Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

17 posts ยท Oct 10 2002 to Oct 12 2002

From: Brian Burger <yh728@v...>

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:11:31 -0700 (PDT)

Subject: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

Hi all,

I got sent this link today, and it's too cool not to share! Some crazy
person (group of crazy people...) has built an entire 1/144 scale Heavy
Gear Landship! Complete with working lights in the vehicle bays, and
scratchbuilt aircraft on the catapults!

Oh, and the other oddity is they're from another Ground Zero Games -
apparently a games store in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Had a chat with these
guys, Jon?)

http://www.dp9.com/Support/landship.htm

Man, I'm getting dangerously inspired in the 'crazy large project'
department...

From: Tony Christney <tchristney@t...>

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:43:32 -0700

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

Maybe this will sober you up:
http://www.starwarz.com/modelshop/make/destroyer.htm

MWAHAHAHAHA

> On Thursday, October 10, 2002, at 04:11 PM, Brian Burger wrote:

> Hi all,

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 20:11:07 -0500

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

Wait a minute...

Didn't we already see the 'mech tree house on the Wiz Kids site? You wanna
talk INSANE?!?!?

The_Beast

PS Course, I'm just jealous of how damn 'purdy' that land ship is!

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 22:43:47 -0400

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

> PS Course, I'm just jealous of how damn 'purdy' that land ship is!

Go look at Maj Gen Tremorden's Colonial Wargaming site, which includes an AAR
with photos of a battle between Brit, French, German and American landships,
plus IIRC a native Bronze Bunny...

From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 22:31:40 -0500

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

That's Major General Tremorden Rederring to you, ol' bean...!

But seriously, I used to hang out on the Victorian Adventurers and
G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. Yahoo groups. You still on there, Beth?

The_Beast

From: Brian Burger <yh728@v...>

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 21:04:49 -0700 (PDT)

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

> On Thu, 10 Oct 2002 devans@nebraska.edu wrote:

> Didn't we already see the 'mech tree house on the Wiz Kids site? You

I love Google. I hadn't heard of this thing, but a search on "Wiz Kids tree
house" got me this:

http://www.wizkidsgames.com/mwdarkage/mw_article.asp?cid=36984&frame=new
s

Oh dear... and *I* just had a plain brown wood treefort when I was a kid! Of
course, I didn't have crazy wargaming parents, either...

> PS Course, I'm just jealous of how damn 'purdy' that land ship is!

It's impressive, isn't it? I'm not sure how much utility it'll be in the
actual game, though. But as a display piece - wow!

Laserlight, the Major General's website is a regular destination! They're all
insane too, but in a proper colonial way. Mad dogs & Englishmen, that sort of
thing, what what?

:>

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:34:08 +1100

Subject: RE: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

G'day,

> But seriously, I used to hang out on the Victorian Adventurers and

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 17:01:32 +1100

Subject: RE: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

G'day,

> Of course, I didn't have crazy wargaming parents, either...

Well if it makes you feel any better Lachy et al are exceedingly unlikely to
be getting one of those for Christmas regardless of how cool it looks;)

From: KH.Ranitzsch@t... (K.H.Ranitzsch)

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:24:34 +0200

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

> On Thursday, October 10, 2002, at 04:11 PM, Brian Burger wrote:

Some mad scientists have had ideas to build such stuff in 1:1 scale. There
are: the WWII German 1000 ton "Rat" tank project
http://www.panzerschreck.de/panzer/pzkpfw/p1000.html
the 1500 ton "Monster" gun
http://www.panzerschreck.de/panzer/pzkpfw/p1500.html

And in the early 1930's the "Midgard Serpent", a tunneling tank.
http://www.geocities.com/madsin72/midgard.html
Some data: Length 524 meters (a 6 mm scale model would be over 5 feet long)
composed of 77 coupled sections, each 6 m long, 6.8m wide, 3.5 m high the head
to be fitted with 4 drills total 19.800 horsepower able to wade up to 100 m
speed 30 km/h over land, 10 km/h under the earth

It was rejected as technically and tactically absurd

Sorry, all weblinks in German

Greetings Karl Heinz

From: KH.Ranitzsch@t... (K.H.Ranitzsch)

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:58:22 +0200

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

[quoted original message omitted]

From: JRebori682@a...

