Snapper

Hope Santa was kind to you all. Thanks for the text, Mark! MB

Great to have you here LongJohn. Your stories will be most welcome. Have a good look around the place and fill yer boots. The clubhouse, as you can see, offers a beautiful vista across sunswept plains, where gum trees climb majestically. The bar is always open and the vehicle park, full. The Friendly Forum is the place to be. HAPPY NEW YEAR MB

Someone is out to settle with the Bunker team. I had my Verso reshaped last week by a lady who ignored my indication and positioning in the road and drove straight through me as I turned right. Need one new door and a door skin. It took me some time to get out because the central locking went phut. My daughter climbed out the window. The lady had the grace to call her insurer and take responsibility instead of producing witnesses with tales of the unexpected. She was gorgeous as well. Down boy. Glad you're OK Joris. Cars are just a means to an end. Onwards and upwards... MB

Not sure if John is active on the forum anymore. The last time I emailed him I didn't get a response. He was looking at making a series on Canada in the Great War with stuff on the Western Front. MB

No such thing as 'not very good' on HMVF - unless we are talking about the Beckett hairstyle, if I can do it, anyone can. I clearly need to get myself a copy - but I'll wait til Boxing Day until you are allowed to read the thing. M

I'm named Mark after my father's favourite foreign currency...no but seriously - welcome, Austin, to the Friendly Forum. This place is a top quality home of knowledge, micky taking and all round stupidity. K9 owners are directed to the HMVF book project. MB

One of you lot must do a review for the front end for us please. You can use lots of words chosen at random and cover yourselves with glory. You know it makes sense. (or I'll set Beckett on ye) MB

Don't war graves take you to some amazing places? This has all been very interesting. MB

Good to see you here - especially with such a specialised vehicle. Welcome to the Friendly Forum. Mince pies are being served on the club house terrace from 0000 to 2359 every day until Jan 2. I'd steer clear of the mulled wine, if I were you, and skelp into the Guinness. Regardless of it being the Season of Goodwill - you are not permitted to touch my custard creams. Newbies are not allowed in the officers lounge. Do not park your MV by the gum trees and do not discuss wing mirrors with Catweazle. He is handy for matches, though. Other than that, you can put your feet on the furniture in the newbies hall and look out for the dancing girls, who are winging over from Eindhoven as soon as their airline tickets from XL are redeemable with AirEasyRyan. MB (Moderator and gob5hite)

This looks bloody good from this distance. Does this mean we could genuinely self publish our HMVF MV book? Is it a realistic prospect? Discuss...

My father was a journalist in the 1930s and then again post war. He was sports mad and specialised in the, then, huge interest in non-league football and speedway and wrote primarily for the News Chronicle. He was sacked from this because when covering a big match he failed to mention that a wall had collapsed injuring several people. His defence: "You sent me to cover the football". Perhaps he wasn't a natural. He had 26 jobs in his life and on my birth certificate he is listed as a metal merchants clerk. I joined the Observer Foreign News Service in 1975 as an oik and did no formal journalistic training until 1980 when I attended IPC's highly respected inhouse course run by Farmer's Weekly. I learned to sub-edit, to write features and to do page layouts in the days of emms and column inches. I was working for the Melody Maker at the time compiling pop charts and being a librarian/messenger oik. I love writing and I am good at it. I am NOT a journalist. To me magazines, whether mass commercial, specialist press or privately puiblished have to be all things to all men and cannot win. They have to please too many hearts and minds. So they go for what I descrived previously as BALANCE. It is a bit of an art not always achieved in every edition. The issue of making money from pix is separate. You need to read the relevant sections of the 1988 Copyright Act and it's ammendments. I have. A photographer's rights are being impinged by plod and all manner of litigious muppetry these days. But when it comes to snapping tanks or anything I work with simple rules - courtesy, mutual respect and co-operation. I get lots of requests for my snaps. I always supply, however long it takes me. I expect and hope to make commercial money from companies and so on - but not from private individuals. Of course, there has to be trust that they will not rip me off. Though, in practise, I am not sure what I would do about it. The final issue is vanity. I always assume my stuff is good enough - I don't offer up cr4p to my customers; but my head fits through the door. Lose this notion and you lose it all. I always expect the tap on the shoulder when someone says "so long and thanks for all the fish". It should happen to everyone in due course...But please don't ask me about correct wing mirrors......

