On Minairons' future

Minairons miniatures will definitely cease to exist as a brand in March 2026, when the current minairons.eu web hosting and domain name contracts expire. However, commercial activity will come to an end long before, because I'm going to shut that website down permanently in October 31^st, 2025. There is no turning back here.

The good news for our dear customers is that most of our 20mm SCW figure range is going to resurface to market pretty soon, under the management of Xan miniatures --which is the brand owned by the sculptor of said figures. I haven't learnt a timeline for such relaunch, but it will likely happen over this month or the next one --depending on their own logistic needs. A few sets lay aside of this agreement, though: namely, Militiawomen, Nationalist horse, Foreign Legion and Moroccan mortar and cannon teams, which are still my property. Same for my incipient 1:72^nd scale WSS range, too.

Nothing is carved on stone yet about our 1:72^nd and 1:100^th scales vehicle ranges, but there is a real chance these can survive too, under another brand's name. It's too early for disclosing anything else at regard, but I shall keep you all acknowledged using this very same minairons-news.blogspot.com blog --which by the way is going to be still alive for a long time, unlike the webshop itself.

As for the 1:144^th scale SCW & WWII aircraft ranges, I have been making and selling them so far as an authorized dealer of Plane Printer creator via Patreon sponsorship. When the next month I cease to operate as such, our customers will be able to still find these models in one of two ways: if enjoying themselves 3D printing skills and hardware, they can apply for Plane Printer membership and download the models from Patreon. Otherwise, customers can get in touch with Caliga accesorios, who are also authorized dealers for this range and can print them for you.

Regrettably, I've found no perpetuation chance yet for our 1:600^th scale Age of Sail ships range --and this makes me feel quite sad, because I was really proud of it. Therefore, I'm most likely going to keep selling them until they come out of stock, and afterwards will keep the STLs for my own use. There were a couple of contacts from third parties to acquire the range, but they retracted at the last minute. However, I'm still glad to discuss proposals at regard.

Other ranges not mentioned here are most probably going to be dropped --particularly, the 1:56^th scale vehicle range, which I've been admittedly neglecting for a long while now. Flags and decals will be available still for a long time, though.

Last but not least, this minairons-news.blogspot.com blog is going to stay alive for long, in order to keep Minairons' friends duely informed on what future is deserved to each particular range, as well as to let them know whom to address to in every case.

As already stated at some point before, it was exciting while it lasted. Thanks to you all for your kind support!

1:100 Miller-Ford racer & status update

I'm happy to share Minairons' latest release, the 1935 Miller-Ford racing car in 1:100^th scale. Once again, this new model comes as a 3D-printed product, so requiring no assembly except for the white metal driver to be attached in cockpit.

As for our family health issues, my wife is coping well with her lung chemotherapy treatment; also, she is making visible progress in her motor rehabilitation process (she was affected by a Guillain-Barré syndrome). This is going to take a long time still, but we both are optimistic at regard.

Nevertheless, over four months have passed now since this health issue started, so I'm likely still going to need to shut down Minairons' website from time to time, in order to perform all necessary housekeeping tasks while she is hospitalized. You know, a day is just 24 hours long!

As for the desired Minairons miniatures managament transfer after my retirement, I'm happy to let you know that a preliminary talk took place recently with a friend who had also been in the wargame business for some time, with satisfactory results so far. Hopefully exciting news in this matter to come within this year.

Minairons' status update

Some of you having recently visited Minairons miniatures website may have eventually noticed this was shut down for a period of time --one or two weeks, usually--, allegedly due to family health reasons. Such closure has happened two or three times in the last two months, and I must say it to be expectable for several months else, while Minairons miniatures still goes under my management.

The reason behind these intermittent closures is my wife's health; she's affected by a serious disease requiring both oncological and physiotherapeutic treatment, so that her full rehabilitation is probably going to take a long time. Therefore, the fraction of my time currently available for Minairons business has decreased significantly --enough for making me decide to close the website from time to time, if eventually overwhelmed by the amount of orders, in order to keep taking care of her as well as household stuff as a priority.

The current situation also affects our new releases schedule, as still shown in our blog's pipeline page. I'm not going to release any new item for a while, maybe one or two months; so everything in pipeline stands there in some kind of standby, even those items potentially ready for an immediate launching. Hopefully things may start to run better soon, as while as my wife's health starts improving and I become able to retake halted projects and serve customers as they deserve.

On the other hand, I recently started a conversation with someone interested in taking over the management of Minairons miniatures, now that I am actually retired --I hope to bring great news about Minairons survival soon!

Minairons' website, temporarily closed

Minairons' online shop is temporarily closed until August 21, due to logistical reasons: most of our service or product providers have started Summer holidays, basically. But also I wanted a little time to rest and start figuring out my future after having retired.

