Im am currently doing a dio of mogadishu, i have just got some of my models and i am starting to make them, how do i whether the hummers to make then look a little worn and dusty and how, if i do, do i make bullet holes on the hummers?
Also does anyone have an idea on something that will hold up a black hawk 1/35 while looking like rope.
thanks for your help in advance

CJballer

Dust Weathering:
What you can do to weather your vehicles to give that dusty appearance is using your Airbrush to give the lower half of your vehicle a very thin dusting layer. You spray really thin a color like khaki, Buff, or a light earth color.
You can also achieve this dusty appearance with drybrushing use the same colors as noted above
And pastels can work very well as dusting make some sort of wash from water and pastel powders from the same colors as noted above and apply this with a brush.

Bullet holes:
What I usually do when I want to make bulletholes is I take a needle heat that and stick that in the plastic on the place where I want the bullethole to be I stick it in while it`s hot and turn it a couple of times around to widen the hole a little. Then I pull the needle back wich makes the plastic come with the needle and sticking out of the vehicle itself wich looks quite stupid. What I do to get rid of this "sticking out" plastic is grabbing my exacto or whatever blades you use stick that int the center of your bullethole and twist that around in that way you cut off the molten plastic. Paint it in gunmetal and Voila bullethole

Making the Black Hawk fly.
Well You could solve it with fastropes I have heard a lot of people about that. I haven`t seen Black Hawk down yet and I don`t know that much about the conflict there and I surely can`t tell if they fastroped from a Helo If you do it with fastropes then you migth consider that you have guys hangin in the ropes that are fastroping and that is some really heavy scratchbuilding.
You might look at this: Treacherous Crossing This is a dio on Dynamic Dioramas and the guy who made this dio attached his planes to the trees and it looks really good. Maybe you could do something with the landing gear and attach it to a building with a piece of transparant sprue.
A dio with the Transparent sprue can be seen here. A nice dio that shows some cool action
Rangers in Somalia

I hope this is of some help

To 'dust' up a desert type AFV I would recommend one of two ways. If you have an air brush I would get a jar of Tamiya Buff and lightly airbrush a coat of that along the base around the wheel wells and wheels etc.
A second way would be to get some pastel chalks (not oil ones). Get the appropriate color and scrape some of the chalk into a container. Dip a brush into the dust and apply in a dabbing motion. Note that this should be done after the dull coat because a thick coating of dull coat will either blow off the dust or cover it so much that the dusty appearance will be reduced a great deal. You can do pastels, dullcoat, pastels again if you want.

As far as keeping up a black hawk - Hmmm- lots of discussions recently I recommend searching the forums. You may want to look into getting a piece of string that is hollow and inserting a metal rod. You may want to drop a bunch of ropes and let one of them (in back) be a metal rod by itself and paint it accordingly. You could try a metal rod wrapped in tissue paper that is weathered like rope.
Then there's always the clear rod - glass, plexyglass..

This'll get you started - ask more questions as you go.

For the Black Hawk, you might be able to get away with using a brass or steel rod and wrapping it in thread to support it from the ground vertically, but I think at 1/35 scale a rod strong enough to support the model might be too thick to closely resemble rope. Maybe if you contort the rod a bit so it more closely resembles a free dangling rope and using the rod on both sides of the Hawk?

Or maybe you can place the Hawk close to a building and support it through a reinforced rotor? Or maybe through the tail and into the build? Maybe a fusion of these two ideas?

Just brainstorming...

Greg B.

For battle damage to nonarmored parts of vehicles, I thin out the piece from behind with a Dremel, then when the plastic is thin enough, poke a hole through from the front with an X-acto blade and twist to make the hole ragged.

Patrick

This is my method as well.

I was doing some Web crawling while I was waiting for some sprue to disolve in plastic cement (ask why I'm doing it at your own risk! ) and ran across this diorama that shows a helicopter supported by a brass tube to support it. I thought about your question in this post and just wanted to pass it along.

Here's the link to the example at Modelwarships.com

Greg B.

heh, while im here i mose well thank you guys, those suggestions will help alot, cant wait till our dios are done cj-baller, maybe we can pm, discuss some of our ideas etc... cheers