Cheers Ron, they do come up on ebay still, I think there are sought by the collectors, so the prices tend to be higher...your just as well going for the Italeri kit if you want to build it. I'm sure I am being called all sorts of names by the AIrfix collecting crowd for daring to build this kit...

Thanks mate, I used the Eduard set for the Zvezda version, but looking at the Revell and Italeri versions they are exactly the same, the only difference being price, this one was the cheapest of the three....

Apologies blog fans, I've been laid low by a very nasty flu bug over the last week or so so I have been unable to get back to work on this one, but I am feeling almost back to normal now so will be fitting in time on it where I can so I can finish it in time for the campaign...

Don't worry about it Mark.

Missus has it too, she's busy infecting everyone she knows with it. I haven't done any modelling for days, (in best Scrooge voice) blinkin' Christmas.

Stuart

Cheers Stuart, having gotten over the bug, dealing with Christmas I then got a cold, sneezing and PE work do not mix so have only had a few days on and off to get any progress made, now thanks to markm for the extension to the campaign I AM going to get this one finished on time, well finished may be a slight exageration but finished enough to sit alongside all the other excellent builds, I'll do the final touches after the end if needs be..

Moving swiftly along with whats been done.
First up from the last pic we have the armoured shutters for the radiator which I had intended to have slightly open using the Eduard parts but in the end decided to go with the kit closed option as seen here.

Switching to the rear end I built up the rear bumper which is again from PE and looks much better than the plastic kit parts and can be seen here.

This was then fitted in place along with the straps/brackets for the canvas roof support hoops, these are shown in the next couple of pics.


Next up was the skate rail for the mg's, this is made from two parts and took a lot of cleaning up due to both its complex shape and the large amount of flash present, eventually it was done and was fixed into place in the car, this itself was a challenge as it has to fit around the supports moulded into the side and rear plates anyway I got it there and the result can be seen here.

The next job was dealing with the tools that sit either side of the cab, once the moulded on brackets/straps were removed and the tools themselves cleaned up I added the replacement PE ones and once done were fixed into place, one sides complement can be seen in place here.

Good luck mate, you are cutting it fine!

Hope you are feeling better, i'm sure seeing Shaun of the dead on TV the other night will have cheered you up!

'Oh my god! She's so drunk!'

James

Tell me about it! lol
There is another series of pics coming in a moment....

It could well be getting finished at 4 in the funking morning!

As another step in getting complete I set to work on the headlight grills, I have to say these are probably the most annoying and difficult piece of PE I've had the misfortune to use, the instructions are exactly clear on which way things go so a bit of guess work and trial and error was needed, fortunately they didnt self destruct like I believed they would having been bent more than once. When I referred to the pics of the real vehicle I noticed it didnt have the small side lamps or their mounts so I had to remove the lamps from the wheel arches and the bases from the grills, fortunately doing this went without a hitch too.


The sharp eyed will have noticed these pics still show the above mentioned side lamps and base plates in place.
Another small step taken with sorting out the doors, as can be seen these too suffer from very large and deep ejector marks, CA, Bicarb and Mr Surfacer sorted these out..

Referring back to the pics again after its capture the M3 was fitted with a German radio set and also had the related antenna mount, this was simply added on the outside close to the radio on a piece of angled metal, to replicate this I used the antenna mount from Tamiya's Panzer IV equipment set which I trimmed down to leave just the mount itself and joined it to a piece of etched brass fret cut and bent to shape then fixed in place as seen in this next pic.

I was undecided as to wether to fit the doors before or after painting the interior, as can be seen from the pic I eventually went for the before.

As mentioned in the previous post the Germans fitted a radio into the car, more than likely it was a FuG Sprech device as fitted into SdKfz 251's and many other AFV's, perusing my spare's bins I came across the radio from the old Tamiya 251/9 that I built when it first came out but had since been consigned to be used as parts. This fortunately fitted into the space between the wheel arch storage box and the deviding wall to the front compartment, so after a bit of work it was fixed in place and wired up as seen here.

One of the last assembly tasks was the mg mounts that fit onto the skate rail, as provided in the kit they are rather chunky and in dire need of finesse, fortunately Eduard provide some much needed detail for them so once built they were hacked about, cleaned up and finally received the etch details. The next pic shows the difference between the base kit parts and the updated one, apologies for the slight blurryness of this shot.

And next two much nicer looking mounts after getting sorted out.

It was at this point I decided that it would be fair to assume that perhaps a German fire extiguisher could have been added by its new owners so thats what I did, again using one supplied in the Tamiya Panzer IV set.

The final piece of assembly concerns the windcreen and its armoured screen, again the Eduard set provides a piece ot thin acetate to replace the very thick "glass" supplied in the kit, it also has a part that represents the inside framing, once the ejector marks were filled these were fitted onto the front frame with CA, I then turned to the armoured screen and once again dealt with its ejector marks before fixing the three uprights that hold it in the open position.
Finally I peeled off the masks from the backing and applied them to both sides of the "glass" to protect it from the up coming paintjob.

