A late addition to the painting backlog, this is the Tumbling Dice ASN2 120 gun second rate in the guise of the 110 gun HMS Ville de Paris, flagship of the Channel Fleet. Although she did not engage in any significant battles it would be a shame not to have her as a potential adversary in the event of a French break out from Brest or Lorient.
In case you were wondering what I've been up to, apart from mowing the lawn, fixing the fruit cage, mending the toilet seat, washing the car and doing the weekly shopping, here's a quick update. The Royal Navy fleet has now been tidied up with matt black and is ready for blocking in, the first stage being the masts and strakes in Vallejo Yellow Ochre. This should make them look a little less monochrome and a bit more like actual ships of the line, frigates, brigs and sloops. I'm aiming to crack on with this tomorrow, if I don't have any more domestic distractions that is?
I had to pressure wash the drive today, ending up covered in crap from head to toe, so thought I deserved a small reward. This is my latest order from Big Jim, a random selection of interesting ironclads and gunboats to fill some gaps in the big box of 1/600th scale ACW naval metal, resin and plastic. I might even make this my project for the Summer holidays?
I've decided to opt for a simple kit build for the next Knights of the Sky game at the end of the month, with a flight of old Revell Sopwith Camels. I'd planned to build some of these last year, so I have the kits in the plastic pile already, even though I already have two of the Academy models built and ready for use. The Revell kits are pretty bomb proof, not to mention idiot proof, so much less stressful than the Eastern Express Sopwith Snipe kit. To speed things up I'm also going for a simple black nosed paint scheme, as displayed on RNAS machines and latterly the RAF ones too. Tally Ho!
The ongoing Napoleonic naval painting I've been working away at has given me some ideas for a mini-project linked to my existing South American ironclad and pre-dreadnought fleets. This would be to assemble the various ships of the First Chilean Naval Squadron of the 1820"s, either in 1/2400th to match my other stuff or possibly in 1/700th using the Black Seas plastic models, with a few resin 3D prints for some of the smaller vessels. I might even consider 1/1200th as Langton Miniatures has some suitable models that would work very well. It's just an idea I'm floating about with but I think it would be good fun and a bit different from the usual.
These arrived a couple of days ago form Big Jim and they're very nice indeed, all of them being from the David Manley Designs 1/600th scale range. I particularly like the CSS Georgia and the Rolf Krake, although I'll need to straighten out the masts and spare on the latter before I can paint it.
There's a Knights of the Sky game at the club in a month's time, set in late 1918, so if I get my skates on I can build a couple of aircraft for the occasion. At the moment these are likely to be a pair of Sopwith Snipes using the old and rather fiddly Toko / Eastern Express kit. If this gives me the fear, I will make life easier by building a good old Revell Se5a or a couple of Camels which I have in the plastic stash.
