HEY!! No fair! I know it's a group build but your cat will have to get a kit of her own!

Nice choice in the Wespe. I always liked the 38t chassis and you have lots of extra goodies there!

Hope the back feels better soon.

Bart where do I get a guard like the one in the photo, I have always had trouble with messed up table tops with the desk guards that I have had in the past.

Robert

Looks good, Emre. It will be interesting to see what you get from the AFV Club tracks.

Bart, always nice to have a guardian, as looks as it is not participating directly in the work process

Here is an update on my BM-13 launcher. This is going very well and the camouflage was applied in one evening. I think I will not apply any markings so I will move straight on to the weathering today.

More to follow soon....

Last night I picked my Wespe too...


Is there a metal gun barrel for it ?

Jesper: that BM-13 is coming together nicely!

Emre and Sean: I'm looking forward to seeing your M-109s

Bart: you have a handsome cat there. Looks like you Wespe is going to be first rate as well.

Aber makes one;

http://aber.net.pl/upload/model/7bc29a1fec26aa0c6185e0aca3c9ea80.jpg

I haven't ordered one...............yet.

I started on mine last night.







It's pretty much going to be built straight out of the box. Man, I now realize I do not like poly caps!

hey jeff go ahead and build youre m108 lets give those guys that are building the m109 a run for thier money

Man, I wish I had but I already started this one.

Thanks Bart!

I might get it at my LHS, if they have it, otherwise i'll order it soon.

Just enlisted would a 105mm sherman howitzer in an inderect role count on this one

yes, i believe it does qualify!

Great but still may do the old tamiya M8 GMC so that I,am not doing to many Shermans at once That way the wife will know I,am doing another kit

Well, you just gave me an idea. That is what I will build as a second build for this campaign, when the BM-13 is finished.

I have now given my BM-13 a wash and some initial mud on the suspension. The mud will be much darker when I give it some more paint. After that more washes, some light airbrush dusting and then it is ready for inclusion into a diorama.

More to follow.....

Nice mud Jesper, I like the way it looks.

ROBERT

Cool launcher love that muddy look

Love to sign up with a Canadian M109 but I'm not seeing the "enlist" button on the Campaign page, what up?

Cheers

Joker

If you're logged in, it is inside the box with the list of participants and click on the word ENLIST:

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Campaigns&file=index&req=showcontent&id=258

If you aren't seeing the enlist button on that page, then, as Jeff said, you need to log on.

Bit more progress

A couple more desultory evenings’ work and you get this. The turret is now fully assembled and ready for painting. The hull lacks one headlight, the rear mudguards (which won’t go on until the tracks and I have decided who’s won), and of course the running gear. The only other missing part is the machine-gun for the turret roof. So either I’m getting better at this sticking-things-together lark, or I’ve made a horrible mistake that will come back to bite me.

The white on the gun barrel is filler – well, correcting fluid. I realised too late that the spigot that attaches the barrel to the breech end is off-centre. Good filling practice if nothing else. The other bit of white at the back of the mantlet is a little strip of plasticard to fill a surprising gap. Mounting that mantlet was definitely not the easiest part of the story. The glass on the sight is 35mm negative, which is every bit as useful as they say it is. Unfortunately with these ere diggital cameras, it may be in short supply in future.

A new headlight is on the way courtesy of a very nice chap called Mike Griffin who picked up my plea for help after I lost the other one. (Don’t ask how; just look in the bins behind Sainsbury’s in Guildford.) This man is a saint and we should all emulate him.




Stage one in painting the running gear: a solid coat of very dark brown. It’s Humbrol 98, chocolate brown. With a coat of Klear (you may know it as Future) it has just the right satin sheen to look like wet mud.


Stage one in painting the camouflage: the lightest colour first, which will be white but at the moment is ivory (actually Humbrol 28, which is “camouflage grey” from the old USAF SE Asia colour scheme). Primer is Halfords plastic primer. The camouflage scheme is MERDC “snow, temperate climate with trees”. Obtained from a site called The Bunker, which took a while to find but is invaluable for almost every MERDC pattern you could want.


Stage two in the MERDC scheme: not the next lightest colour, but the other main one (two cover 45% each and the other two cover 5% each). This is forest green, or Humbrol 116, which is also (oddly enough) recommended for the SE Asia scheme.

The ivory is now overlaid with white and it still looks pretty ropey. That’s brushes for you. I plan to leave it like this and cover up the worst with weathering, then blag something like “it was repainted in a hurry for an exercise, you can’t expect perfection”.


Third colour is 5% of sand (Humbrol 93, desert yellow) and it doesn’t look nearly enough. But the Italeri instructions agree with the MERDC guide and both roughly agree with photos, so it must be about right. The guide also says that colour three, whether sand or earth, is generally mixed to match local conditions, which at least gives you some leeway.


And finally, 5% of black. Ordinarily I’d use deep grey but against the dark green, yer actual black stands out better. It’s all a bit gaudy now but some weathering will eventually sort that out.


This is how the wheels turn out after all the weathering, which I’ve forgotten to illustrate on the way through. Essentially, dry-brush it to hell – matt khaki drill for the dried mud, then light grey followed by ivory (no white) for the white wheels, and olive drab followed by forest green for the green ones. The tyres are then Panzer grey followed by black, which when dry-brushed isn’t as starkly black. A final layer of earth (for dry dust) may follow later.



Here’s the rest of the hull. You can’t see just how bad the white coat is. I thought my trusty Humbrol white was getting a bit tired so I decided to try Revell. That has only two problems: it’s not white, and it’s even more unpleasant than the other stuff. Never again. I eventually recovered by rubbing down some of the worst brush strokes and going over it again with a fresh tin of Humbrol. From now on, it’s Halfords Appliance White for me.

Thanks for the comments, Keith and Robert. I appreciate the incouragement

Sean, excellent work on the camouflage. I cannot find "the bunker" site you refer to. Can you post the link?

I have now finished my BM-13 launcher. It is finished in Syrian 1973 camouflage. I am planning to include it in a diorama with a Syrian PT-76 I have build a year ago. I have also finished some figures for the diorama. I might add some more weathering later on the BM-13 to tie it better into the diorama ground work.

I have not added the rockets to the launcher as a couple of soldiers should be in the process of reloading in the diorama. However, I might add 6-8 rockets to the launcher as it looks kind of empty.

It was fun to participate and I will continue to follow the interesting builds in this campaign. I might go right into the next build for this campaign - the 105mm Sherman.

You're very kind. Yours is a lot better, though - and finished already!

The MERDC site I used is actually called Wark's Bunker. I think this link leads there: http://www.geocities.com/wark_on_geo/homepage.html

great looking builds so far. escipally that m109 i really like that camo job. i have started my m108 and step 1 is all most done. i hate doing roadwheels why couldnt tanks and apc have somtthine elses besides so many roadwheels. i will post some pics later this evening. but yard duties are next before any modeling today

HA! That's why I squeeze mine in through out the week so the weekend is MINE! Hope you get it all done.