Jack, me old son. You need to take more water with it. M

I don't pretend to knowing the exactitudes of the costs involved beyond the bleedin' obvious that they are prohibitive. Publishers need advertising revenue to offset costs and to increase profits. But this often applies to companies producing more than one title. So, if you were only intending to publish Fantasy MV Mag then you would need to be able to bankroll it. The key aspect is distribution. You will need a place for it to be sold over the counter and to do this you will need John Menzies and/or WH Smith in the UK. Either/or will determine where your magazine is sold. I am under the impression you would need Menzies to reach independent newsagents and small chains as opposed to just the big artillery. If you rely solely on mail order you will be charging a lot per copy and then your content will have to be superior beyond all dreams to make it viable. Advertising revenue has to come from within the MV generic trade, though obviously there is an element of crossover from the likes of (common) major components and tool suppliers. Thereafter you will need the militaria, kit, toys people we rely on to make our MVs look pretty and event advertising. Is there real money in it? Dunno. Content is the nightmare thorny sixty four thousand dollar conundrum. I personally do not find flat pages of text on Land Rover trunions to be very interesting. I found W&T had reached a point where the vehicles covered were becoming increasingly obscure and I couldn't relate to it. However, in my mind, Bart is unimpeachable. I am fairly sure that there was no one prepared to step into his shoes, which is partly why W&T folded. This should put the potential candidates in a good light as far as I can tell. They were honest. I like CMV and MMI in parts. I don't like generalised features on battles and campaigns which use generic pix to fill holes. However, this is often the cause of publishing costs. Picture budgets can soon run out. I totally agree with Catweazle the Ship matches magnate that a bad pic of the right MV is better than a pretty generic. It is a question of balance. Balance is the art. I think Pat Ware, John Blackman and Ian Young all have to work jolly hard to achieve it. Keeping the publisher happy is the mother of all nightmares. I think it is fair to say that whether you are talking tanks or budgerigars, they all want profit. The wrong snap or the odd miTsake are of no interest while the revenue rolls in. So, you will have to self-publish to get what you want. Get the money together, dictate what you want and I'll edit it for you and make it look nice and proper. A fair offer... Meantime - stick with the two commercial mags doing their best. Letters to the editor still work. They listen. They need your money. M

You lot have lost your minds. I blame the Chinese. Keep an eye out for the raccoons. Nasty things when cornered.

That is interesting. But by then the UK will have more or less run out of able bodies. It is a fact that always seems so odd. But I guess so many people were working in production of some sort. Hopefully by that time the skies were not so black with Dorniers. Wonder what they did after the HG was disbanded?

You're up early. Raccoons nicked your cornflakes again?

An age thing, heh tentman? Atleast I'm fully thatched.... I've improved with age like a fine wine...now get back to your fridge. Mark Barnes....aged 49.7

You reap what you sew....

This question will always be on the table. German engineering is hardly likely to be criticised. It was probably their choices of specification that effected them. They did not have a GMC or a jeep and relied on a disparate range of lorries and cars to do the job the Allies managed to standardise. I am no expert on the quality of their specifications. But I presume they were a tad over-engineered and complicated. This continues to evade the question, doesn't it? But I think you have to break it down into specifics - trucks, field cars, wheeled or tracked armour and so on. They'd obviously win hands down with some, and not others. Vorsprung Durch Technic...as they say in Southend.

Yep - looking good. Looks like you might have to make a speciality of British trucks. Nobody will have one for miles...What is the Dude building next, then, lads? A Leyland Martian or something really silly? MB

The first one is a Demag D7 - the Sd.Kfz 10 one ton half-track. The second is the five-ton variant - which IMS is the Sd.Kfz 10 which I think were Borgward built - someone will always know better. I hope.

Greetings Alastair, What an interesting into. Welcome to the Friendly Forum. Tony, I hope it's not new lino, because Jack has paid for parquet flooring in the club house. Cheeky sods. Someone will have to own up.

Those Crazy Dutch...

I came, I saw, I conkered.

Is that the tin of paint they used to paint the turret? This is a quality item. Cheers Adrian.