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M-109A6 Paladin

M-109A6, named as the “Paladin”, is the latest M-109 variant that is still in service today. Since the hull is nearly the basic M-109 hull, it was easy for Italeri to produce a kit by molding a new turret and adding this to their already existing M-109A2 kit. Of course, there are visible differences in the hull and if you care a lot for accuracy (not me) you will have to make modifications. I chose to build this Paladin for the Self Propelled Indirect Fire Campaign.

The construction of the kit was a little painful since the upper hull was warped seriously. The molding quality is not as high as any recent Tamiya or Dragon offering, but overall the kit looks okay when built. Since I hate vinyl tracks, I dumped the kit tracks and replaced these with AFV Club’s workable M-109 tracks. You can see I had quite a bit of trouble on the left side and learnt the hard way, so the assembly of the right side was much better. I also replaced the barrel with a Barreldepot metal barrel.

I used Tamiya’s NATO colors for the paint job and Humbrol enamels for detail painting. I do not like the way the jerry cans came out, I tried to make them look different but somehow they stand out too much. I think I should’ve replaced them. Also, much to my dismay my matt varnish was spoiled and for fear of destroying the model I applied to little, so the turret is still a bit glossy.

For weathering I used Mig Production pigments. I tried using these both dry and wet, using different solvents. Not too bad, but not as good as I wanted it to be. Guess I have to keep learning by doing, I’m still very new to pigments (this is my second application ever).
Hope you like my Paladin!