I'm still here... a Ruin and a grand overview of Oronegro

Well first things first I am appologizing for not being active recently. I have been up to my eyeballs with work and as soon as I clear just a little, my sister leaves minecraft on the computer and it just draws me in like a fly to a light... so yes clearly I have problems to sort out there but during this time I have got some work done.

Well I guess another thing to say is that if you were expecting a nice small post with a few pics I am sorry but this may just ruin your day. 17 pictures and a lot to say, so lets start it off with the RUIN!\

The Ruin is made from cork floor tiles salvaged from when we ripped up the floor in there. other materials include sticks, bamboo scewers, brown packing paper, card (various types), thin plywood, filler, wire mesh and kitchen towel (more paper). not the best built ruin I must say but for a first go its alright. the figure for scale is actually from Emmett (Winttrix) who was selling his old models. I bought a few figures, a helicopter and some Bren Carriers, which i am sending to Michael. Some of the figures were already painted with a few patches where they had been damaged, so my job was to patch them up and get them ready to go again.

I found the cork quite a nice material to work with. easy to cut and stick together.

examples of the way to get the ruin effect, breacking the cork by hand looks (left wall and front) more realistic IMHO than cutting (wall on the right)

I also decided to add some details, on the roof are some sand bags with some nasty spikes. it looks simple because it is, card wrapped in kitchen towel and some sticks. ok the painting is bad but i forgot about my colour blindness and assumed it would all look good in th end. (ps lines on wall to the left are the glue for sticking the tiles to the floor)

perhaps the best angle for viewing the ruin, the curtains are made from packing paper. nice and easy.

the ladder is very large compared to a figure but is more for show than to be 100% accurate.... its so you know there is a ladder (you can sometimes get a fig to stand on it also)

 Now lets take a closer look at our friend here! he was the least damaged of the figures and the most painted... so a simple bit of nasty Tamiya primer and some paint to cover the metal that showed through and he was ready againt to see action! since I took these photo's (a while ago now) I have fixed up a buddy for this guy and almost completed some of my own figures from the Elhiems I got sent. All very nice figures I must say.

Special forces, Merc, rebel, PMC who knows this man could be any of these.

Remember most of this is Emmett's work, I just patched him up.

well there you have it. Emmett stopped posting pictures on his blogs last year so I am happy that I can show off just one more bit of his excellent work

 Now onto the overview! these pictures are even older but still well worth a look! This is all of Modern Oronegro minus the city boards and the terrible little river boat I did ages ago... if you don't remember its the green one which I photographed with a rubber duck.

it is big! very big! and for some reason its not enough... perhaps its good I am going to university next year. that will limit how much I can do.

newer work stands by older work as we look over the National side

the lynx is there also, it was the newest part of the overview.

now to the rebel side. the Spetnaz and russian T-90A standing out against the rest of the rebel forces

rebel armour advances. this battle would A) not occur at any time except when everyone agreed to it and B) be a nightmare to be part of.

Now for some action and detail shots! first up we have some pictures of the aircraft of oronegro. then some shots of the chaos on the ground.

2 jets, 1 Spitfire and 2 helicotpers (sort of)

view along the rebel advance! I seem to have reversed the laws of stereotypical cold war style warfare by making the Russian's the blue team... well I guess that means I have to paint the US soldiers Red.

fighting back the UN Germans and other troops hold the left wing of the national army, in the distance the black angels unload and prepare for what must be the most chaotic fight in Oronegrean history.

and the view from the National right. they have the better position and armour but still this is not going to be an easy fight

Well thats all folks. hope your well and happy and I hope that I might post more frequently and visit more frequently but seeing how busy I am I cannot promise that. anyway have a good day/night everybody.

the Lynx!... or my first helicopter kit

Well if you saw it in the last post it may come as no surprise that its done. I had some problems with the old decals, namely that they disintegrated and didn't work at all. oh well its will have to be an unmarked lynx. no worries though that gives it more uses :-D Major things to note, first of all the kit didn't fit together well, bugger; the glass for the window doors fell in and was only luckily shaken into place where liberal use of glue was required to secure it, doubly bugger; one of the rear landing gear legs is longer than the other so the aircraft is leaning to one side, triple bugger; and that the cockpit was not given all the detail so I could not paint on all the struts, quadruple bugger.

oh well on with the photos!

