Raining again.So heres the back story.Berlin,1945,late April-early May. The Battle of Berlin is winding down,Red Army Forces are closing in on the inner city.Based on "French Itel" they have located the Fuhrebunker,Hitlers last hiding place and on May 2nd ,the few people remaining in the bunker are captured.One of these prisners belongs to the 33rd Waffen Div.of the SS Charlemange(1st French)It is found out that He was the one that had provided the "French Intel".He was later let go.Little did the Russians know he was also a U.S. double agent.Opon hearing from their agent,the U.S. Military rushes to the site and joins Soviet Intelligence Operatives in a search of the bunker.Together they find many burned papers and documents along with the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun.They also stumble across a secret room that when opened reviels a vast tresure trove of ancient artifacts,almost all of them made of gold.The U.S. offers to contact Dr. Indiana Jones who has been helpfuf in the war effort(that ark of the covenent thing) to help with identifing these objects.The Russians take the offer,as they can use all the extra funding they can get.Dr. Jones is flown in from Libia where He was looking for hidden oil reserves(another story) and bigins looking through all the stuff.As He is doing so ,he notices a small crack in the rooms wall.Seeing that the walls of the bunker where 3 feet thick, He thought that was strange.Tapping the wall ,it sounds hollow.He calls for a pickaxe and strikes the wall,and it begins to crumble.Every one joins in tearing at the false wall.More treasure?countless millions?As the hole becomes larger,and the light to shine inside ,a small portion of what appears to be a tank tread can be seen.The wall is completely removed,and there it is,12 feet under ground,inside a room with 3 foot walls,the largest tank any of them has ever seen! It turns ou to be a Panther F.A model that has never seen the battlfield but was good enough for Hitlers Last Stand.The U.S. wants it ,the Russien want it ,they strike a deal.The Russians get 2/3 of all the gold,the U.S. gets the rest plus the tank.It will be taken to the U.S. and reverse engineered ,with the info to be shared.With great effort it is removed and loaded onto a M25 "Dragon Wagon".They MAKE IT fit.It is decided that 2 U.S. officers and 2 Russian officers will man the hauler to prevent any funny buisness on the way to Caen France to be shipped across the pond.It never gets to Caen............ Thats my story and I'm sticking to it. Of course you know ,I have to by another kit to complete this scene.There is a method to my madness

Now that's a backstory. I would have been the first to say these are silly, but we all love Indy, and I read every word! I'm eager to find out what happened on the way to Caen.
Thanks,
Sean

Sean,I don't know if we will ever find out. That may be the biggest what if of the whole story. But that gives me an idea! Here it is,you guys finish the story,jump in with anything you want.or give me some ideas and I will try to come up with something.

jtucker: Cool backstory, though I don't know about Indy and the artifacts part: the guy couldn't recognize an ancient artifact if it danced naked in front of him, wearing a large sign saying: this is an ancient artifact

Sorry, had to have a go at Spielbergs lack of archeological knowledge

Sean: My profile pic is just my cat: Morgan. Although it seems she is the root cause of all evil, destruction and nefarious plots around here...

Happy modelling,

Dr. No

When I began my career I did look like that, bushy hair too!

G

Hello everyone,

Started working on my kit today, got quite a bit of work done. I will upload a picture tomorrow when I get a chance. I am really excited at trying out a digital camouflage!
Looking forward to see your builds!

Regards,

Duncan: Looking good!

Benjamin: Glad to hear it! Shame Trumpeter won't sell extra replacement parts..

Sean: I think the same way when I see everyone's avatars

jtucker: Awesome story!

vladimir: Get those pictures up as soon as you can, let's see how it's coming along. Looking forward to that digital camo when it comes time to paint

Ben:No problem,it's a "what if' campaign

Doh, hard to keep track of that part sometimes

Duncan,just read your backstory post in the armor/afv forum.If you read my backstory further up this thread,you will see that my Panther did not get to Caen France for shipping to the U.S.After reading your story,I think I know where it may have ended up,and what it may be turned into It might be cool if we bridged the gap between your story and mine.Let me know if this is something you would be interested in.If not ,that's fine to.Just another "what If"J.T.

