HI, Max and Chris

I am building tamiya M1A2, I picked the USMC Version but It has tons of detail missing or incorrect
After I read this blog........You guys have a lot of detail reference here, Thx

jay

jeff those 2 M1,s are not Marine M1A1 HA those are Army M1A2

Jay i hate to tell you this but the maeines dont use M1A2 only the army uses M1A2s

Thx, Nick, But what I meant was in the tamiya kit, they offer options to make army m1a2 or marines m1a1ha.

Good to know that as well anyway

Jay

Nick,
in case you are referring to my builds, all the tanks that can be seen here are USMC M1A1 HC tanks. the army's A2 version does have some significant differences to the A1 version. if you search the site you'll find a great article by Gino (heavy arty) on the different M1 varients... that actually helped me a lot when I first tried getting into the depth of the M1 series of tanks...

Jay,
I have to agree, and must admit that I had trashed the tamyia kit if I hadn't already invested so much work into that kit before dragons M1A1 AIM kit came out... if you need info on how to tackle some of the tam kit's issues send me a pm....


Cheers, Max

Outstanding works indeed Max

Congrats

Told you so !

Here a pic of the original tank, kindly provided by Walter Böhm ©


Here yeah go !



Cheers
Christopher

Hey folks,
seems like I'm finally getting somewhere with this. finished off most of the darker washings as well as the main stowage parts and been struggling with getting those goddamn photos to look right (switched computer and lost my editing program, now I'm desperately trying to get a hang on 'GIMP' ) but somehow it worked out... although the colors might be off. I'm still not used to the new monitor...
as for the stowage, I made some tarps, TIP's, pieces of cloth and small MRE's using green stuff, painted all of the MOLLE-assault packs, folded up some MRE boxes and pre-weathered the oil pans. still some detail painting to do here and there, but I'm really satisfied with the results so far...






it was a real pain in the ass getting that huge tarp on BIG OL' NALGAS to fit properly without breaking anything... the real tank had both it's bustle racks covered. I thought about doing it that way but eventually decided to leave the ldr's side rack uncovered so one could still see the details I've added to the BRE as well as some of the loose stowage items laying around there.



+

I'll still add two bedrolls, two40 cal. ammo liners, two scepter water cans, a few MRE's, a few shackles and the bore sighting device's case to the turret before I'll begin with the dust weathering on 'GOT ARMOR?'...

any suggestions for improvements on the stowage?
that's all for now, hope you'll like it.

Cheers, Max

Yo Max !

Those "Green-Stuff" things turned out really good .... see what happens when you take my adivce
Very convincing indeed !!!
But I still think you should make the black camo spot (driver hatch to front hull) just a bit more "wavy" on the left side from the middle on down ... too straight sort of
A bit thin maybe .... you are very welcome to use my M1s as ref.

"Got Armor" looks great .... up till now ... don't drop it !
Tarps look better from my perspective .... not a huge fan of covering up everything.
Seem a bit to "olive drab" ... could be your new laptop as you mentioned.

That is enough "priceless info" for the time being
Like it, both are looking very realistic at this stage, nice work!

Cheers
Christoher

thanks, as for the black spot, I already made it a little more bumpy, just compare to the last two images on the previous page... can't do that anymore without having to redo all of the washings etc...

Cheers

thanks, as for the black spot, I already made it a little more bumpy, just compare to the last two images on the previous page... can't do that anymore without having to redo all of the washings etc...

Cheers [/quote]

Just a minor adjustment with a huge improvement .... come on do it
A little touchup washing .... perfect, you are going to use pigments anyway

Cheers
Christopher

update:
found the time to getting some more stowage done. scratch built the bore sighting container, a camel-bag, and a few more bits 'n pieces...
also been working on an alpine figure, converted to look like he's wearing the MOPP suite and a helmet cover, tell me what you think








last but not least, threre's a little progress on the KFOR M1.
I somehow lost motivation to eventually finishing this one, however I've added a few more details and altered the base colors by spraying on a light mist of newly mixed tones, which were closer to the original colores before I re-applied lots of the single weathering steps such as filters, washings and pigment stuff... still there's some minor fiddling to be done:




Cheers, Max

wow, 13394 views and almost 140 comments! last time I had an eye on that it was somewhere around 9000 views or so ... thank you'll for checking by!
few more pics:


tried my hand on some random dusting effects using my airbrush and a light (tamiya buff like) enamel color (revell 89) to spray the dust accumulations around the camo spots, this was then streaked using white spirits, after that I applied some dry pigments and sealed everything using a thin layer of vallejo flat... next up I'll apply some pigment washings, and dry mud effects following pictures of the original tank, anyway i'm pretty exhausted by all that thinner-sniffin' right now, so I won't come around to doing that the next couple of days I guess...



here's a pic showing 'got armor?' side by side with the KFOR M1, I always find it interesting to see how different colors for washings, filters and the like can alter the base tones. both tanks have been painted in colors pretty similar to each other, plus, as I stated above, I layered the KFOR M1's colors using the same mix as on 'got armor?'. anyway, the alternate weathering really makes a difference here...

