Showing posts with label 155mm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 155mm. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 September 2014

AS-90 in Iraq - 1/35 Trumpeter

Good day to you people. Hope you readers having a good day and all are good. 

As you all aware, I'm building a fleet of SPG and this is my final entry on the line. The fleet is a total of 7 SPGs consisting the the Dana, Type 99, Pzh2000, AuF1, K9, 2s19 Msta and this AS-90. 

This is the only kit of this kit available in 1/35 scale. Since it's release, a lot of sites including Armorama has reviewed this gal so I will not be saying anything about the quality of this kit. Although I can say this - even though it's old, it's a pretty good kit.

I was lucky enough to get it for £15 posted including the metal barrel with the sagged recoil sleeve. I also indulged myself with a Eduard upgrade set. I didn't spent money on the second set which consisted of the basket on top and the grilles. I thought it would be waste of £7. 

As you all know, the British Army desert colour is something that is very hard to paint and there is no exact shade available out there. So using XF-59 desert yellow as a base, I decided to play around with the high light and shadow as I know this will be a monotone vehicle anyway. Four other colours were used to play around with the highlights and shadows - XF-68 Nato Brown, XF-72 JGSDF Brown, XF-57 Buff and XF-55 Deck Tan. I admit I put in more brown than I'd like to admit and it makes the paint very brown in hue but I kinda like it. You can see the visible brown hue along the edge of the bottom of the turret and the upper hull. 

For the weathering, I wanted to show it used well enough from the strong offensive as we have seen during the Iraqi war. I also wanted to show a lot of sand and dusts on it to depict a vehicle going through the very harsh desert environment. 

I didn't have any kind of sand colour pigments so after pondering, I decided to go for 2 tubs of pigments from Pinnacle Modelling supplies and there were fantastic. I bought a tub of Desert Sand which is of a darker colour with a brown hue to depict the deeper part of the desert and another tub of Light Sand which is a typical sand colour but not as yellowish as beach sand.

The chipping colour is from AMMO and I actually enjoy that colour rather than the usual Vallejo German Black Brown ( or whatever it is called exactly). The Streakings colour are made from Oil paint and I used Serpia Brown, Burnet Umber and AK Streaking for DAK vehicle. 

The stowage comes from the Tamiya US military set along with some pouches I found lying around. The big tarp was made from a big cut out of aluminium foil, folded nicely and pressed along the edge of the stowage basket and then painted.


I'm vary satisfied with what I did, albeit it could look better but still, I'm happy.
It's time for the photos - 
(Just click on the smaller ones and they will pop out ) 





The running gears -




The Stowage on board -
The machine gun -
The massive amount of fuel spillage -
The streakings -


 


The dusts and numerous chippings from severe usage -






The exhaust -
And as usual, my show case photos from various angles -










And as usual from me, the Gary Wintin Shot  -


Well, that's all I can say about this. As you all know, my patience is my bane so the usual hiccups are met but nothing I can complain. I could have done a better jobs on colouring the periscopes, some of the P.E works and also on some of the over- and under-sprays but at least it is presentable. 

Ohhhkay, maybe I have one complain. I have no idea what in heaven happened underneath the exhuast marks. I didn't see it until I took photo of the exhaust. Just what are those squiggly lines underneath the black soot? Grrrrrr, it's pissing me off to see them. 

Oh and another thing I have to nit pick is that since I cannot find any information about this gal during the Iraq war except 3 photo of it in action, I had to wing it with the decals and I didn't know if I should put on the CIP panels or anything so that's another thing I didn't put on as I couldn't be bothered. That annoyed me but let's just say I took a artistic license hesitantly on this one.

Apart from that two fact about those squiggly lines, this was a very enjoyable build. I am more than proud to have this on my shelf. Now I can focus on other fleet such as SPAAG or IFV or wheeled vehicle. We will see. 

Until next time. 
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Monday, 2 June 2014

Academy 1/35 South Korean K9 Thunder

Good day to you people. Hope you readers having a good day and all are good. 

As you all aware, I'm building a fleet of SPG and this is my fifth on the line after the Dana, Type 99, Pzh2000 and the AuF1. The sixth and seventh will be the Mista-S and AS-90.

The kit is almost entirely conventional – no photo-etch, no resin, no clear plastic; just 314 parts in old-fashioned tan polystyrene, plus two matt grey one-piece vinyl tracks. Moulding is sharp and in some places really rather nice. The parts breakdown and assembly sequence are pretty much as you’d expect from any typical modern AFV. 

I used a variety of different paint type for painting this gal. Having no other brand apart from revell Aqua for the base colour which is Dark Green, I thinned that with Ultimate Modelling Product fantastic thinner and sprayed it on. After that, I followed up with MR. Hobby Aqueous Wood Brown. I decided to use Nato Black instead of Black as I thought Nato Black would look much better than just normal black. Followed that up with Tamiya Wodden Deck Tan . I wanted to put on just flat Tan and bought Flat Tan ( labelled as Tan Earth on the bottle ) but that colour looks very much like a friend Salmon pink so I just opted for the Wooden Deck Tan. I wanted to use Deck Tan but my Deck Tan ran out.

I decided to go for a very wet situation. I saw some videos of these gals doing exercise in a very rainy weather so I thought '' hey, rain .. wet vehicle.. wet mud..'' so I went ahead and put it on. To compliment the wet mud on the running gears, I decided to take the wet effects further. I decided to make the entire vehicle quite wet as if it has been staying out in the rain. In order to do that, I just used a lot of Vallejo Gloss Varnish as I do not want to spend money on any wet effect fluid. It's not perfect but it does the job suitably. Had I more budge, I would have love to get an AK or an AMMO.

As I have stated in my WIP post, I managed to get a after market resin set for this and used the stowages from that set. After building tanks and SPGs without any stowages on them, it's kind of a good feeling to be building vehicles with stowages. 

The build was really enjoyable, despite being a academy kit and a somewhat old one. I made a full account of the W.I.P in the previous posts and you are welcome to look over at them if you are curious about how well the kit goes together. Actually, let me make a list here for the Work in Progress posts -

Well, that's about as much I can sum up about the build. The exact steps can be found in the 4-part W.I.P. 
I'm vary satisfied with what I did, albeit it could look better but still, I'm happy.
It's time for the photos - 
(If you think some are small, just click on them ) 

The running gears -




The on board tools - 
The outer side of the turret just to show the rain marks and water effects -
The only one visible sight/scope on this machine -
The head and tail lights on this machine, you will see why I am not happy about them -


The Stowage on board -
The machine gun -
And as usual, my show case photos from various angles -













And as usual from me, the Gary Wintin Shot  -
Well, that's all I can say about this. As you all know, my patience is my bane so the usual hiccups are met but nothing I can complain. The most unsatisfying thing on this particular build would be my lack on control when painting the lights. I thought they were alright but upon taking the pictures, I saw that they could use a repaint with the camo colours as the edges bled out but if you know me, you know I will just say '' meh, can't be bothered now''  and be done with it; which is exactly what I did. Another thing I am now regretting, in hindsight , is that I should have put on some more mud on the tyres. That was a BIG boo boo.  


I couldn't keep building if not for my supporting friends and comrades. Thank you guys for always supporting me. Thank you dear readers for your patronage as well.

Until Next time.
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