Personal conversions can be tricky, sensational, and sometimes brutal. When people have ventured from the familiar and embraced radical change, there have sometimes ensued historical, game changing consequences, or even tragedy. Now stay with me, I promise we'll get to the modeling part soon.
Witness Muhammed Ali.
Saul on the road to Damascus.
Or the Salem which trials, where the term 'Conversion Disorder' took on a defining context.
Admittedly the conversion from scale model aircraft to armour may, when factored against the historically pivotal examples above, be seen as small potatoes. However, I feel that given a man's allotted time of 'three score and ten' (and no-one is getting younger, especially in scale modeling) taking the time away from Spitfires, Hellcats, and Mosquitoes to build a tank is a BIG THING.
So rather than Saul becoming Paul, Cassius transitioning to Muhammed, or a bunch of New England villagers becoming...well, dead, I will be contributing a tank (otherwise known as a 'clunky thing') to the 'Kasserine Group Build'. After engaging in some interesting banter with iModelers recently about the relative sanity (or otherwise) of Tankers (and losing), I consider this my willing penance to my brothers in arm(our)s.
No big planning, I'm just jumping in, here. The diorama will centre on a very well known kit, and I'm just going to let it progress 'organically'. Knowing iModelers (especially the Tankers) as I have come to do, it'll take about three seconds for someone to spot the tank, regiment, crews names, and probably the species of camel (we'll get to that) all involved in the build.
A very special thanks to Prof. David Thomas from Dr. David Leigh-Smith for creating and organising this terrific group build.
Construction starts as usual with the cockpit.
Next is the gluing together of the two camel halves. I'm assuming this is also the traditional tank build sequence.
And viola, that's step one completed. So far, so quick, so good.
What could possibly go wrong...