Those few orders still in course will be processed normally, and users will be acknowledged of eventual status updates as usual. Also, I'll be still there to assist eventual questions or requirements at info [at] minairons [dot] cat; however, until the date above no new orders can be placed.

Holidays week

Minairons miniatures website will be closed for holidays since today 12^th until Friday 21^st of October.

Apologies for eventual inconveniences, but this is a much needed vacation! - the only one we're going to enjoy this year...

Nevertheless, this Saturday 15^thwe'll be attending the X^th Napoleonic & Black Powder Open of Montmeló town (Catalonia), where we're going to run a couple of demo games, as well as setting a small sale stand with some of our Black Powder era products.

This year favourites for a demo are Galleys & Galleons and (despite a bit out of period) Bag the Hun with SCW aircraft.

After this event, my beautiful wife and I are going to discreetly vanish for some days amidst the Pyrenees range steep valleys, in some place only known to minairons, dones d'aigua and other fairy beings ;)

Coming back soon!

Closing for holidays

Minairons' online shop (www.minairons.eu) will be closed for a few days, since today 15^th until saturday 25^th of September, due to I'm taking these for some much needed holidays. Our eBay store (www.ebay.es/str/minaironsminiatures) is already partially closed too, so that orders can't be taken there.

I'm going to spend these days at an undetermined location, plentiful of high peaks and forest. If anyone knows where this traffic signal is placed, then he'll have a good clue where I am roaming about :)

Re-opening and new releases

I'm going to re-open Minairons webshop tomorrow Thursday at noon, so as to let users eventually interested in placing an order to do so normally. Please have into account a couple of things, though: first of all, that not all products are at good enough stock levels, because of the general shutdown ordered by authorities by well-known reasons. Secondly, that mail services all around the world may be experiencing some difficulties, so that delivery times might widen a bit. Please accept in advance my apologies for all this - and do not lower your guard against Covid-19. Keep staying safe!

So as to celebrate our re-opening, I'm happy to share our latest releases: three new sets of 1:600^th scale Naval Flags from both 17^th and 18^th centuries.

As you can see in the photo above, these three new sets are devoted to privateering and piracy: Dutch West Indies Company (1621-1660), Barbary Corsairs (1580-1780) and Bartholomew Roberts (1719-1722) (a renowned pirate also known as Black Bart). All three sets will be available for purchase right tomorrow!

Covid-19 update

Following orders issued yesterday March 29^th 2020 by the Spanish Government regarding confinement and non-essential activities shutdown, our www.minairons.eu website will remain temporarily closed for 2 weeks' time, as our eBay store as well.

We expect to reopen next April 10^th 2020 - gods willing! In the meanwhile, please keep in touch and stay safe.

Any further change will be eventually announced right here, in this blog.

Brand new website and SCW figures

Finally, works to update and improve our www.minairons.eu website are over. It has been some of a pain and a lot of money, but I believe it has been worth the effort. SSL protocols, cellular friendly software, non-registered visitor carts and, above all, the open chance to easily improve it furthermore - all this in!

Any software change uses to leave some path behind though, like a slug: user profiles of newly registered customers (from the last 3-4 weeks) might have got lost, for instance. Also, orders history of old customers having ordered recently might not show the orders processed over that 3-4 weeks period (despite all them have been actually processed). But that's all; website is running fine and smooth now - like an Hispano-Suiza. Please feel free to visit it and check how it works now.

So as to celebrate the event, we've made available a new SCW figure set right today. It consists of a pair of 20mm Republican dispatch riders on Harley Davidson motorcycles - all in white metal. They can be found right now at our website, naturally.

Website redesign

Minairons miniatures is going to close temporarily its website for a thoroughful redesign, software update and security improvement. Works on it are scheduled to start next Monday 23^rd and should last some 2-3 weeks depending on eventual incidences. Due to it, it is possible that the website can remain unavailable for hopefully short lapses of time, while backup copies are performed or some key pieces of software are introduced.

Our activity isn't going to stop for this, however. We'll be keeping you acknowledged from our blog, from which it can be now downloaded an updated listing of our products.

If our website happened to go offline for some days and you eventually wished to place an order, you can e-mail it to us, or you can use our eBay store.

Data Policy update

As many of you have probably noticed, a new EU Regulation about Data Protection (populary known as GDPR) enters into force tomorrow 25 May 2018. Accordingly to its provisions, I've thought it fair to update Minairons Miniatures privacy policy so as to renew my personal commitment to it.

If willing, please take a look to Minairons Miniatures updated Privacy Policy.

All the best, Lluís.

Website fully restored

I'm still awaiting a complete report from the team who've been working on the www.minairons.eu malfunctions detected recently. Anyway, according to a talk with them I held yesterday, only website's "friendly URL" creation tool was affected (thus masking product pages URLs, as if they didn't exist anymore).

