I am a bit late to the party but fashionably late seems to be my thing. I have joined the Thunder Run build group for the Museum at Ft. Stewart, that Robert Burik is putting together. While RB was looking for East Coast modellers I volunteered to take part from the west coast, call me crazy.

Although I was an M1 tanker, and served on the 120's it was over 20 years ago and they have changed a bit. So venturing into this is new territory for me, familiar, but still new. All of the tanks for this group build are the Dragon M1A1 AIM, which if you have never seen it in person is an AMAZING kit. Truly amazing. The sheer number of parts is daunting, but the detail is a marvel of modern engineering.

So far there are very few photos that I have been able to acquire of C11 but am hopeful more will turn up soon as I am not confident that I can make a really good representation of the track without the proper photos. If anyone has or knows someone who has pics, send em my way, please.

I plan on making this a full build log and feature that will track my progress through the end on this one. Doing this helps me as it keeps me honest and up to date on getting it done, and a full record to review one I ship this bad boy of on his journey across the country. To me this is an honor to be able to take part in this build. Not only for the chance to help preserve that moment in time, but for those who took part as a memorial to their sacrifice and bravery. Feel free to chime in if you see something amiss, as constructive criticism is always welcome.

Opening the box was amazing. I have never had the pleasure of building a Dragon kit, although I own some of their modern Soviet series from the late 90's. Having just finished the old Tamiya M1A1 this kit is not only overwhelming in detail but much, much more sophisticated and complicated. Where Tamiya made a great starter kit this is by far THE benchmark Abrams kit. Dragon supplies several options in the box to make a few different vehicles depending on the time period and unit. My trick is going to be figuring out which parts are on and which are off for this particular vehicle. RB has already clued me in that the Blue Force Tracker is a no go, as well as the APU, which I was surprised to hear. I know that it needs another jerry can rack, but not sure what particular stowage and configurations C11 had, so I am flying a bit blind right now.

After the initial shock work off and I perused the instructions for a day or so I started the chipping process on the road wheels. With an xacto knife I shaved down the pretty, crisp angles on the wheel edges and made them apear worn. Next, with the same blade, I began to take small "chips" out of the wheels on the edges and a few in the middle of the rubber. This simulates the wear of the rubber against the rocks and sand that accumulates in between the track and the wheels and between the two halves of the wheels themselves. As of right now I have 4 left of the outside wheels to do, then on to the inside. . . .this is going to take some time. Wish me luck. Cheers.

After my wheel party I went to work on the lower hull. The idler wheel and arm for the first road wheel are a multi part affair and you need to do these one side at a time so you do not confuse the parts, as they are side specific. The track tension bar that connects to the idler wheel arm has two parts that fit on the back side and need to be glued in place prior to mounting the whole deal. I found it best to take this task in a few steps:

1). Dry mount the idler wheel arm and the 1st road wheel arm and then using some tweezers dry fit the track tension arm between them. Mark this position with a pencil and remove all.

2). Glue the track tension arm to between the other two arms and then, remount the two arms for the wheels dry. This will help set the position for the track tensioner.

3). remove all of this assembly carefully once dry, add the back parts and then remount and glue in place.

If you try it other wise things will not line up correctly. Since I am going to paint the road wheels I was not ready to add them in place yet, but got the road wheel arms in place and glued down. Dragon provides a few guides on each piece to help line them up, but I found these are easily broken off as they are so tiny and thin. I used all of my road wheels that I had previously glued to help line up the arms and then glued the arms in place and removed the wheels until they are painted.

I lost one piece to the carpet monster but it will be under the side skirts so i am not too concerned. Irritated, but not concerned. Two other pieces were almost lost but were recovered with some searching (and a few choice words). Will post photos when time permits. Cheers.

Ok. I know I promised pics a week ago, but life has preempted any model building for the most part. Also, I have taken on a build review and that just arrived last friday and felt the need to get started on that. Enough with the excuses.

I have managed to get in touch with the tank commander and platoon leader for C11 and he is helping track down some additional photos, so positive news there.

