Coming along nicely, Keith. The ability to paint the hull marker and tail lights on this tiny beast would drive many modellers batty. The nostalgia that this build produces is quite something. Not only am I recalling my own experiences with ROCO but also with an old company that went by the name of UPC. UPC kits were very similar to ROCO but generally had more parts and came in small boxes and were unassembled.

Cheers,
Jan

Thanks again Jan! At least there's one person following this build.
I have not heard of UPC. Not that I can remember, but I am getting old. I could not imagine having more parts in this scale. Whew!

Painting the lights was not so bad. I thought about painting the yellow stenciling on the missile tubes but decided to go with small decals instead. I dug some out of the stash which should work. They may not be the correct verbiage, but at this size who could tell?

More to come...

Keith, I'm basically a small scale nut and appreciate anything diminutive. At these scales markings can almost become unnoticeable. My SpPz 2 Luchs build had decals for tire pressure stencils and I needed a jewellers loop to tell which way was up.

Here's what I'm talking about. Picture was taken with a 4X macro filter.



People that have seen the real model have to have the tiny decal pointed out to them.

Cheers,
Jan

Wow! I just went and relooked at your pic portfolio. I would have bet your paycheck that your Luchs was 1/35th scale!

Those decals are a bit nuts. I thought I was bad. Please tell me it is 1/72 scale.

But seriously, it is a beautiful build. My hat is off sir! I can only hope my little Roland comes out half as nice.

Keith, it's your thread so I guess you can do what you want with it. What you show there is a very early version of a Luchs, possibly the first version after the original prototype. And if you painted this 15 years ago then your skill level was considerably more advanced than mine was at the time. The camo for the the size is amazing. During the period you mention my airbrush skills could only be called disappointing. For Braille scale vehicles I used the airbrush for only the main base colour. Additional camouflage colours were done by hand with a brush. Here's a couple of embarrassing pictures of a 1/76 Fujimi Hetzer done around '91.

I pulled this little tyke out of storage with the idea of bringing it up to the standard of my current builds. Due to years of renovations of an older house most of my previous builds were kept in storage and a large number were mangled or otherwise damaged. You might call this Hetzer as going through a partial "Tank Overhaul." At this point I've reattached numerous pieces but I doubt I'll take it much further. My attempt at creating Zimmeritt back then was to smear the body with Testors putty and use a sharpenned toothpick to create the texture. Definitely over scale. It is however a good example of where I was and where I'm coming from.

Cheers,
Jan

Thanks again Jan,
I do like to airbrush. The Luchs was done with my old, trusty Badger 150. Albeit the camo pattern wasn't much more than stripes laid down in a haphazard fashion. The Roland was done with the new love of my life--an Iwata Eclipse. I was able to do a slightly better camo pattern, even if the feathering is a bit out of scale. I'm still getting used to the airbrush and learning what it can do.

Your Hetzer isn't that bad. Looks like a good, clean build. And 'It is better to have tried Zimmeritt and have it be out of scale, then to have never tried Zimmeritt at all!' When 'overhauling' your tanks do you ever repaint them?

I had and have a Paasche airbrush that my SWMBO got for me just before I built the Hetzer. The brush really wasn't suited for 1/72 vehicles (not fine enough lines. It was also a bear to clean. It did however work fine for aircraft. Here's an example.

The Mig is just another resurrected model. It required the reattachment of the landing gear, one tail fin, several pylons as well as assorted other damage repair.

At the time the Hetzer was built there was no Internet, only model magazines. I got the Zimmeritt idea from an article in AFV News. At the time I thought it turned out pretty well when compared to some of the pictures.

My Luchs was painted with my new Iwata Eclipse CS (the same airbrush fairy that got me the Paasche got me the Iwata) . It's my first 1/72 camouflage attempt and like you, I am still learning it's ins and outs. At the present time the overhaul process is concentrating on repair and I haven't done much more than brush touch-ups on the repaired items. My logic is that once I have several vehicles repaired I can try a "group" or assembly line repainting. This will also give me time to experiment and learn about the new brush.

Cheers,
Jan

Good looking MiG! Gotta love the -29. Here is one I did for a friend. I tried to depict a worn out Moldovan plane. It was done with the new airbrush too. Which also was a birthday present from my ol' lady. I think that is common among married model builders.