These were then fitted in place to (just about) complete assembly, the one final thing I added was a triangle of plastic sheet between the battery box and the wheel arch on the right side as again the pics show this to have been an actual modification, this nect pic shows both this and the windscreen/ armour in place.

OK, so in the last post I said the assembly was done, as it happens I was wrong, the last parts to be added were the mg skate mounts, I'd decided that the Germans had modified these to accept an MG34/42 by welding a short post to the basic mount, using the Airfix .50cals I turned these into the posts and drilled out the top to allow a Dragon MG34 to fit, I took these guns from a 251 kit that has some Gen 2 weapons in it as well as the older type so I knew these would be surplus and hence were perfect for this project.

With the mg mounts glued into place I could call the assembly phase done so it was immeadiately onto painting, first off I gave the whole thing a good clean to get rid of any loose detritus using my airbrush without a paintjar attached and the air pressure from the compressor as high as it would go.

As there is quite a bit of brass in this I felt it necessary to first give it a primer coat, this was done using regular grey car primer from Halfords, I wasa bit wary of doing this after reading in a recent magazine that Halfords had changed the formulation of their paints and that they now attacked the plastic! With this in mind I sprayed the unused canvas roof as a test, fortunately there was no ill reaction s I proceeded to give the car itself a couple of light coats making sure all the brass is covered.
The result of this can be seen here.



Also seen in the first pic is one of Armorscale's beautiful turned brass antenna's in a clamp after getting its own priming coat, I decided to paint it off the kit as I knew I would be knocking it off every five minutes!

Once the primer was allowed to dry for a few hours I applied a pre-shade coat using Tamiya Flat Black, the interior getting a complete coat while the exterior only got it around recesses, boltheads and along edges as seen in the next shot. The antenna and the two liberated Dragon machine guns also got painted at the same time.

To bring things up to how they are right now here's a couple of pics after the Olive Drab application.



More soon.

Mark,

You have turned this into a real beauty, well done sir. Can't wait to see the final results.

Andy

some super fast progress mate! You surely are putting the hours in!

Good luck getting it finished,

James

This is looking great, Mark. It's amazing the transformation you gave this 30 year old kit. Looking forward to more

Well Mark what can I say!

The photo etch looks fantastic and I am happy that it comes through well after the paint has been applied. You have really transformed this old classic.

Seats look ace too. I often up-detail seats in AFVs with tissue paper; the sort you find in new shirts and am always happy with the result.

Pre-shading has turned out a treat, the panels have a lot of depth and it's certainly more interesting than the standard OD finish.

Keep it going Mark

Stuart

Cheers guys, am onto the last bit before weathering right now so I failed to get it finished within the campaign timeframe, tbh it nearly went heading for the wall last night, a few bits didnt quite go according to plan shall we say, am gonna get as much done today and post in the campaign thread then finish it off later.

lol, easy does it now mate, no point destroying her at this stage in the game!

look forward to seeing her done.

James

Hey James,

actually it was the amount of work I'd done so far that stopped me putting into orbit, normally I am pretty laid back with any errors I make but cos I just want to get it finished it got under my skin a bit, but I have to say were friends again now....

A mini update while the coat of Future is drying, I surmised that even though the Germans had repainted the car I didnt believe they would paint the interior, so to that end I masked it off using tissue and tape. The pics I was working from showed the dark yellow to be coming off quite a lot, especially around the top edge of the crew area most likely due to them climbing in and out and a poor quality bit of painting. To this end I used Maskol to creat a rough and patchy replication of this wear and tear, it brought back immeadiately the memories of why I hate the stuff, it has a working time on brush of about a second before it starts to gum up and pulls off already dry bits of itself...
Anyway, eventually it got done and it was time for paint, I mixed up a slightly paler shade of Dark Yellow using Tamiya Desert Yellow, Dark Yellow and Buff to mimic the in the field application the real thing got.


With that done it was markings time, all it wore was a white balkenkreuz on the front, rear and sides, using the stencil out of a Lion Roar set of various sizes I eventually used one designed for a Tiger as it looked about the right size when compared to the pics. A few minutes later they were done and once dry it was time to remove the masking and hope that the maskol had created the effect I was after, and on the whole it did, its not perfect and will need a bit of work during the weathering stages to make it look realistic but I dont mind that really.
Here are a few pics just before the Future came out...




More later tonight as I get some weathering done.

What a great job. Really nice work.
DJ

Looking great Mark!
Its amazing what can be done with an ancient kit like this, you've shown what a little TLC is capable of, well done.
I know its probably a bit to late to be giving advice but make sure you add some OD chips in other vunerable areas to balance out the chipping around the top and doors.

keep it up,

James

Cheers DJ, many thanks.

Thanks James, I will be adding more chips later in the weathering process, keep watching...

Well she is still someway short of complete but is complete enough for now....