Building on the lower hull is pretty straight forward and seems to be flowing along nicely (knock on wood). I have found that the kit over all seems to be really well engineered and laid out well. The fit of the parts is very nice and generally amazing, at least as good as the Tamiya of old, with notches and guides to eliminate most guesswork. I find the instructions are packed and probably a little too much, for my tastes. I tend to like the LEGO instructions where each step is laid out and you know what parts you need before you dig in. Maybe its just me. I think that the addition of a few extra pages in the instructions would be beneficial to many and might even help the younger/less experienced modeller with this kit, all those parts seem very intimidating at first. One thing I really enjoy about some of the old Tamiya kits is the inclusion of the naming of parts, i.e. "commanders m.g.", "loaders hatch", etc. I think this is a great idea for those that do not have a separate budget or want to create a small research library for each kit they build. It also helps in identifying certain items like on this kit the Blue Force Tracker (BFT) that was not on most of the line tracks from TF 1-64.

One area I have found challenging is the application of the PE grills on the back deck. These pieces are VERY thin and can easily be bent during the removal from the fret. This in turn makes gluing them down difficult and clamps may be needed. Clamps increases the chance of too much glue getting in areas that might not be beneficial, i.e. on the top of the PE piece, you see where I am going right? So if someone has a REALLY GOOD solution on applying CYA in small quantities to minute areas that will not run, bleed or create a weak joint, please, please, please let me know.

The grille areas on the back engine exhaust area are very fiddly and can easily be snapped with very little effort, so do be careful there. As careful as I was (and I was VERY careful), I managed to snap one small piece, so be mindful.

The back deck plate was challenging to line up but I think this was due to a slightly warped upper hull in my kit, not bad, but enough to throw the alignment off just slightly. This has been corrected with the addition of the back deck plate not, so no worries.

I think that Dragon should keep running this kit as a production model and offer upgrade or "down grade" aftermarket sets to produce ANY and ALL of the M1A1 variants that have been made and maybe even give the original M1 and M1IP the same treatment.

I plan on getting after the tracks soon and abusing them with either the knife or something to show the beating they took. Upper hull has started, obviously since I mentioned the back deck above, and I expect to start on the upper hull soon as well. More pics are coming and some will be taken in the "new" photo booth I built (yea me!). Currently I have this, the build review and the FAUN SLT all going at once, so updates will be when I have something to add or discuss. Let me know what you think and Thanks to Robert Burik for putting this project together. Cheers.

Damon,
I have had success with sharpened flat toothpicks dipped in a small pool of CA, you can vary the amount of CA by how sharp you make the toothpick.

Cheers Rob.

I'll be watching Damon!
Dan

i have been using toothpicks and even fine brass rod, but very little gets on or too much. There seems to be no happy medium. Thin glue, thick glue does not matter. Need to find the Goldilocks answer.

Long time since my last post, the Tiran build review took priority. So getting back into this and the FAUN build:

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/198640&page=1

So today I was working on the FAUN and got quite frustrated with the PE and some life issues so decided to get the Abrams back on the bench as this one is for someone else, the boys of TF 1-64 and especially C-11. So where we are at, I have mated the upper and lower hulls and needed to fill a few minor gaps that occurred. Not sure if it was me or the kit but either way those are done and now need to be sanded. I have added the rear exhaust area and all of the proper details save for some minor ones that can be added later.
Today I have started on the magic tracks as I find track assembly a bit less frustrating that anything else right now. So far, I really like the magic tracks. I am surprised that Dragon has not issued these as an aftermarket set. They are easy to assemble and would be great for many of the other M1 kits on the market including the Tamiya kits. Can you imagine if you could pick up a bag of these for 5-10$? That would be fantastic and probably kill the rest of the market. You could even use a bag just as "spares".
As far as these go I have found that you only need to lightly sand one side of the track and snap in place. There are some push marks on the inside of the tread, but if the road wheels are in contact, who's gonna notice? I am building a few small runs and then my plan is to bang them up with the dremel. I will get some progress photos of the magic tracks going together and the dremel on plastic action later. Cheers.

