BradG

I don't often buy brand new kits, but I liked this one.

Yeh that is the one thing you have to be careful of if there is a fire or flood; all those critters will be looking for dry ground away from the water/fire too. Good news is once the water goes down, they will move off, they really don't want to be around you anymore than you want to be around them. I've lived next to and around open fields for many years (not so much these days as the area has been built up) and I've only seen a snake in the wild a couple of times. As a kid the freeway that goes at the back of my house was just a huge open field of long grass, friends and I use to go walking through it down to the river near by, there were 100% snakes in that field, never saw one. If walking in long grass, stomp your feet, snakes are deaf but they will feel your footsteps and quickly get out of your way.

Yeh, they call us the land of fire and flood for a good reason. Ironically all the "climate experts" were telling us how rain would never come back to Australia and "global warming" would mean endless drought.....Tim Flannery, calling Tim Flannery...nope he's nowhere to be seen at the moment. In Victoria the state government was so scared by Flannery and his alarmism that they built a billion dollar desalination plant.....that has barely produced a drop of water and costs us tax payers 1 million dollars a day NOT to produce water, because it started raining again. *sigh......

The sun is pretty quiet at the moment, thoughts that it might be going into a solar minimum, with little or no sun spot activity, this will mean cooler temperatures. It's been a very mild summer out in Australia and predictions for a wet Autumn.

Oh no, the dreaded diamond duck! Yeh I figured it would be longer Wumm, oh well.

500 wickets is pretty good, I have 3 wickets in 280 games! We have a team mate who we plan on clapping his 100th career run

Back into 5 days lockdown cos our government screwed up again. Cricket cancelled just when I was back in form (51*, 84, 29, 38 in my last 4 digs), can't go out, can't have visitors, can't drive more than 5kms from your house. Well I think I'm building models for 5 days.

1/250 Battleship Musashi.

One of the best fitting kits I've ever built.

I set out to again build more than 1 per month and did that. I also rescued 5 kits from the shelf of doom so progress was made there. In no particular order; 1/32 PCM Macchi 202 Hasegawa 1/48 A6M5 Zero with Rising Decals Dragon 1/48 Me 262A-1a/U3 with Cutting Edge decals Fujimi 1/72 Yokosuka D4Y3 Judy Hasegawa 1/350 USS Gambier Bay Trumpeter 1/32 Mig 17 with Cutting Edge decals. Tamiya 1/35 Pak 40 vingette Dragon 1/35 Hetzer Dragon 1/35 Jagdpanzer IV Hasegawa 1/48 Junkers 87D-8 Stuka Hasegawa 1/32 Messerschmitt Bf 109K-4 Italeri 1/35 Tiger 1 with Dragon crew Italeri 1/72 B-26K Counter Invader Dragon 1/35 IS-2 diorama with Dragon Soviet Motor Rifle Troops and Dragon German Desperate Defence figures. Academy 1/72 F4U-1 Corsair

Well ok, I'm in I guess.

Sorry stuffed up the image code, fixed now.

This is the biggest diorama I've built. The centre piece is the older Dragon IS-2 which is a very nice model still. It has a roughed up surface texture and the track links are impressive, being able to be linked together without glue and bent/shaped around the wheels. White aircraft ID stripes were freehand hand painted with the tank number being the kit decal. List of other items used are; - German solders from the Dragon Desperate Defence gen 2 figure set - Dragon Soviet Motor Rifle Troops Berlin 1945 - Verlinden Ruined house sections and sidewalk - Firestorm Hobbies bricks (repainted) - Unknown brand cobblestone street sections - Tamiya barricade set along with other Tamiya accessories (ammo boxes, cans, drums) - Eduard etched barbed wire I made the rubble by combining the bricks with a red and grey tile grout, HO railway ballast and soil sifted from mums garden. Base isan old picture frame I found laying around the house. I also did modify some of the figures slightly by adding different weapons, especially the bloke holding the magnetic mine, he was originally holding his MP 40. A nice touch from the Dragon figure set is they give you some empty pistol holsters so I put a pistol in his hand along with the mine, his buddy there is covering him with grenades. He was originally holding a K98 but I've put a G43 in his hand along with the appropriate ammo pouches. I also plan to put a tanker in the open hatch, but haven't been to the LHS yet to get some soviet tankers. I'll get to that though. Thanks for looking in.