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:09:56 EDT

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

In a message dated 10/11/02 4:25:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de writes:

> It was rejected as technically and tactically absurd

Hopefully no one will be insulted by this, least of all Karl, But I just

couldn't help laughing at the juxtaposition of those two lines. Might have had
something to do with a High School Chemistry teacher that always complained
that 'You kids have it easy, you don't have to write your homework in German.'
Guess I'm showing my age.

John Rebori ETN2 (Discharged)
USN 1976 - 1982
ex-USS Pegasus PHM-1

From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@t...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 14:04:16 +0200

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

> KHR wrote:

> Some mad scientists have had ideas to build such stuff in 1:1 scale.
There
> are:

<chuckle> These are almost big enough that even USAAF high-altitude
bombing would've hit them... <g> And I can't help wondering about little
details

like ground pressure, and finding clearings and roads wide enough to actually
move them through!

> And in the early 1930's the "Midgard Serpent", a tunneling tank.

Eh... *why*? I can understand "why a tunneling vehicle", but why make it so
long?

Later,

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 08:21:59 -0400

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

If any of you insane modellers *do* try building a backyard Mech, a 15mm scale
star destroyer, etc, I suggest you use Sintra, which is more or less
the PVC equivalent of blue styrofoam--it is very easy to cut, drill,
bend, shape, etc, takes paint well and is waterproof. Plastics suppliers or
sign shops will have it in a variety of thicknesses from 1mm to 19mm (although
3 and 6 are most common).

From: Roger Books <books@m...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:58:51 -0400 (EDT)

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

> On 11-Oct-02 at 10:51, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:

Can you imagine the sheer volume of noise this beast would make?

You figure out where the cutters are going to break ground, setup to destroy
it and suddenly all that nifty underground action stops. At least if it breaks
down you don't have to worry about digging graves.:(

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 11:57:38 -0400

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

From: Oerjan Ohlson oerjan.ohlson@telia.com
> Some mad scientists have had ideas to build such stuff in 1:1 scale.
There
> are:

> <chuckle> These are almost big enough that even USAAF high-altitude

like ground pressure, and finding clearings and roads wide enough to actually
move them through!

And bridges. "We can fight our way back to the river and....uh...stop, I
guess."

From: Brian Burger <yh728@v...>

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 20:46:56 -0700 (PDT)

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

Wow, German tank engineers were even crazier than I thought!

Karl, could you give a bit of German-English translation help? I ran
that
Midgard Serpent page (http://www.geocities.com/madsin72/midgard.html)
thru Babelfish, and mostly understood what it gave back, but it also left me
with the following line: "580 large pressluftflaschen and a large nebula
thrower".

What on earth is a nebula thrower? Or rather, what should Babelfish have
translated the original German as? This is in the third paragraph of the page,
right after the lines about the 3000hp engines & 960m3 fuel capacity. The
orginal German seems to be "580 grosse Pressluftflaschen und einen grossen
Nebelwerfer geben".

Babelfish is good for getting the general points of a non-English page,
but it often fails in the details - especially when it tries to
translate military terms & such!

From: Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@w...>

Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 18:26:49 +1000

Subject: Re: Insane modellers (and another GZG...)

From: "Brian Burger" <yh728@victoria.tc.ca>

> Karl, could you give a bit of German-English translation help? I ran
thru
> Babelfish, and mostly understood what it gave back, but it also left

50 large compressed(?) air/gas flasks and a large Nebelwerfer.
Nebel = Fog Werfer = Thrower or Projector (a Werfel is a die, something that
is thrown)

A Nebelwerfer is a Chemical/Smoke Projector.

Except... that in WW2 the large salvo rocket launchers, sometimes described as
"multiple barrelled mortars" weren't usually used for making instant
smokescreens, they usually had HE warheads. As these were often 150mm (just
shy of 6") and sometimes 300mm (just shy of 12") in diameter, and fired off in
batches of 6 to 8 within about 10 seconds, they were justly feared: often
called "moaning minnies" (UK) or "screaming meemies" (US) because of the sound
they made.

See http://www.achtungpanzer.com/rockets.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWnebelwerfer.htm has a picture of
the most common variety.

As for the meaning in this context - probably "Heavy Mortar" with 50
rounds of smoke or gas. Though "poison gas" is "giftgas" in German.