This bad boy is gonna be awesome when your done!

cheers

Looking good.
Bin the rucksack ,as we tankers never have the room for them on the tracks.Just the valise and a Awol bag(small pack) was all we could afford to stow on the beasts.

Cheers

Anthony

Thanks guys. I was a little unsure of the huge pack, so I was only going to put the roll on and cut the pack out.

I have the prime paint on the lower haul now. This is a big day for me,and I will admit I struggled to get through to here. I'm in a bit of a hurry to get er done for a show in late Oct. so I'm hustling. Here's a pic.



nice pic of a turret in Germany. This could be the very tank I'm modeling.

Few more pics of the primed tank. These pics show Tamiya's great detail.

Looks really good Chris! You did great job with PE tool clamps and fenders assembly.
I see you attached the support arms to side skirts and to the turret before the slat panels. This might rise some problems with alignment of the panels. Eduard did a great job on their set, considering the info available at the time, but there are mistakes...
I found that applying the support arms to the slat panels first (requiers more time spent on test fitting) works better in the final picture... but that maybe just my stubborn russian way of doing things LOL

Cheers!

Andy

Good advise Andy. Of course you know this build. Your right about the PE set it has some flaws and I plan to explain these later in the blog. I also plan to do a later version of one of these tanks with the main difference being the tan colored Barracuda camo cover. When I do this version I will make some more changes to the Eduard kit.
For this build what I did was build each slat section as I build and attached each arm. then I laid on the slat and went to the next slat section and aligned it with the last one. I'm sure it will all line up. The thing is Eduard were smart enough to give you a little wiggle room with each of the main slat arms. Its quit the cool engineering going on with the Eduard set,Good Industrial design.

Here's a good example were the Slat set is off. You can see behind each side armour bracket a rubber block,the slat set has left this out and if you choose to add it each arm on the haul topside will be to short. So its time for a resin upgrade!!! I think if the arms were made of plastic or resin this would be perfect. I did ditch a few of the PE arms and made my own with plastic.


Don't let this discourage anyone this is going to be 99.99% accurate.

Heres a couple of great pictures from the Combat Camera website. Taken in 08 My interest in war photogerphy is why I started modeling.

That is some great looking dirt.

Who makes the tow bar?

Paul

Paul The tow bar is from the Dragon Abrams kit. I just cut the end peices off then cut some alloy tube and glued the plastic parts to the tube.

I painted the base coat on the Leopard. I went a little light were the brown and black will be going. I'll let this dry for a day or so and get on to the CM and camo.
I've never done the NATO camo so I may need a little advise. Any suggestions or links would be helpful.
Pic


The turret is mounted to some plastic bases to hold while painting

Lookin good so far.

What I did was use the guide in the instructions and drew with a thin pencil the outlines for the camo. Just write in between which colour goes where.


cheers

Sounds like a plan and I think I have a mag were someone did that with a Leopard. I think I will mark out the brown then paint, and finally pencil in the black and paint to avoid confusion.
In the Hobby Boss kits they have color guides for the camo. I'll use that.

This may help as well....

http://www.panzerbaer.de/colours/a_relaunch/bw_kpz_leopard_2a5.htm

Thanks man that's a much better view.

After doing some reserch on this paint I came up with this.

Coming along nicely. Well done on the camo!


cheers

Looks real good Chris, what type of airbrush do you use?

Cheers
Todd.

yeah that camo is looking really good.. nice one

Thanks for the comments. It was my second time doing a 3 color camo so not to bad.
Todd the airbrush is a Iwata eclipse. Its a double action basic brush from them. I mix Tamiya paint 60% paint 40% Tamiya thinner and my air pressure is around 20psi. Are you planning on getting a new air brush?

Chris,

I must concur with the others. Your Leopard 2 is coming along quite nicely. Both you and Rick have provided the rest of us who have yet to start this project with excellent build blogs to work from.

Cheers,

Duncan

Thanks Ducan I'm starting to get some rythem on this build so its getting easier as I Go. I have a few things figured out on this so if you have any questiens when you start yours let me know. I'll be doing a Cuda version soon as well.

Chris,

I already have a Badger 150 and it works fine. But I would like a second gun. I'm looking at an Iwata Eclipse HP-CS or a Revolution HP-BCR. Something that will spray a very fine line. Yours looks like it did a grate job on the Leo's three color cam. Can't wait to start mine.

Cheers
Todd.

Todd all I can tell you is I became a pro when I got the Iwata. Its so much nicer then all my old brushes(Pashe,Bager) and it cleans up nice due to the great chrome finish.