Air and Space Museum San Diego

Really interesting visit to this museum, which turned out to have some unexpected treasures, starting with the Apollo 9 capsule "GUMDROP". Always brilliant to stand next to a real spacecraft.

She went to LEO, not the Moon, and it was a critical component that bridged the gap between a manned orbit of the moon in Apollo 8, and proving all the other components that would ultimately make Apollo 11 viable for a manned landing.

CSM Gumpdrop from LEM Spider in LEO, March 1969

This 10 day mission in March 1969 was the third crewed Apollo Mission and only the second manned mission to use a Saturn V rocket. It was the first crewed flighted of the LEM, and proved the vital docking and extraction manoeuvres for the Apollo flight plan.

Net to that is the Space suit of William Anders who wore it to the Moon in Apollo 8 in the first ver crewed mission to the moon.

MiG17 in North Vietnamese colours, but believed to be of Polish origin

Then there were some nice models and artefacts from German WW1 Luftschiff

And then, to my amazement, were the ORIGINAL medal sets of WW1 legendary Aces of the skies

"Eddie" Rickenbacker, US Army

Billy Mitchell, US Army and arguably the father of the US Air Force

"Billy" Bishop, Royal Flying Corps

AND....

Manfred von Richthofen, German Air Force

Father's Days Blood Bowl

Father's Day in Australia is in September, and both Comrade James and I have traditional grudge matches with our offspring on this important weekend of family machismo!

In Sydney this year, Reilly and I got some DungeonBowl on with DeathMatch twists!

Loved the MVP Wandering Werewolf - somehow the teleporter in that room just sucked everyone in!

Somehow, I managed to leap a Gutter Runner around the Guardian Ogres and squeek over the line (get it?! - Dad jokes are legal for Father's Day)  to claim the first ever Father's Day win by this Dad,.

Meanwhile, in another State, James threw down with some Blood Bowl Team Manager with 2 of his progeny

Bolt Action fun

Recently, Reilly and I threw down for some WW2 action. My Socials feed from the day reads thus:

Getting our bolt action on: US paras (painted by Reilly) v Germans (painted by Patch) 1250 points in Normandy #beatpaulsson

All reactions:

US howitzer opening shot. Needs a 6 to hit right? Hmm… Boom!

US Greyhound takes my 222 Armoured Car under fire. 6 to hit - so I didn’t Recce away. Guess what he rolled…

Remember that time the US Air Force dropped a bomb right on Hans and his comrades crewing the Pak40? No, they don’t either….

Tiffin card arrives!

After another US ground attack fighter eliminated an entire infantry squad, I thought a taste of home might help the boys’ flagging morale

And the US light mortar finished the game in style, lobbing a sighting salvo into my last remaining squad. Needless to say, I did not #beatpaulsson

So yeah, that was a game. Throughly enjoyable as to seeing what hijinks the boy could pull off next, and if I would have anything left on the table by Turn 5!

Scratchbuilt Medieval house

In recent weeks I've been playing with scratch building some buildings, based on free paper designs.  The process went somewhat freestyle along the way, which has been fun if time consuming - and probably true to the spirit of civil engineering in the period too! 

Reminiscent of the old Warhammer fantasy building templates that White Dwarf published back in the day, I started with this paper model as my design:

  

Which came free from here: https://mojobob.com/roleplay/props/buildings.html

Using that, exaggerating a few curves here and there for flavour, I decided to add a matching but smaller side structure (kitchens and servants rooms?) to make it more interesting both visually and for gaming with.

The roof base is artists' paper, wetted down and shaped (carefully) to get the sagging appearance. By itself though it is a bit uniform as you can see.  That wasn't the look I was after  

So I added some internal roof framing (visible in the following pics) and reshaped the artists paper around it to get add a wavy look. Trusting that the shingles would (hopefully) hide the bleak edges, I pushed on!

Yes, the roof is indeed made of individual shingles, each clipped from coffee stirrers and glued by hand. Maddening work but the results are worth it (and I just glue away while listening to Audible). It was at this point I decided to make the roof more characterful by using even smaller tiles and placing then in more uneven rows. This added build time but adds to the character of the building.

Finally I was done with the shingles and got started with the walls. Yes, even MORE coffee stirrers gave their lives for our hobby!

Again it was a bit of 2 steps forward and 1 backwards as I adjusted the angles and many were glued down only to be pulled of the next day to be flipped and re-glued.  Looks much better for it though as it was a bit too symmetrical initially.  I should also have distressed those more fulsomely before sticking them on but, to be honest I was excited to be doing something other than glueing shingles on!

And to complete the build I scratch built some doors and shuttered windows before filling the walls with a mixture of spackle, PVA and water. 

Which shows significant evolution from the original paper model design I started with as a template!

Not perfect but certainly good enough so that's the build completed, all proudly done with scrap and bits I had to hand. I might leave the painting to another time - upcoming AHPC maybe :-)