Cheers, Max

Getting better every time ...... like the details ..... TC looks okay.
"Got Armor" looks more fresh ..... not as dull/dark as the SFOR one.

Cheers
Christopher

Looking good, Max.

Are any of these using the decals I sent you?

Chris,
tanks! yeah, the KFOR tank got pretty 'brownish.' think that was mainly caused by the pigments I applied. wanted to simulate residue of loamy soil on the running rear, covered by dust and some light dry mud effects but when trying to fix the pigments the gunze flat I've used 'till then melted the entire pigment applications to the surface and altered the color... apart from that, and after the light, particial repainting, it's already way better than it used to be... whatsoever 'got armor' still needs some dullness added to it, let's see how to do that

Bill,
thank you, yes I've been using lots of the decals you sent me. couldn't have gotten so far without 'em... here's a little 'collage' showing all the echelon decals I used. had to switch to the dragon decals on 'GA?'s' EAPU however as I found the contrasting grey markings more appealing than echelon's black ones... (the palm trees were kindly provided by Chris, so another thanks ya there... )

Von mymodels - update 12/10

Von mymodels - update 12/10

Cheers, Max

EDIT: click the pics to enlarge...

Lucky U, how neat and clean your decals are applied.
That Photo - Link is also a nice idea.
But I wouldn't "darken" "Got Armor" too much .... keep it a little fresh !

Cheers
Christopher

well, despite Micro Sol really is THE magic bullet when it comes to applying decals some of these needed some further treatment... had to do some touch ups via brush I think that on the previous page you can still see some silvering on the weight disc on 'got armor?'
apart of that I was really impressed with the quality of dragon's kit-supplied decals, they went on straight, snuggling that EAPU like... well, I think you can imagine some catchy simile...

Cheers, Max

Max,

Dude I'm the Tank Commander of "Big OL Nalgas"!! That was my tank during OIF I. I'm totally surprised to see my tank on a model. Curious how you chose my hog and the details of my hog. We actually had the bustle racks wrapped due to the NBC threat! Pain in the ass trying to access chow and gear. One thing I'm not sure if you caught with your pics was on the Coax we had "Nalgitas" painted on it. The crew was as fallows during the war:

TC: GySgt Erik Benitez
Gnr: Sgt Anthony Jefferies
Driver: Lcpl Gonzales
Ldr: Lcpl Rodriguez

Great Job brother.

email Addy:
[email protected] or [email protected]

yikes, this it awesome, watch your email bud

Erik, What the Foxtrot Over? What are you doing geeking out on a scale modeling site? Welcome to my alternate world! You will see there are some serious Panzer fanatics like Max on here whom do some great work. Outta here, Mike sends . . .

Mumbo! Holy Moly just sitting here surfing the Net and see you saw Max and I been talking. I'm not a model guy, would love to be no time brother. Jays retirement is Nov 1st i'm going you?

Hola Mijo! Erik, yes 'Eye dunn seen ya wuz yakking it up mitt Max' way back when in the spring! I was just up at the Stumps this past weekend to pay my respects to those about to retire. The Jeep felt like it was 'going back to Kali, Kali'. Besides my wayward son I also had to visit mini-me. You can figure which is which! I hope to make it out for the CoC next Summer.
Great seeing you up on the net. Outta here, Mike sends . . .
.

Hey Erik,
I'm almost done:




aaaaaand, here are my other wip's for this year (propably gonna last me till next year, but well...) dragon M1A1 AIM with PSM conversion.
this time it's going to be a bravo Co. tank called 'prom queen'...












and last but not least another kinda kitbashing project using the old dragon M1A1 and pretty much anything else I could find in the spares box...
doghouse was scratch built, added weld seams to the side skirts, replaced bustle rack, EAPU, blow off panels, CWS, gun breach, fuel filler caps and a couple other details already, still waaaayyy more to come...



Cheers, Max