BRITISH AIRSHIP

          "REDOUBT"

After Building my Prussian Airship I knew that I had had so much fun building it that I would build others of the "leviathan" class! It just dominates the game board and never fails to get "ooh's and ahh's as it motors above the game board.

I have written elsewhere about my disappointment with Scheltrum miniatures and vehicles. The require an inordinate amount of work to clean and put together. Many of the parts need quite a bit of work to make look good.

As with most of the "Scheltrum" kits I threw away 90 percent of the parts and made drastic changes to the kits design. The kit is a Vacuform hull and a bunch of poorly cast bits and pieces. The Hull came in two pieces and the overlap joint in the middle was just horrendous! The kit was so poor that I left it sit on my workbench for months before finial deciding on a course of action. I was also not happy with the fact that even though it was over a foot long ship there was only room for about 4-6 figures on it and they would look crowded and silly in the models original layout. After much thought I came up with a redesign that would have much more deck space including a complete wraparound mid-deck!

As you can see in this picture of the first build stage the only 3 pieces of the original kit I used are the black vacuform body (2 piece out of sight below) and the one cast metal hatch. I built the 3 top decks and the Wraparound mid-deck out of styrene and balsa wood. Props and all else are replacement items.

The flimsy kit rails were replaced with a combination brass rod, steel pin, and heavy thread setup that would stand up to wargamming!

The future Commander of the yet un- named British Airship and the Director of Navel Spending inspect work on the project.

This project seemed to flow from my brain and I raced to get it finished for the upcoming HMGS/PSW con. Here are some pictures of the completed project. There are some great details that people notice after their 3 or forth inspection of the ship. I hand drew all the lettering and designs on it then created decals with and ALPS thermal wax printer.

I created "extra" armor plating from styrene and attached it to the hull to give more detail and also a more primitive Victorian feel to it. Since most of my weapons are not glued directly to my vehicles but have magnetic bases so that they can be used on many different vehicles the upper gun deck and control deck are wood but have some steel plates hidden on them so that I could use a variety of different guns and control layouts.

The director of Navel Spending and the "HMCS Redoubts" Captain are once again seen on the Bridge of the ship as she puts out for "Trials" (by the way, HMCS is abbreviation for "Her Majesties Cloud ship"

The ships name came about during a tour by her Majesty the Queen and  Captain Bromhead VC hero of Roark's Drift. Bromhead commented many times on how "Chards" forming of the inner "Redoubt" made the defense of the Drift a success!