Soviet Trucks

It's been a while since I posted some newly completed stuff so today I'd thought I'd post up some Soviet trucks I either built & painted, repainted, or simply fixed up a bit.

I mentioned I recently had an article published in Wargames Soldiers & Strategy Issue 106.  I needed to take some photos for the article so I decided to add a few new vehicles and tried to make a couple of old vehicles look a bit more realistic.

Just over 3 years ago (hard to believe) I bought this Fabbri MAZ 535-A Artillery Truck:

Obviously I didn't want something that wouldn't have looked out of place in a May Day Parade for my photo which was supposed to be in the middle of a war in Norway.  So I repainted it.

That looks a bit better to me

I also had a what I think was a Trumpeter Jiafeng CA-30 fuel tanker which was part of a large swap I did years ago.  It had no instructions - but fortunately also came with Soviet markings.  Well it is an exact copy of a Zil-157 fuel truck.  So I built and painted it to provide fuel for the generators of my SAM Battery.

Sadly the decals were 20+ years old I reckon so they fell apart as I applied them.  All I was able to salvage is what you can see and there is a bit of silvering.

Finally I had ICM Ural Command Vehicle that I built here 10 years ago (geez) and it was very clean so I tried to weather it a little with a couple of new techniques (new to me anyway).  Here's how it came out:

So all in all I'm pretty happy with that lot.

Thanks

Richard

ICM Ural-375A Command Vehicle

Every army - even wargaming armies - have to have some command vehicles - and luckily enough some command vehicles are pretty cool looking. For a particular mission I needed a least 1 Command Truck and the ICM range provides a number of Soviet Command trucks to choose from. Admittedly they all look pretty similar to me... but I'm reasonably sure that I made a Ural-375A.

Here's a wikipedia link on the Ural-375 and a link to an English website on Russian Military Trucks which even has a Ural 375 Manual available for download!

REVIEW

I made this kit a couple of months ago (sorry) and it is the first truck I've ever made. I was actually pretty impressed with the kit itself - very different to ACE Models - nice clean sprues etc.

The most major downfall in my opinion is the rather simplistic instruction sheet. Basically 1 sheet of paper, showing the different stages of the kit from just one direction - so in some cases I had to use my imagination to work out how things go. As a result I think I managed to get the entire suspension system upside down!

I'm sure I also managed to stuff up other numerous bits under the command cabin.

Under the cab itself there are a couple of peices to cover the underneath of the engine and after hours of struggling tio work out how they fitted, I realised you needed to trim about 2mm off one end of each peice to make it fit. I have no idea why ICM just couldn't make it the right size?

But in the end I think you end up with a pretty good looking kit.

Painting

I painted the model the same as all my Soviet kit - very straight forward.

Here's a couple of pictures of the completed kit - skillfully arranged so you get to see as little of the suspension as possible!


Side View


Semi-Rear View

That's it for now - apart from the standard youtube clips.


Some good views of Ural Command Truck amongst other vehicles


An interesting clip with a Ural Command Truck on the back of a PTS-M


A bunch of different Ural trucks

Have fun

Richard