Making Kits

It's been a bit of a crap winter for me. Wet and miserable and I've been quite sick through most of it. On the mend now tho... So apart from working on some army lists, I've not really painted anything - just built a few kits - some of which I've had for quite a while and I just wanted to get them finally done.

Kits are all 1/72 and are as follows:

1 x Revell Leopard 1A5, plus a spare 1A5 turret I've attempted to turn into a 1A1A3 turret, using spare bits from and old Esci Leopard 1 and the hatch and hatch ring from the M48A2GA2 below. I need to add some 3D printed smoke dischargers once I've managed to print them.

2 x M48A2GA2. One the old original ESCI kit and one a rebadged Revell kit. For the Revell kit I used a spare old ESCI Leopard turret hatch and ring so I could have an open turret. As much as I love the look of these tanks - I kinda hate these kits!

3 x Revell Fuchs. Not much to say here really - but I thinkl I've showed one of these before - so just the two made so far this winter.

2 x S-Model Weisels, plus a couple of 3D printed Weisels. These will look much better once I've put some cam nets on them.

I love the pic of the M48A2GA2 sitting beside and above the Weisel. Pretty amazing size difference! How amazing is the Weisel. So much coolness in such a little package.

So hopefully I'll be painting and soon. I hope you're all managing to get stuff done as well.

Thanks everyone

Richard

The Hummer Horde continues to grow....

 I'm not exactly sure why it's been such a long time since I posted here - it feels like the last few months have been a bit of a blur.  Anyway - I'm rectifying that right now with some additional HMMWVs I recently finished.  Well... finished to a point - no crew painted as yet - but I'll post them up when I get them done.

Here's the latest group

There's a range of models in the photos.  The HMMWV with the slightly different camo is actually a Dragon diecast where all I've done is add a Mk-19 automatic grenade launcher.  All the rest were made and painted by me.

Some close ups

And now the little horde as it currently stands

Pretty happy with that progress - but still a few more Hummers to go before I've finished with this lot.

Thanks for looking

Richard

A Horde (almost) of Hummers

One of my (ridiculously too numerous for words) projects that has been plodding along in the background for a long time is finally starting to see the light of day.  I've been collecting HMMWV kits and models for years now and am now starting to work my way through them.  Very, very slowly...

Anyway - as always it seems the kits/models I got most recently tend to get finished the fastest - so here they are in no particular order.

This is a AN/TWQ-1 Avenger.  Basically a HMMWV with a Stinger SAM system turret, which also mounts a .50 cal HMG.  This is a resin model from The Hobbyden.  It's not the world's greatest model, but I'm not the world's greatest modeller so.....  I think it looks great and as a wargaming piece it couldn't be simplier or more fit for purpose.

This is a M997 Maxi Ambulance.  Like the Avenger it's a standard HMMWV chassis with the specialist extended and heightened Amblance rear cabin.  This is a Revell Kit which also comes with a TOW Carrier.  I think this is a simply beautiful model so it jumped straight to the front of my queue.

These next two are HMMWV RED-T's.  RED-T stands for Remote Electically Driven - Turret.  Imagine an engineer looking at a M2 Bradley and saying "I bet you I can fit the same gun onto a Hummer!"  And he did.  A few were made as prototypes but it never saw service... in reality.... so why not in my gaming I say.  If it's good enouigh for Twilight:2000 it's good enough for me!

Let's be honest.  It's not the best model - a free 3D print from Thingiverse - and my original 3D printer was kind of going through its death throes at the time, but it was the only one I could find at the time and again - it will do for gaming.

These last four are HMMWV M998 Troop Carriers with their tarpulin's raised to keep the chaps in the back dry.  These are from BobMack3D and are simply excellent.  The plan is for these guys to be the platoon vehicles for a US Light Infantry platoon.

And finally the mini-horde.

That's it for now.

Thanks

Richard

M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle Platoon

 After completing the M1 Platoon, the next logical step was to complete an M2 Platoon.  A bit of armoured infantry can never go astray and in 1/72 I can use these vehicles as either M2 BFVs or M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicles - so two platoon options for the price of 4 models - not bad.

Like the M1's I've owned these vehicles for quite some time and only just now felt confident enough to stow and paint them.  Pretty sure this lot includes 2 Dragon diecasts, 1 Trumpeter kit and 1 Revell kit.  I have a feeling the Trumpeter kit is the only one you can show with the commanders hatch open.  Could be wrong...

So here the platoon as a whole:

Now broken two to two sections.  The Platoon Commander's element:

And now the Platoon Sergeant's element:

And now some individual vehicle shots:

So that's this lot of M2's done.  Like the M1's there's plenty more left to do, but I think I'll be moving onto to more infantry of a new platoon of M113's in MERDC next.

Thanks for looking.

Richard

Sticking to the Dutch 3D Print theme...

Just as the title says, today I'm sticking to the Dutch 3D printing theme. 

As part of an ongoing, soon (I hope) to be revealed project, I needed a couple of Dutch Leopard 2A4s.  Fortunately I had a couple of very old Matchbox Leo 2 kits, which I was able to "quickly" make.  As if I do anything quickly!

One of these kits came with West German smoke dischargers, which would look like these:

Originally I thought I could convert these to look like the Dutch smoke discharger layout, which I knew to be different, but couldn't quite remember how.  So I looked it up:

or a bit closer:

So not much chance of converting what I had to look like that!

Fortunately I stumbled across a designer in Cults3D who had already designed a set for 3D printing.  It can be found here.

Now what follows are not the 2 greatest photos I've ever taken, but you should get the idea of my new Dutch Leo 2NL turrets, with proper smoke dischargers, an FN MAG (just blu-tacked in place for now), cam nets and a wire reel like in the photo above.

I will take better photos once the model is complete, but the 3D printed smoke dischargers are exquisite and came out beautifully.  Once again I'm very chuffed with the result.

Thanks

Richard