They were skeptic whether this odd malfunction had been caused by any eventual hacking (not so I am), but the good news is that database itself is intact. No illegal accesses recorded.

Website status update

Well, not everything has been fixed yet, but at least I can confirm you now that our www.minairons.eu website is able again to take and process orders normally.

Website was hacked last weekend in a quite odd, insidious way: all product pages were masked so as not to be accessible from their respective category/subcategory listings. That is, website was apparently normal to a first sight, provided the user was just browsing through the various folders and sub-folders hosted in it. All them showed normally.

However, if user wished to check in detail one precise item before purchasing (red arrow on picture above), in order to watch sample pictures, or to learn kit composition, or to read some historic briefing on the real thing, the website link unfailingly failed as if that product page didn't exist anymore (404 message below).

As said, the good thing is that if user dispenses with accessing product pages, he/she can still add items to his/her cart from the respective category/subcategory page (green arrow on picture below). I mean, a full cart filling up and checking out process can still be performed normally in our website, despite individual product pages aren't accessible yet.

I understand these explanations are going to be little help to first time users, who'd be logically willing to know what kind of stuff we're selling; but regular customers who already know our products high quality can be confident their orders will be taken and processed undisturbed.

A technical team is currently working hard to fix the problem; as soon as website functionalities are fully restored, I'll let you know.

Website wreck

At an undetermined point of this weekend, our www.minairons.eu website has ceased to work, due to an apparently serious internal damage. Right now, Sunday night, it's still impossible for me to know the damage degree, or the working time it will take to our technical support team to fix the error cause.

Those eventually willing (or in the need) to get in touch with us, whatever the reason for, can still write to any of our e-mail addresses (info[at]minairons[dot]eu or lvilalta[at]minairons[dot]eu for instance), because they're fully active and working. We can of course take eventual orders using e-mail, too. And last, those among you accustomed to using eBay portal will perhaps greet to know that Minairons does run an eBay store comprising a great deal of our own products, whose URL is stores.ebay.es/Minairons-miniatures.

Believe me I'm consternated and so sorry for the eventual inconveniences this unexpected event might cause. I'll do all my best to restore Minairons website as soon as possible.

Website working fine again

I'm most relieved and happy to let you know that our www.minairons.eu website has just been fully restored at last, with all its main features properly working.

Most important, these good news also include our PayPal payment module, that had ceased to work two weeks ago --due to have become outdated and no longer supported. Such module has been adequately updated folollowing PayPal's own directions, so that it works fine again.

Apologies to all those having had issues during those stressing two weeks!

Website down

Some of you perhaps have already noticed that our www.minairons.eu website is currently out of order.

Our maintenance team is hurriedly working to solve this. It's still uncertain whether they'll be able to sort the issue out in a matter of hours, or days instead. Please accept my most sincere apologies for this temporary inconvenience.

All our e-mail addresses are working and fully functional, however. If you are in the need to get in touch with us, whatever the reason for, keep confident that we'll be promptly responding to you. Apologies again.

1/72 and 1/100 T-35 Soviet heavy tank

Just a short note to acknowledge you we're from now on stocking both Zvezda 1/100 and S-Model 1/72 kits of the huge, impressive T-35 Soviet heavy tank.

Both in plastic. Zvezda's 1/100 model comes by the one in a box, and consists of just 12 parts! As for S-Model's one, it's more of a complex model kit --but there are two tanks in each box!

More from Peter Pig

Our catalogue has just grown with more stuff of Peter Pig. In order to increase our offer related to Spanish Civil War 15mm gaming, now we store Italian troops and equipment from Peter Pig's Range #08, so as to allow building the so-called Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) Italian Army divsions that Mussolini sent in Spain in support of the Nationalist cause.

This includes not only Italian infantry, but artillery and tank crews too, as well as L3/33 tankettes. Besides, up to four different variants of Renault FT-17 tank have also been incorporated into our catalogue on a permanent basis.

In the end, Peter Pig's early WWII German and Russian Anti-tank guns are now stocked too. All these new items from Peter Pig can now be found on Minairons website, so as to allow 15mm SCW aficionados to combine their acquisitions of our own stuff with those of Peter Pig in a single purchase.

Website working fine now

Glad to acknowledge you that our previous issues with our www.minairons.eu website have been finally fixed, so that it works fine again. Website has also been moved to a more reliable server.

Minairons website down

We're experiencing some troubles at our www.minairons.eu website lately. It apparently started yesterday, or late Monday as an intermitent malfunctioning, and today it seems to have gone to worse. We're looking into it.

Otherwise, either this blog and all our e-mails addresses are working normally. Apologies for the inconvenience.