Work continues. I have made contact with the C11 Actual, but have yet to be able to secure photos of the actual track during the period in question. Hopefully soon. Recently I have joined the upper and lower hulls and sanded the front slop as there was some3 minor overhang that needed to be cleaned up. This seems to be an issue with these kits, some more so than others, be mindful. I have left off some of the small details of the lower hull that could easily get broken off by my clumsy hands. These will be added just prior to painting. Sane will go for the turret. I began the basic construction of the turret and am trying to break things down into sub assemblies that can be painted off but along side the main vehicle for various reasons. It seems easier to mask small detail items like periscopes if the subassembly is not attached to the vehicle already.

So today I assembled the main gun from breech to boresight and that is set aside. The tracks have two runs for each side done these can be the center top and bottom sections as those will have minimum movement and do not need the road wheels in place to be joined. The sponson boxes have been added and I have to say I love this design. Looks like the real deal, trust me I am very familiar with the sponson boxes. Blast panels and commanders cupola assembly will be next on the list. Cheers.

Delays, delays and more delays. Maybe its my inability to focus on one thing or my inability to just be ok with my inexperience. I have found myself putting this on hold and only doing bits and pieces here as I second guess myself to death on this project.
Firstly the reference material on this track is seriously limited, even with contact with the actual crew, nice guys by the way. Then its the constant guessing on how I am going to accomplish one thing or another and should it be done before or after paint. . . .eeesh.
So I have been tinkering with this a bit here and a bit there. I will take and post some pics later on either tonight or wed, but here is what I have accomplished thus far.
Side skirts have id tags on them. The right rear skirt on C11 was missing so that has been removed from the field of play. The bottom hull has been primed and initial coat on. The road wheels have been primed and base coated both rubber and sand. The commanders .50 cal has been started but halted until I can get things primed and base coated. I am weary of making sure that all parts can be painted and retouched if necessary once assembled. Once this bad boy is finished it needs to be shipped to the East Coast, so I am sure there will be a few sub assemblies that will need to be dealt with in place once it has arrived there.
So progress has been slow, but wasn't it slow and steady wins the race? Cheers.

Damon, I'm right there with you. I'm building A32 and also find the construction of this kit very frustrating both due to the high parts count making for unnecessary sub-assemblies and the poor fit due to parts warpage or less-than-absolutely-perfect alignment of the sub-assemblies.

I'm taking a slightly different approach with mine in that I plan to get as much assembled as possible before breaking out the airbrush. I figure it will be easier to paint everything at once, then weather and attach the roadwheels, tracks and skirts in one go. But I gotta finish getting that turret built first!

Keep up the good work and don't despair...others who have completed theirs have turned out some fantastic models so I'm confident that once the assembly is complete and the paint goes on, the headaches from the build portion will be easily forgotten!

Damon, while the photos that you do have of this tank are blurry, they still give a very good idea of the stowage layout and other items - like lack of razor coils on April 5 as well as no pickets. You adroitly picked up on the missing rear skirt. I'd say the only thing that is hard to tell is if you have any green wheels to do vs all sand. There might be two or three green ones on the left side.

It seems that some owners of the kit got unlucky with hull warpage, while other did not have any. The best fix seems to be putting appropriate length plastic rods inside the hull to keep it straight. Overall, I think the kit is great, and no other kit comes close. But it is not for the novice due to the items Don points out.

Anyway, it is good to see you back at it. The treads look nice. I think they will look cool once they are painted up and weathered.

Looking forward to how this progresses.

Bob

Thank you boys for the kind words, they are greatly appreciated, some colour has been added to the hull and I will get picks up soon as the temp outside have gotten balmy, heading back into the 40's. Yes I said that. So update tomorrow. Cheers.

Ok photos and a quick update. I took these over the weekend and while it is nothing dramatic it is some progress. I am hoping that today I will have the time to get the tracks set up and at least positioned and glued together. This will allow me to be able to move forward with weathering the tracks. Once the tracks are ready to mount the lower hull can be put together and weathered, then onto the turret, stowage and crew. Here's hoping.

