Beginnings...

Having enjoyed building Trumpeter's 'Ferdinand' recently - fiddly running gear notwithstanding - I thought that I could use the kit as the basis for a simple conversion to the upgraded 'Elephant'. All I would need would be a Stug commander's coupla, and a bit of scratch building for a hull mg. A decent fellow (a reader of this blog, and famed for his own be-Shako'd blog) immediately promised me an Airfix Stug III. Excellent! So, onto Hannant's website I went to order another Ferdinand, only to discover that part of my head clearly still lives in the 1970s, when conversion was the order of the day, and kit releases like Airfix's Panzer IV, or Matchbox's Pz IIIJ were greeted with delirium as being the basis of endless other chariots of war, 20mm size. For, of course, not content with the Ferdinand, Trumpeter also makes:

Which arrived today, by first post ... at 5:00pm (uh? What has happened to the world !). However, the Stug and its coupla started a train of thought that led to another viewing of Hannant's e-emporium, and the order of more boxes of bits of plastic and a new project ....   Now, all I have to do is wait for the postie...