Dropping off the Black Angels under the cover of darkness the high speed lynx is the best choice for these missions

the team leader gathers his men before setting off on another dangerous mission few others could handle

as you can see I didn't paint on all the struts, mainly because their were no lines in the "glass" for me to work with (also I had no masking tape)

without decals all details are painted on but despite the lack of detail its perhaps rather more useful with many rolls open to this aircraft

this shot shows the rather uneven joins and the tilt the aircraft has taken on

view down the side.

naturally a birds eye view of the bird. the rotors are attached in a way that makes them not so secure I had to add extra glue and paint before taking these photos

the mandatory flying shot! nice view of our lounge/living room, and the home-made book case.

and man with satellite phone. I have run out of credit on my phone quintuple bugger! and don't have the money to top it up. curse you ridiculous prices for using a mobile device, all we are using is a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, are you going to make us pay for seeing certain colours? (then again I'm colour blind so I can't see some)

anyway hope your all well and not worrying about your own phones. To those of you suffering the Heat Wave in the UK (and Europe?) don't despair seasons change. though if it is part of global warming well then expect this to become normal, I also wish to include those long cold winters in that as well.

As for New Zealand well, chilly yes, had some extreme weather earlier this winter but its calmed down in recent weeks, perhaps you guys might want to come down here for the winter and cool off... don't forget to visit Waiuku and play where's Charlie.

have a good day/night everyone.

NBC team, more mercenaries and a preview

mercenaries, love 'em or hate 'em their part and parcel of modern warfare. The two new mercenaries for today are an old Brit who is rather tall and an American with some rather odd camouflage. But not all of Oronegro's warriors are hired nor are all of them from overseas, some are local and lethal! Also up on the list today are some soldiers from a rather radioactive regiment. Generic NBC, similar is paint job to the Black Angels but with a white dry brush instead of a grey one (yes I was thinking of adding them to the black angels but I changed my mind half way through). so let me show you this unit first.

first photo, no flash, the guy on the far right is either there to de-activate a device or for removing the contaminant

 Well their not that great, 3 poses are unaltered strait from the Caesar Special forces set (old one) and 2 are my own conversions, both head swaps. I took 2 photographs, one with flash one without, mainly because some of the colours in the first were rather odd and seemed more vivid than in real life, due to low light probably.
the main roll of these troops will be to clear contaminated areas of enemies, dangerous material or other things that are found in such places. They could also be used for an elite rebel unit that is trying to emulate the Black Angels, though their is little chance they will be even near a match for one of the worlds best special forces units!

flash photo, less detail but the colours are closer to normal now.

Now for the Mercenaries! the Brit, in the beret, has managed to get hold of a complete though dated issue of arms and camouflage, probably from an abandoned depot, the American on the other hand has got a helmet and some pants that are distinctly modern while he also has some older chocolate chip gear. Though the two are not perhaps the most impressive or most organised soldiers on the battle field they are ready to fight, either for a cause or for some cash.

a bit of experimenting with the camouflage patterns here, both are wearing gloves, I normally forget to add gloves but it is more realistic

the low light, and the lack of flash means the camera takes longer to make photographs, which leads to blurry images as I do not seem to have the steadiest hands around

And now for the preview!
its the Lynx, which was either made in Poland or the USSR. the construction is complete, not without problems though (the 3 windows seen in the photo  fell into the cabin once it was stuck together and only with shaking and luck did they fall back into place where I glued them again).
as you can see, painting still needs to be done, I painted the body grey before construction to make it easier at the end but some things will need to be done. The front wheel is way too short and the side ones are not equal lengths (partially my fault, partially because the parts don't fit together well) so it does not sit evenly, but I am happy so far. I am a little suspicious that it is not 1/72 but having not seen a 1/72 scale lynx or the real thing, my comparisons with an NH-90 kit might not be the best (the NH-90 naval kit by Revel to be precise... still to be built)

this will be used by the Oronegrean marine corps

Well their you have it! hope you are all good. I have been a little low recently which is why I have not been on-line recently but now it the holidays oh wait perhaps I should put it like this...

It's the Holidays which means I have 2 weeks off :-) so lots of time to work on some models.

Now onto the formalities:
Hello to BiloRay from blodger corner and Kir's Miniatures welcome to this site!
Welcome to tsold2100 from somewhere? sorry once more I am having problems locating where people are from.

Welcome both of you to this site! Now in other news I have completed a map of Oronegro, the WHOLE THING! now I cannot expand any more, which is a good thing. That will be coming online shortly, I have also made most of the map for the colony, which will soon be online also, and then story work for that region can be done.

Well we're a few days into this holiday but its good that I can get some R&R. Hope your all well and that I haven't missed out to much of what you've posted on your blogs while I've been away.

Strange goings on in town!

