What's Mr. Joe painting now?

Hi everyone;
A big part of Miniature Wargaming and one of the most enjoyable parts for me is actually painting the miniatures to be used in various games.
I collect rule sets/books, like other people collect novels and each rule set covers a different period in history or combat in a certain element.
The only other item I collect more of, are the actual miniatures, which become the playing pieces of each game or set of rules.
World War 1 or 2, the American Revolution or Civil War,  European wars of the 17, 18 or 19th Century, Brits versus Zulus, Naval warfare from the 19th century to present day or Air Combat from the First World War to present day, I have a set of rules and the miniatures needed to recreate those battles on the table top.
To cover all of these periods, you need miniatures in a variety of scales and of course a way of finding out just what that soldier, aircraft, ship or vehicle looked like.
Thankfully I have a great core of gaming buddies, who know even more about this stuff than I do and as always, I have the World Wide Web at my disposal.
My last paint project dealt with one of my favorite set of rules, named Check Your 6.

As you can see by the cover to my copy of the rule book, this deals with plane to plane combat in WWII.

So far I have painted miniature (1/300 scale) aircraft for Italy, Britan, US and Japan.

My latest group of planes are from the French (Vichy) Airforce of 1940-43.

Check Your 6 offers several scenarios or settings for pitting Vichy French aircraft against the Royal Airforce of Great Britan and the US Navy.

A little history for you. After the German defeat of France in 1940, a pro-German government was allowed to set up and run a small part of France, plus their overseas colonies. It was called the Vichy government, or "Vichy French". Part of these territories were in North Africa and the Middle East, and so eventually brought them into conflict with England and the United States, as we attempted to beat Germany and Italy and Vichy France strove to defend their territory which was in our way.

The French had some sharp looking aircraft and used some flashy colors to distinguish their craft.

trolling the internet and websites like, "Wings Pallette" and "The Miniatures Page", plus the CY6 Yahoo group got me the color and paint scheme information to accurately paint up the French D.520s.

The color scheme consists of a light grey blue for the bottom of the plane and a 3 color cammo scheme of dark blue grey/earth brown/ dark green for the top half. Plus the Vichy French "team colors" of a yellow tail and red stripes.

While I was at it, I also painted two Italian Macchi 202s, as seen below.

These were painted with a combination of Yellow Ochre and green splotches

 

Up next on my paint bench are some WWII British soliders in 28mm scale.

These lads will be used for a different set of rules and actually we have a real plethora of rules sets to go with. Current group favorites are "Rules of Engagement", "Nuts" or "Force on Force".

Here's some I painted about a month ago.

Now, if you are reading this (Thank You) and not one of my wargaming buddies, your probably saying. "Wow, that takes a lot of time and patience" and you would be right.

Time and Patience is what I have plenty of here in Mr. Joes World.

Thanks for visiting.

Joe