Preparing for COW

Preparations for this year's Conference Of Wargamers (COW) - to be held as usual at Knuston Hall in Northamptonshire are well in hand - just as well given that it is this weekend!  As well as my involvement in running the event itself, I will be among those running the Plenary Game It's All In The Best Possible Taste and the game we 'launched at Triples in May - Better Red Than Dead - both on Friday evening.  I will be running my new game Rollbahn Ost late on Saturday night, and at other times over the weekend I will attend a number of sessions run by other attendees.
Bob Cordery and I also plan to potter about with our recently acquired Funny Little Wars armies -largely for our own entertainment, but others are welcome to join us.

King Boris III en route to COW.  Elements of the Army of Forbodia will be engaging in manoeuvres with the Army of Cordeguay.

Waddington Air Show

On Sunday 3 July I was treated to a trip to the Air Display at RAF Waddington.  This was by way of a birthday treat - the great day itself is actually on Wednesday but apparently the organisers were reluctant to change the date of the show...

On arrival, a nice touch was that visitors were ferried from the car parks in a fleet of classic buses from the 1950s-70s.  The tickets Sara had arranged included seats in the 'Spitfire' Enclosure which gave us a decent view of the action.
Sadly my camera is not up to shots of distant aircraft so what follows are the best of the photos I took.
This was my first visit to Waddington, and my first Air Display since the last of the Lakenheath shows in (I think) 1992. I must confess that when I think of such shows I still mostly recall the events I was taken to at RAF Leuchars in the early-mid 1970s, when the 'performers' included the EE Lightning (then based at Leuchars), C-130 Hercules, Avro Vulcan and the RAF's  'new' aircraft - Phantom, Harrier and Jaguar. Plus, of course, the Red Arrows (at that time in Gnats) and a flypast from shiny new Concorde.
The displays at Waddington featured, as well as the aircraft photographed below, Spitfire, Lancaster, Hurricane (all from the Battle of Britain Flight Link), B-17, Tucano, OV-10 Bronco, Tornado (very fast and loud!), Chinook, F-16 (Belgian) and Vampire (Norwegian).

Alpha Jet

Harvard.

10-foot long WW1 tank

Hang on - that C130 looks a bit low...

...because it's actually a van!

RN Merlin - a big but very agile helicopter.

The Hawker Hunters of Team Viper - great to see this classic shape in the air again.

The Hunters may be getting on a bit but the pilots still threw them around.

The Red Arrows put up a splendid display...

...with several spectacular manoeuvres.  They never disappoint.

The Navy's 'Black Cats' Lynx display team.

The USAF 'Thunderbirds' display team flew their F-16s very close together.

The main feature - for me at least.  Vulcan XH558 on the runway.

A sight I thought I'd never see again - 558 - the world's only airworthy Vulcan - takes to the sky.  I'm not ashamed to say that tears were shed.

At the controls of 558 was Martin Withers, who flew Vulcan 607 on the famous 'Black Buck' raid to the Falklands in 1982.

The underside of 558 - with bomb doors open.

This was a relatively sedate display compared to what used to happen when Vulcan was in service, but understandable given that they'll not want to break this one!

Incidentally, 558 is kept in the air purely by private donations, so have a look at the website and give them some money: Vulcan

Luftflotte von Gow

About ten years ago I bought a huge and mostly painted batch of Halmark 1/6000 scale WW2 warships, and a couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to be able to reunite them with a collection of 1/1200 scale aircraft painted by the same chap.  As the paintwork is really rather nice (and better than I can manage), my work has been confined to rebuilding and painting the stands and attaching small squares of magnetic material to them.  This means they can now be stored and transported in a slimline foolscap box file.

Some of the German models, including Ju-52, Bf-110, Ju-88 and He-111.

There are also a lot of Italian aircraft, together with smaller numbers of Brits, Americans and Japs.

A nice new laser printed box label.

The (almost filled) box.  To save your eyes and sanity I risked my own by counting them.  140.

Il Gigio Pass - WW2 Airsoft event - part 2

As promised in my earlier post, here are some 'in action' photos taken at this event.  Photo credits as per the first post.

Me manning the '42, in conversation with one of the soldats soldiers.  Martin is in the centre, chatting to 'our' Feldgendarme (the owner of the MG42).

A thing of beauty.  The MG42 that is!

MG gunner's eye view of the field of fire.

British troops moving up a very Italianate zig-zag path on the opposite side of the quarry.

Martin was our designated communication operative.  We memorised three German messages:  "Hilfe, hilfe!" [Help, help!]; "Der Schwere Panzer Abteillung, schnell!" [The heavy tank battalion - quickly!] and "Al ist kaput!" [All is, er, kaput!].

Later in the day - relaxing while the Brits attack another position.  

A more authentically 1944 version of the same scene.

They were the enemy but they looked pretty good!  The Military Policemen were particularly striking.

The assembled multitudes in front of the German command post after the end of the game.

A nice touch was the souvenir mug presented to every player at the end of the day.