Well for those of us in little old Waiuku we all knew it would make it onto TV but never when. But last night the White Horse of Waiuku stared on TV.... here he is sorry for the quality as its the only clip from the show on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFSzjdIsGo4&feature=player_detailpage 

meet Charlie! actually I only found out its name last night. when watching the program

Now for some reason I can't actually get the video to work on blogger. but no worries. Now we don't know the person who owns Charlie but we do know a few people in this clip.

yes welcome to Waiuku P.S sign in in Km/h for all you non-metric people

The School is Sandspit Rd school.... I went to View Rd school. Charlie is currently hanging from the Kentish Hotel holding a sign (white building in clip). and yes he has brought great fun to trips out of town.... with us constantly on the look out for him! Once he even turned up outside our house across the road ontop of the bus stop! that was very funny, going outside to walk the dog in the morning and looking straight across at a horse.

found a photo of that actually. I didn't take this but one of Charlie  followers did

RIP a most beloved pet and I am in the paper again (still good news) post 150!

Well this is post 150! a big landmark but perhaps its not what I hoped I'd be posting.

Well this post is going to be a sad one I am afraid. our most beloved pet Rabbit simply named Bun Bun has passed away. 8 years old she was the first pet we got when we came to New Zealand and therefore has a special place in our family. its sad when a pet passes away and it is hard to make that choice to put them down, but it was the best thing for her. she had been limping badly and there was a nasty lump under her chin although female rabbits do occasionally have a large lump under their chin Bun Bun already had one and this lump signalled something more serious. therefore the decision was made with much sadness to put her to sleep so she would not suffer living on in a deteriorating state.

how she was, this taken shortly before My trip to Argentina... early days in my blogging history

 So after school today it was my job to dig the grave for her. we placed her in her little box into the ground and said out good byes. I took a photo, a final picture before the earth covered her up. here is her little box. sweet I think, simple also but it doesn't have to be complex. Bun Bun herself was not a complicated character. she had her moments when she was young several escape attempts, confusing the cats when she decided to go up to them instead of them chasing her, when she was older she looked after the guinea pigs (which went to a friends house as my mum was allergic to them) treating them as her own children. and in her old age she was allowed to wander out and about as there was no need to worry about her doing a runner any more.

goodbye Bun Bun

well there we are. not much really to say but goodbye... but as usual life must go on and happiness must be found....

and once more I am in the papers!

... so now I shall tell a nice story to lighten the mood. This is one of success against adversity and a bunch of simple college kids showing themselves better than some intelligent egg heads from private schools!!!

Team wins Tractor pull without raising a sweat click on the page to make it bigger so you can read it!

First order of business! We're year 13 students and I am mentioned by my middle name. apart from that points for who ever guesses who I am ;-) Also yes the college carriers expo is about our school... that's already happened as you can see, the NZ defence force turned up late! and one of our guys almost got run over while trying to organise parking, some people seem not to care what they are being asked to do.

school ball this weekend also big occasion perhaps pics to be seen on the schools website after the event... not sure.

Anyway have a good day/night if your down here in NZ try to keep warm (I still have to walk the dog and there's hail showers, it's freezing and its pretty dark out there. oh well better wrap up as much as I can then... oh was that thunder hmm maybe not!

on the front page of the local paper :-D

Not just me! No I didn't kill anyone! except a few weeds. http://downloads.thepostnewspaper.co.nz/this_weeks_post.pdf take a look. Students efforts tidy up community. That's the one to read. for those of you who want to know where I am in the photo here's a clue... in the middle standing up.

This is the area we cleared up... there is a reason you can't see the hill to the left in this photo, it was pretty ugly

In the photo we are arranged around one of the large piles of weeds we made, there was a second larger one and some full bags of weeds we pulled out. there was also quite a bit of rubbish from decades of people just dumping stuff there.
what you won't read about it one of us (not going to name and shame) hit a pipe (whoops) small one fortunately, luckily it was turned off at one of the walls on the buildings near by. Nearly the whole Prefect team was involved in this. As well as two German exchange students, these girls were just walking past and decided to muck in. I found loads of Skinks (little lizards) which one of the German girls found really cute, she ended up with a skink on her hand for quite a while. Anyway we cleared the hill of ivy and weeds, revealing the bare earth beneath and years of rubbish, including a really old coke bottle, the front (minus the door) or a fire place, a radiator and some really old light bulbs.

this is what a skink looks like

Anyway we are planning to go back and re-plant the hillside at a later date! so this is a bit of a work in progress. Fun parts of the day were sliding down the hill pulling the ivy down (quite effective) low points were the looks we got from passers by, who must have thought we were on community service.

Oh well have a nice day/night everyone and if your ever in this part of the world come visit Waiuku and marvel at the hillside we cleaned up... oh yes and visit.

model x extravaganza 2013 or...

