Well i've been lurking aroundd the Special Force Dumvee and Afghanistan Humvees thread long enough to decide to do one myself! I got myself the Academy M1025 kit... And here's progress so far...


Here's the hard top dry fitted on, i'm debating whether to leave it on as i dun think the slope looks nice.


Under belly.


Without the hard top cover...

Comments appreciated!

Dang forget to publish this as a WIP blog topic.

I'm trying to make it look something like this but i can't seem to have a clear shot of the back stowage area...


I'm assuming it's something like this...

Help!

WOW. NICE JOB RUSSELL. IT LOOKS NICE.

KEEP UP WITH THE GOOD WORK !!!!!

I really like your figure set in the second seried of photo's, they look so lifelike.


Tanks
Andy

The interior on something like that is pretty spartan. The benches on top of the rear wheel wells consist of three long wood (?) planks that go the length of each wheel well. The side walls that you see in the pic are more...extravagant as far as the modeller is concerned than a standard soft-top M998. From the look of the second photo, I don't think the planks are there, looks like a sheet of metal or something. The Dumvee conversion from Pro Art (though expensive) is a good start - its about 75% accurate and I guess that CMK conversion is great for a standard 998. If you are doing a regular soft top, then you'll want to take out the "square" in the middle since no turret will be placed thus there is no need for a platform for a non-existant gunner to stand on ; if you are doing a dumvee I think you can leave it in.

One thing you sure want to do in either case is get rid of the radio you've put in. It is an old radio that hasn't been used by US forces since Desert Storm. A SINCGARS radio (easily obtainable from the excellent Pro Art SINCGARS set) is a good start. For an SF unit, though you will probably end up needing SATCOMs and GPS things and all the great little gizmos they have. 18Bravo can tell you more about comms situation than I can since he's one of those been there...still there guys

Anyway, keep up the good work and I hope to see further progress.

Jeff

Hmm

Andy-Those are the real ones!

Jeff-Thanks! Yep i'm somewhat attempting to make it into a Dumvee... But through reference pics that i've seen, dumvees come in many variations and for the back stowage area is one difficult part to tackle... Do you have pics of what most Dumvee have in that area?

Thanks

I found a picture that bests depicts that Humvee with the soldiers... Only the back area of course...

Yea, I have that photo. When I get home tonight, I'll go through my humvee photo database (yea its that big) and see what I can find. I don't have a huge amount on dumvees so I can't promise anything.

Jeff

No problem at all Jeff, by the way i've picked up the Academy kit and everything's pretty much the same except for a few additional sprues for the armour plates... There's an option to change it to the traditional M998 version too.

Ok Russell here is what I found. I can not claim credit for taking or finding any of these, that probably goes to 18Bravo, Bill (Boggie), and Matteblack to begin to name a few off the top of my head. These should also be useful in other ways too.

Oh and by the way, it looks like it is a sheet of metal is attached over the wheel wells (I don't know what that type of plate is called off the top of my head)


Notice the recliner in the back









Night shot
I added this as an html link because the image is quite large and I didn't want to take up too much bandwidth

If you need anything else, let me know.
Jeff

Geez thanks Jeff! Most Dumvee had the back seats removed and replaced it with cushion or soft padding? I've seen some which used the back seat area to store their ammo and supplies... By the way the external link is down...


Thanks again!

P.S any idea how can i make this topic into a WIP one? Do i have to approach the appropriate person?

First attempt at scratchbuilding... Used evergreen strips to make the bars holding the roof up.