While the build has been going slowly it has been going (when my garage is not too cold to sit in for more than 30min). I have added another coat of sand to the hull, began getting the tracks put together, weathered and painted and started the drybrushing on the hull. The drybrushing has turned out well and I have been able to get much if the wear and tear on the beast. Wheels are primary coated, and will be sealed and clear coated soon, once I get the center caps painted and in place.
Once I get the lower hull to a good place I will continue on with the turret.
Still need to figure out all the stowage and pic some figures. Will post pics once I get them uploaded. Cheers.

Ok, so here are the updates and pictures as promised.
The wheels and the basic track runs had already been given an initial coat of paint so I decided to begin the process of getting the track in the correct position and shape. This was held in place while the glue dried with some desk top items:


While waiting for the track runs to set up I decided to tackle the initial weathering on the drive sprockets. Since the running gear will be almost completely inaccessible once the side skirts are mounted this is a necessary process now.









The sprockets were drybrushed with a combination of several paints, some my own mixes and some straight out of the bottle. I used, gun metal (my own formula of Tamiya), Metallic Rust (own), OD Green (Tam) and Chrome Silver (Tam). These were laid down with very little paint in the following order, gun metal, rust, green and silver. This was followed on the top side as well with mostly only the gun metal used top side and all of the colours used on the lower hull around the running gear.




























I have begun to do the initial weathering on the track runs as well, by adding the metallic rust and some chrome silver all drybrushed on. This will get a dust wash soon, to create that dusty road worn look and allow me to see how the track looks with colour on the worn pieces. I have also added a clear black/grease colour to the wheel center caps but these will be mostly painted over with sand and dust, as that is how things actually looked. Any questions? Cheers.

More progress yesterday. Managed to get the tracks stable, finished the "chewed up look" this weekend and sprayed another coat of black. I went back over this with some rust on the end connectors and center guides (sprayed on), then drybrushed on some chrome silver for the tips and such and let that sit for two days. Yesterday I went over the whole thing with several layers of acrylic washes. My own concoction of SWA dust, diluted with water and added on with a big #3 or #4 round. This was done in several layers to build up the colour. I then added in some brown to this to give some depth and repeated the process with both until the look was satisfactory. This will of course need to be done with oils and probably re done with the acrylic was later too. I also applied these washes to the road wheels and the lower hull to bring out some depth and colour variation on the underside. Three of the road wheels were painted NATO green as I had gone back through video footage and it looked like at least one on the right and two on the left were green. Photos are limited and blurry, so hard to say, but the colour variation will be nice.

Progress has been slow but steady on this when time and weather has permitted (it gets cold in my garage in winter and trying to rectify this with a move, possibly). While photos and research material on C11 are few and far between I have been making what I have count. Hull is mostly done save for a few minor detail Items and some touch ups in the future. Still contemplating the skirt bolts and pins that would need to be added and how I am going to accomplish this without mounting and subsequently tearing off the skirts. We'll see.

Turret has been painted and the gun tube decals/transfers are on, although not with out some serious issues. Have to say that Archer is a great company with great customer service, really cannot stress that enough. However, I have found that their TF-1-64 set leaves me wanting. While I am no expert the front glacis items seem to me, to be smaller than they would be, slightly but still and I can be wrong here, just my opinion. What I have really had issue with is the gun tube transfers. In 6 attempts I was able to get 2 to work and not 100% on either. Frustrating. Maybe its opeartor error here, but I swear I did everything exactly as the tutorial explains.
The extra bustle rack is done, again not without issues. But put together, primed and painted and waiting for mounting. The additional drive sprocket for the turret roof, is painted as is the additional road wheel. Two bags for the bustle rails commanders side forward have been painted. The two blue igloo coolers as well. The two figures have been painted and need a clear coat and oil washes. The loader needed glasses so I added those from some tiny freaking wire. That was fun (not), but the result is good. Three MRE packets have been painted as well. The "53" and chevron for the forward skirts are added as well as the packing/shipping decals, although these need to be covered up with some dust per pictures. Work continues but here are some pics. Will try to keep up with regular updates, but no promises as things are getting a bit crazy right now.

