had added a new interest to my life.

Unfortunately, nearly a decade later I loaned most of my Airfix Magazines to a friend, and, of course, I never saw them again. But a few survived, including this one from November 1973, with the late John Sanders' '8th Army in the desert'. What a wonderful series! Only rivalled by George Gush on Renaissance Warfare.


A long time ago, but still there, somewhere.

8 comments:

  1. The George Gush one was the one I recall most fondly,especially the introductory article filled with a brief but tantalizing overview of the exotica to come.

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    1. Gush's series was 'just sublime', with wonderful period illustrations, a great header drawing, and fascinatingly fuzzy photos of metal figures I could just not afford - a perfect blend of the exotic and historic.

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  2. great stuff, I love going through old mags that you haven't looked at in a long time.

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    1. It can be dangerous though, you never know when an old project will be fanned into life by an old magazine article!

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  3. When I read your post I reached over and pulled Airfix Magazine Annual 1973 out of the bottom of the book shelf and had a quick flip through. Ahhhhh, it actually smells like 1973....!

    Cheers, Dave

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    1. Yes! Fuzzy, slightly grainy, and with a musty, flared trousers and long hair smell...

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  4. I started collecting Airfix magazines about the same time and I now regret passing them on during a major tidy up and reorganisation

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    1. I feel your pain! I've only a dozen left, out of about five years' worth. Sigh.

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