Lock downs are not recommended even by the WHO and many virologists do not recommend them to combat pandemics. This idea to lock down came from the Chinese.

Doubt is the corner stone of all scientific advancement.

I can't help but laugh looking at the tiny little hooks holding the bombs on the devastator...and bombs on a devastator with a torpedo is another laugh.

I couldn't stand Fury, Apart from the fact it looked like star wars with all the coloured tracers, that battle with the Tiger was just rubbish. The whole thing about having to get behind the Tiger, like mate, you're in an easy8, you could penetrate a tiger at fighting distances let alone at 50 yards you'd blow right though the frontal plate!

Ironically the average age of a corona virus victim in the UK is 82.4. The average life expectancy in the UK is 81.16. Not saying the virus isn't dangerous, but it's more dangerous to those over 80 than it is to those under 40.

The good news is that although there is a second wave in Europe and the UK, the deaths don't seem to have spiked with the second wave. Gaz your maths is a bit off, 2.78% of 7.54 billion is a touch under 210 million (I think you missed a zero). However, I do agree that this virus is not as deadly as we are being told. Most people who die of this, have underlying serious health issues. Out here in Australia, the average age of a victim is 83 and around 700 of the 900 victims have been in aged care. The average length of stay in aged care in Australia for an elderly person is less than 3 years. I was also listening to one of the top people in the virus research field this morning, they said that for every person identified with the virus, there is at least 7 undiagnosed cases of people who are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms. This again means the virus is not as deadly as we are being told.

I really hate rubber band type tracks, but at 50-60 dollars plus post for an aftermarket track set, I might as well just go and buy a Dragon kit with magic tracks in it and throw the older model out! It makes no economic sense to me the costs here.

Meanwhile we in Victoria still cannot go more than 5kms from our house. The curfew was dropped, only because the Liberal politician was making a court challenge to it. You wouldn't believe that after all this being the fault of the government (although they all have collective amnesia and can't remember who made some decisions), contract security was STILL being used to guard quarantine hotels.

One thing that seems to be eroding fast are our rights here. Now the government is trying (and probably will) pass a law that allows police, or anyone who is designated a Justice of the Peace, to arrest and confine a person indefinitely without charge and only on the suspicion they may break a law. Scary, scary stuff here in Melbourne. Imagine how that could be abused. Just think, an untrained person could be allowed to detain someone with no evidence of wrongdoing, without appeal and without question for as long as they want on a suspicion. Australia doesn't need to be invaded by China, we're going to turn into a Communist dictatorship by ourselves!

I use to just sticky tape a piece of white paper over my flash, worked well.

Not something like this but I've had people send me modelling items from all over the world that I've asked for ,without asking any payment or post. I always pay it forward by helping other modellers with their requests when I can for free too.

Out here we're now finding that the estimates on deaths and how many hospital beds would be needed was in error by a huge percent. So they punched all this data into the computer modelling and got information out the other end that was 300% in error. Our governments then used this crap to impose draconian restrictions on us. More cases of the gestapo, I mean Victoria Police harassing people sitting on benches, one woman 38 weeks pregnant was asked why she was in the park. Clearly she was out walking, but needed to sit down for a moment, but the police kept dodging the question on if she was allowed to rest for a minute while out walking. We are wrecking Australia and destroying our civil rights for nothing. It's actually very scary, especially to see people cheering on these things. In fact, I'm under the threat of being banned from one website if I criticise police, because some of the admin and friends of admin are in emergency services. Mind you, not break any rules, just post genuine concerns about law enforcement's behaviour.