Been a long time between posts but have been steadily working onthis. Most of the other guys are done but I am still working on mine and I MUST have this finished by July. I am now working on the sub assemblies and the minutia that needs to be added to make these special. Scouring photos and taking with the few crew I can find has left much without proper reference. Of note below, the over spray on the lower front glacis where the "QTA #" is. This was achieved by masking off the area with some FROG tape and using an angled filbert type brush, dry brusing around the mask to give the appearance of over spray. charging handles have been added to both of the crew serve weapons and the locking pins and chains. The orange item below is the handheld civilian type GPS device that was (as I understand) common amongst the crews. I have begun making the battle board from some spare sheet plastic and am hoping that the Archer transfers will include this sized number and chevron. Still need to make the tow cables and mount them to the turret. All for now. Cheers.

Hi Damon - thanks for posting the updates - really great work - attention to detail and subtle signs of wear and tear - very nice

cheers
Nick

Okee dokee. Things at worked have stabilized for the time being and I have chained my self to the desk on the off days. The turret is nearing completion. I have added the spare sprocket and wheel, the side sponson/bustle items to get things moving as well as the tow cables and spare tracks. It all seems to be shaping up nicely, with the occasional hiccups. I added the TC cupola and loaders hatch and the CIP panels. These were the kit supplied stickers mounted on some spare index card and the corners were done with Frog tape and the whole deal sprayed sand then touched up the corners (they are darker) with Tamiya Buff. On my track the water cans in the side racks were all used to help put out the fire on C12 so they are gone at this point in the time line. Let me know how we are doing. SO far my crew likes the pics I have sent to them.

Great build Damon,this is coming along VERY nicely,puts me to shame seeing as I have a couple of these lying at the bottom of the pile! Keep at it

Cheers mate.

Finished off the CIP (?) panels on the front glacis last night. Today I tackles the back bustle extension and what is on it. Battle board was made with plastic card, size approximated, colored with Tamiya and then Echelon decals added. my track had 3 of the 20mm cans for the crew NBC gear still mounted when they jumped off on April 5, 2003. The louvered CIP panels were mounted on the right side center and the back bustle center between where the 4 cans would have been. So, I still need a small ruck with 3 color DCU cover for the side water can holder behind that CIP panel. I think this will need to be a scratch job as will the flight helmet bag that will need to be on the turret roof forward. I am working on the various piles of gear that made C11 look like the modern warfare version of the Beverly Hillbillies. Difficult to tell from the photos but there are two blue coolers I know of and a few water cans in the bustle extension. Other than that it is gonna be guess work. Here are the latest photos, I also made some .50 cal and 7.62mm spent casings from brass rod, these will be added eventually. Cheers.

So armed with very few photos that are really of good quality i have been trying to decipher the stowage (of which there is A LOT!) on this tank, understanding that after C12 "Cojone Eh" went down all the crew personal gear was transferred to C11. So recently I made the helmet/flight bag that can be seen near the TC .50cal in this shot



My version here:

It actually looks good on the vehicle (trust me).

I have also added the damaged water can that was severely tied down to the point of mashing the top of the can under the handle my version first:



and the real deal:


Still trying to get the two figures that will be in/around the loaders hole worked out for this. Hernandez, the C12 Gunner and Diaz the C12 TC were moved to C11 and both were on the 240, one with the tank mounted and the other I am told with the 240 dismount kit, still trying to get a confirmation on this one. Either way, I have to model two additional figures that I was not aware of for this. One is going to be seated on top of the turret and the other in the hatch on the 240. Still trying to get the rest of the stowage worked out from the references I have. Cheers.

Updates continue with more stowage. After C12 went down Creeping Death looked more like the Beverly Hillbillies mobile with all of the extra gear that was transferred from C12. Various personal bags and gear was transferred over as well as weapons (there will be a .50 cal sans barrel just forward of the TC periscope and just aft of the dog house) and other tank gear. Trying to model this is a challenge as I have few references as mentioned and it all has to fit and look the part. There are some items that are obvious and some that I am guessing at. Once the gear is all placed and set I will be removing all of it to weather the turret and the gear, separately. Then all of the gear will be added back, piece by piece and secured in place. Then all of the strapping will be added. Here is where we are at now.