I've been thinking about repainting some of my older kits. Mainly the HO scale stuff. This Roland will be added to my Bundeswehr Order of Battle, circa 1992-ish (even though there is a Leo 2A6 thrown in). Most of the kits were done 15-20 years ago and they could all use a camo update.

I know some builders frown on rebuilding/repainting kits and believe it is better to buy a new one and then see how far your talents have come. But I have no problem resurrecting old kits. It saves $$ and precious room on the shelves!

Thanks for the kind words about my Mig. And ditto right back at you on your '29 build. If I do say so I am rather proud of how mine turned out as it's probably my best result as far as aircraft are concerned. As far as I'm concerned the '29 is amongst the first attractive Soviet era aircraft. Prior to that I say the Mig 27 wasn't bad looking either. That one is still in the "hanger" for overhaul.

I also have quite a collection of diverse ROCO kits about the same age as yours. Some of my favorites would have to be the artillery pieces with trails that split and spades that attach to them.

Personally, I'll keep a few models from various periods to show how I've progressed over time. At some point I'd like to bring some of the older and rare pieces up to a more equitable standard. There's even a few from my scratch build 1/72 collection (3 or 4) that I'd like to overhaul.

I've only completely redone a few. Most of the time I just use them for test beds for new techniques, especially weathering. Here is an old M1 that went through stages a dozen years apart:

You’ve scratch built? Entire kits? Which ones? That I’ve gotta see!

I've got an old ESCI 1/72 M1 that doesn't look nowhere near that good. At some point it will definitely undergo a repainting and weathering.

Actually for a time (like almost 20 years ago) I was into the war-gaming side of things and there weren't really all that many kits out there. As they weren't available in kit form I built an M-113, Fv-432 Trojan a Japanese Ho Ki APC and started a number of other builds. Most of the completed was are packed and at present not easy to get at. I've taken pictures of some incomplete ones that were in a parts box.

Here's my attempt at a 1/76 Bren Carrier. I had an old Airfix version and used measurements from it. My original intention was to build a complete "section" of them (4) and I got as far as a mini assembly line. The first picture shows one that is nearly complete as well as some pieces from the others.

I'll have to dig the others out and put up a page on one of my Web sites for you to have a look at them. We'll have to consider if there might be a better forum for this "show me yours and I'll show you mine" type of discussion.

Slipping in a 1/35 impostor, you dirty rotten scoundrel! Okay, we can keep this thread going as long as we want and annoy all of those that don't approve. I've created a new site specifically for modelling. There isn't a lot there but at least it's a start. You can find it here. You might find it interesting to view the Spitfire page and my wife's first build.

I checked out your site and found it quite interesting. Happy to see that you got your daughter started early in the family hobby. Now it's back to working on my M119 howitzer. I took a break to write this as the coil springs on the cradle support arms are driving me batty. They have a seem along both sides that is proving to be a nightmare as most of my files are too thick. I'm going to try one of my SWMBO's finer nail files and see if that works any better. BTW, the Roland is coming along nicely. I decided to acknowledge in this thread so it doesn't look like we have a conspiracy going to hijack the Constructive Feedback forum.

Oops, sorry. That was a bit dastardly of me. I wish my small scale stuff turned out that good.
You got your wife building kits? Lucky! How'd she like it?

I looked around your site. I like the slide show idea. I may steal it, if I can figure out how you did it.

Yea, she got into it early and out of it early too. She discovered boys. She's 21 now and her only interest in the hobby is following the progress of my builds.

That artillery piece of yours is way small. You don't have a needle file set? When you say "try one of the SWMBOs files" do you mean with or without her knowledge?

Thanks again. I decaled the missile tubes last night and should have those pics ready soon. Got a question for ya: should I give the kit a wash? I will definitely dry brush it, but the cracks and crevases seem dark and shadowy enough. Do you apply a wash to yours?

I've watched this thread on and off for a while now. I don't know if it's my place to say anything but I couldn't resist. The pictures and and hints are amazing. You guys have almost created a forum of your own.

Really coming together there, Keith. One thing that really puzzles me is how the red-brown doesn't show up as prominent in pictures as it does when looking at the actual model. I'm basing this primarily on my Luchs but your build photos seem that they are also displaying a similar lack of prominence. I've been doing a bit of research and I think that the answer might be in the camera's white balance. I'll experiment and see what changing it does to some of my pictures.

AJ, welcome to our little "splinter group." I recall that you've commented in some of my build posts in the past. If Keith has no objections, why not post a picture or two in this thread. We all have to start somewhere!