I really like the fact that some of you guys are melding your projects into the same universes. I may have to do something special regarding these builds in the build feature at the end of this campaign.

Alright here is my model almost ready for its base coat! Can anyone tell me if the parts I am thinking of added may not be possible on this vehicle? Namely the gun ports on the sides. I added extra lights at the front considering it would be a dark planet (arthropods prefer darkness), and I am thinking of adding a sort of chain saw at the front (using extra spokes wheels) would this be possible (or even a good idea)?





I know that there isn’t much on the model, but I don’t have a very large choice to modify my models!
I hope I can do it justice with the paint job, I am thinking of copying the Chinese digital camouflage but with Dark grey as a base color and blue and light grey (maybe black) as the “tetras blocks”.

Regards,

Would an ARV be out of place here? What if type of course.

Vladimir....... looking good so far, hold off on the chainsaw for a bit, because once I get this computer to work I'll post up a picture of one of the Forestry machine I maintain that I think you'll like!

Here we go....



Its called a Valmet 425 (or Timbco) with a hydraulically tilting cab for steep going, and it's got a LogMax 7000 chainsaw head on it! here were only cutting fire wood (lots of smoke as we'd run out of bar-oil) but it can fell a big pine tree rip off the limbs/branches and have it cut into 5m lengths in about 2 minutes ! the rollers have about 350 chisel points on each, and grip the tree and rip it through the knifes past the chainsaw.
How about hanging one of these chainsaw head of an arm (ARV style) on one side of
you vehicle what do you reckon = just a thought!

Got the turret done, needs a lot more work but pretty happy so far with the way things are shaping up, filled in the radio operators hatch and covered over the periscope port.

I got far enough along here to merit an update...


Note I traced the bottom edge of the kit side to make my new side.

Above, I realized that I'd have more detail if I spliced on pieces of the original parts.

Here I dummied it together. The sides are glued on, but the wheels are just stuck in place and not attached. I needed to attach the sides at this stage, so i could measure and build the driver area and hood attachments. The downside is obviously that it's harder to reach in there now.
Then, that 4-hole bumper wasn't looking right to me, so reading an old Armorama feature, it turns out Italeri made that in the mid-1980's to a humvee prototype, so I scratched a 3-hole. Even though this is a what-if, I want the base humvee to be easily recognizable under all this. (Here I've made the holes too small, so I'll redrill them wider, soon.)

...and Zon, yes those Italeri mold release circles are littering the inside floor and dash, but at least mine should be hidden enough.
thanks for looking!
-Sean.

Fantastic stuff Sean.

vladimir: I think the real question is whether or not technology has advanced far enough to allow all of that stuff without overloading the vehicle. I would just keep pushing forward and see what it looks like. I think that a rotary type saw would certainly be a reasonable addition on a planet crawling with large car sized insects.

Chad: This campaign is open to all ground based vehicles, an ARV is certainly acceptable

Duncan: Nice job roughing out the proportions of the counterweight area, looks natural!

Sean: That is truly slick! Did you create those line drawings yourself?

Ha! You give me too much credit! Actually, the HMMWV profile was found on the www. I just drew the UPS truck over it and scaled the whole works on a copy machine so that the dimensions were 1/35 scale.
Nice work going on all over this forum now!
thanks, guys.
-Sean.

What if. . .
What a loaded idea.

What if the Germans had succeeded on the Eastern front and eventually decided to develop an amphibious capability.
What would a Panther look like coming ashore on Brighton Beach in the UK or even Long Island.

Hmm. . .

JP

Brighton Beach is next to Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY and is currently occupied by Russians

Great work guys, I am having some camera/memorycard issues so I can not get pic's uploaded till I can sort it out?

Thanks Jeremy. I am thinking of an M32 ARV based upon the M36 hull,with the E8 suspension