Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Baikonur and St. Petersburg

 English Russia keeps delivering the goods with cool photo collections. The Baikonur space launch facilities in Kazakhstan, as photographed by a visitor and the darker side of St. Petersburg.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , , , ,



posted by Ian at 11:02 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Russian Aviation Museum

 A few pictures of Soviet aircraft parked up in a Kiev aircraft museum.

Technorati tag:

Labels: ,



posted by Ian at 10:50 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Mini Moscow

 Moscow Town Hall holds architectural models of the city which look impressive in this set of photos.

Technorati tag:

Labels: ,



posted by Ian at 11:56 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Monday, April 21, 2008

Alternate Soviet navy

 English Russia has photos of planned Soviet helicopter and aircraft carriers that never made it beyond the planning- and display model- stage.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 11:54 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Friday, April 11, 2008

Soyuz on the train

 io9 has pictures of a Soyuz rocket being hauled across the desert to its launch site by a diesel train. It might be hard to scale match a model of the rocket (or even find one, I couldn't get a match for "Soyuz" at Hannants) and a Russian train, but think of the diorama possibilities.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , , , , , ,



posted by Ian at 8:40 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Russian WW2 memories

 A collection of personal photographs from a Russian soldier's collection.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , , ,



posted by Ian at 4:56 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Russian soldiers in Chechnya

 This photoset from English Russia shows Russian troops in less hectic moments during the Chechen conflict.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , , ,



posted by Ian at 11:08 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

St. Petersburg reconstruction

 The anniversary of the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was recently celebrated with a huge reconstruction of the battle featuring authentic uniforms and tanks.

Wikipedia history of St. Petersburg/Leningrad

Technorati tag:

Labels: , , ,



posted by Ian at 10:44 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

American weapons in the Soviet army

 English Russia has a gallery of American weaponry sent to the USSR during World War 2.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , , ,



posted by Ian at 2:43 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

GAZ 51 hot rod

 Oh those crazy Russians. The GAZ 51 was a Russian workhorse during teh Second World War. Now one of them is being turned into a custom pickup.

Model Wheels do a GAZ 51 in 1:72nd, if you want to emulate the project.

Technorati tag:

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 12:49 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Russian tank museum

 English Russia has photos from a tank museum near Moscow. Started in 1931, the collection now numbers near 300 vehicles.

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 11:03 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

MAKS 2007 International Air Show

 More airshow pictures from English Russia.

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 1:54 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Russian photo reference

 English Russia remains a great source of photographs for reference and inspiration.

World War 2 Photos by Dmitri Bal'termants

Military Aircraft Show in Monino. Moscow

Abandoned Trains of the Soviet Era

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 10:09 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Friday, June 22, 2007

A tank from a lake

 Tanks from the Second World War are still being pulled out of the lakes around St. Petersburg. If I remember my history correctly, the city was resupplied across the frozen lakes during the winter phases of the siege and at times the ice broke. The site refers to it as a "BT" tank. You can get BT5 or BT7 tanks in 1:35th scale from Zvezda, or BT5, BT7 or BT2 from Unimodel in 1:72nd. A salvage operation like this would make for an interesting diorama.

Technorati tag: , ,

Labels: , , , , , ,



posted by Ian at 11:01 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Friday, June 08, 2007

Bizarre Russian tanks

 Strange Russian tank designs on English Russia.

Technorati tag: , ,

Labels: , , ,



posted by Ian at 3:16 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Miniature Moscow

 This huge model of Moscow dates back to the Soviet era, and is a three dimensional snapshot of the city at the time. It has become increasingly expensive to maintain and was put up for sale for $3million (or maybe $380,000). Someone with 400 square feet to spare bought it last August.

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 8:51 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Monday, June 04, 2007

Mad Russian trucks

 Two photo galleries on English Russia-

A scrap yard of mad looking trucks and amphibians.

A part tracked ambulance.

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 2:05 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Friday, May 25, 2007

Ekranoplan

 Jalopnik has video of Ekranoplans, Soviet era transport planes that used the Wing-In-Ground effect to skim mere feet above the waves.

Revell released a model of the A90 ekranoplan.

Remote control WIG effect models.

Alternate history ekranoplan.

An ekranoplan blog.

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , ,



posted by Ian at 10:32 AM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Sunday, May 20, 2007

A bundle of reference links

 Whilst going through the archives of Spinneyhead, I've found a few posts and links that might be of interest to modellers-

Fetch!
The Russian dog anti tank mine.

Captured
In the dynamic flow of a battlefield equipment can get lost or captured. A quick trip through captured and repurposed weaponry-
The world of captured planes
Captured Planes
Captured Allied planes (Warning- cheesey beyond belief music, which is a shame because there are some very useful images here.)
A collection of pieces about captured B-17s
Fleet Air Arm planes captured by the Axis
A gallery of tanks captured by the Germans
Modelling a captured Russian KV-2
Israel made good use of captured T54s and T55s and various other vehicles.
Russian tank museum, including many captured tanks.
Captured First World War tanks.
Ships captured by the German Navy.

Test Beds
I've just been to the Museum of Science and Industry and checked out the aviation hall. Interesting stuff-
Avro Lancasters were used as flying test beds for jet engines. Video of the tests is online here.
The Avro 707 isn't quite a flying wing, but I have a soft spot for the delta wing planes such as this and the Vulcan.
A picture of the Hafner Rotachute (more) hiding away in the corner of a painting has given me ideas for another novel way to land assault troops. The Germans used similar devices for spotting from U-Boats.
But the most affecting plane in the whole display is still the tiny Yokosuka OHKA, a suicide jet that was pretty much a desperate last gasp from the Japanese.

Wing and a Prayer
The Me-163 'Komet' was quite an astounding beast. I alluded to a similar plane when the Wasp squadron visited Dreamland (Chapter Three, blink and you miss it). Flight Journal has a long interview with one of the Komet's chief test pilots.
It also has to be remembered that the Germans weren't the only ones experimenting with new and unusual aeroplane designs. The Allies' first jet plane was the Gloster Whittle, a pre-cursor to the Meteor and test bed for jet engines.
The 'Hiller-copter' and Landgraf H-2 were early twin bladed helicopter designs.
America experimented with flying wings in designs such as the XP-56 and XB-35, which I've mentioned many times before, but there were also experiments with gliders along the same lines.
The Brits also experimented with flying wings, as well as canard and tandem wing designs.
Even the Swedes got in on the act with the Saab 21A.

And also- Engines of the Red Army

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , , , , ,



posted by Ian at 12:45 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Friday, May 18, 2007

Russian reference picture

 From English Russia-

Russian snipers of World War 2. Modelling link- 1:35th scale WW2 Soviet snipers by Zvezda.

The aircraft carrier Riga/Varyag. Varyag on Wikipedia. I can't find any Varyag models yet.

Moscow 1967.

Technorati tag: ,

Labels: , , ,



posted by Ian at 6:32 PM
(0) Blogger powered comments

Powered by Blogger Pro™
Member of the International List of Scale Model Related Web Sites