A Break From Terrain

I am getting pretty close to the amount of terrain I need for the first battle of my campaign. About the only thing left is some fields of crops, need to check that I have enough paved road segments, and a truck stop, which is the biggie.

As I am figuring out how to make the truck stop, I decided to work on some odds and ends. First up, solving the problem of the tipping Caribou transport plane. I should have gone with my gut and made a clear, removable peg that served to hold the back end up, but NO-O-O!!! I had to try to cut out the back part of the plane to make it lighter. The result: EPIC FAIL!

Well, that looks like crap.

I drilled a bunch of holes, one of which pushed the sides of the plane out. After three holes, I decided this wasn't going to work. I globbed some nasty model putty in hopes that it will harden well. I still have to put at least one more layer on in the morning. I am hoping that the putty will be hard enough to drill a small hole for a peg.

After that waste of about one and a half hours, I wanted to feel like I accomplished something this evening, so I went back to a project I started in 2009, but never finished. This was improving the hold of GHQ's turrets to the hulls on their Chinese Type 63 tanks. This was more of a pertinent project because the Type 63s will be used in the first battle. Back in 2009, I used rare-earth magnets, but I was burnt out from just making big holes with large pin vises. Instead I used some really tiny nails to do the job.

Tiny nail resting comfortably on a piece of carpet

I only had to drill small holes in the bottom of the turret and on the body of the tank. The flat head of the nail will hold the turret in place:

It was a little work to make sure that the nail was reasonably perpendicular to the bottom plane of the turret, but they all seemed to work out. The turrets rotate smoothly.

The left and center have the nails for pins, the right has a magnet

This was a lot less work than the magnets. My only concern is that someone might try yanking off the turret, which may pull nail out. Time will tell. More importantly, it soothed my soul after the Caribou disaster.