... where I went instead of Arnhem. Well for some of you today (Sunday 3rd) you went to FIGZ but for me I went to West wave, Henderson. I have been there before Many years ago. I bought my first Train set then, and today I did buy some stuff which I'll get to at the end...

Pete (man with glasses looking very interested) kindly invited us along.

 Well I didn't know this was on until Friday night when I got a call from Pete who lives down the road. He makes models as well but not as many as I do (those his are far better). Anyway he invited my father and I to come along with him and his little daughter (she got more than me :-D... most importantly of all a Aston Martin DB5 model) to the Model X extravaganza! Naturally I said yes! and although his nephew who is one of my friends did not come due to have cold induced sea lion barking impression syndrome. we had a good time.

One thing to note though was the distinct lack of traders :-( lots of second hand stuff being sold by a couple of traders but then not much and mostly Aircraft and mostly the same aircraft. Toy World was selling their stock there but apart from Airfix that there wasn't much. and the second hand guys mostly sold old aircraft kits... good prices but NO figures... Toy World had some but they were the usual Airfix WW2 stuff I did see a few tank kits but very few in 1/72... I did pass up an Abrahms from Hasegawa so there was at least some. anyway still lots to see as it was also a craft show, some cool steam punk stuff also. (my dad almost bought some doctor who stuff, but shhh I didn't tell you that)

FORMULA 1 cars! Where is the Ferrari? bugger they don't have the right selection of cars.... DID YOU KNOW I HAVE SAT IN MICHAEL SCHUMACHER F1 CAR??? well I did a long, long time ago. it was a Ferrari, therefore the right type of F1 car.

 Now we get some Large ships of various scales! sorry that I cannot identify them all for you. but F 421 in the second picture is the Canterbury and judging from the size of the helicopter and the figs on it we think its 1/72 :-D

spot the Bismark! the tower up the top is to be found out in the Waitamata harbour in Auckland.

various scales but we are almost certain the Canterbury here is 1/72 perhaps the one below but not quite sure

more ships... can you spot the inaccurate Apache (or Comanche I cannot quite tell) on one of the ships there?

More ships! some very nice models but not really useful for my wargaming... unless I did a beach-landing and we had a naval battle

 Now comes several pictures of train sets... one N scale the type I have... not that I play with it anymore :-( sadly the transformer/controller for mine is broken and the price of getting a new one is large... why I changed hobby really.

This is the sort of thing I would have done... bit of sadness but hey if I did this there would be no Oronegro!

anyway perhaps I can sell off some of those trains or something their a bit sad in their current packed away state.

OO or 1/76 compatible with my models but for large layouts N scale is better (but costs so much more)

I like this one. small but detailed

very similar, but different... not much to comment about... not my area of expertise

 Corgi stuff! all display stuff though, :-( a few of those would be great for Oronegro, have a fire truck or something. Oh well I have already complained about the amount of traders so I'll not start that rant again

cool! is there any other way to describe this?

its all very nice and all but where's the rust and missing paint? these poor things haven't been loved to death.

AND NOW WHAT I GOT :-D well this pretty much sums up what was available... something From Airfix and something second hand! My look was relatively small. Pete's daughter got a few (one of which I wish I had got one of as well) and my dad didn't get anything though he was tempted. SO what did I get...

Airfix and something that claimed to be made in Poland yet the spur said made in USSR.

A new Airfix 1/76 scale T34/85 MEDIUM TANK (exactly how they wrote it on the box see) which will be for my rebel forces. I love the T-34 so its no surprise I got it... there was a T-55 in 1/35 which made me sad and a Lynx with soldiers (Afghanistan) for 1/48 which made me also sad. BUT I did get a second hand Lynx! which can be made into an army or navy version. this is not the modern version though and its missing one piece... which is half the nose cone for the Army version (I might make it army anyway and use the other nose though) NOW here is an odd thing. when I look at the box its got Polish writing on it, the bag with the spurs in has a sticker that says made in Poland... the Spurs say made in USSR (which along with the small pictures for painting showing patters for the lynx in 1973 and 1975) date this kit quite a bit BUT its a Lynx, the worlds fastest helicopter, a British helicopter, and a classic so I am happy.

The lynx also came with a strange container inside, I thought perhaps it contained the missing bit but after getting it open it had some strange plastic thing? anyway looks a bit suspect so I think thats going in the bin... keeping the kit of-course.

Have a good time guys! Looks like there is another event in September I never heard of also so I may go to that. if anyone was wondering I have had a lot of school work and distractions recently so model work is at an all time low.

Finally we come to a new Follower :-) welcome to Nick Johnson from somewhere? I cannot find your blog I am afraid. anyway Welcome to the blog.

have a good queens birthday off all you guys in New Zealand and I hope you all have a good time wherever you are in the world this coming week!