Hi All,

This is my first attempt in snow cam, the subject is Trumpy's Strv 103B (1/35).

The kit is now primed and painted with olive green with a little yellow added,

the cammo pattern is also taped, awaiting the overall white paint.

More pics are coming as it progress, hope you like it !

Best regards,

Li

Hi everyone,

The initial cammo pattern is now done, need some time to sit on this to see if modification to the pattern is needed.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome,

Best regards,

Li

The white fields are too dominant. On the real tank or any other vehicle in the Swedish army with the splinter camouflage, the winter camouflage was done by over painting the light green and brown fields. What you have left is black, darkgreen and white.

Nicklas Karlén
IPMS Sweden

Thanks for the heads up Nicklas, much appreciated.

Does the 103 B version comes in splinter cammo too ? I thought the ' B ' s were all in green only, and the use of splinter cammo starts only with the ' C ' .

Well, I might be wrong then,

Best regards,

Li

The B version was in the beginning painted overall green just like your kit. The tank had a small upgrade and there are some differences on the sight, gun tube and tracks compared with the early vehicles. In this period the splinter camouflage was introduced. The upgrade was made over some time so you can see both green tanks without the new sights and tracks and upgraded tanks in splinter camouflage. You can see the different sights if you look at the sight covers. The early sights have the covers folded upwards, the later type of sights have the covers folded downwards. The upgrade B tanks looks very much like the C versions so it’s not the easy to tell the difference.
The C version is a tank that gone though some mayor upgrades called REMO with new diesel engine and gas turbine, gearbox to mention a few things.

If you add some black fields (Tamiya NATO Black is a good match) and try to make the green fields larger to break up the white your tank will look more like the real thing. The tanks were painted by the crews so there is a large variation in how the white paint was applied.

Here’s a link to the best reference book on the Strv 103: http://www.sphf.se/sphf2.htm

Overall your tank look’s great just too much white and that’s an easy fix.

Nicklas

IPMS Sweden

Thank you once again, Nicklas,

points taken, and that's a lot of info on the Strv 103,

will try to fix the pattern as per your info,

Best regards,

Li

Even if you descide to make it all green with white wash you can look at a camo 103 to see roughly how you should apply the white fields.
Also the B version only had four digit license plates.
The two first digits (20) was introduced on the C version.

/Thord

Thank you Thord for the valuable info,

Best regards,

Li

Nice clean build and I like the splinter pattern but I've always though that whitewash for winter camo is brushed on and the edges wouldn't be that sharp.

Paul

Thats correct Paul.
The white wash is applied with brush and the fields are often not masked when it's applied since you need to repeat it several times during the winter.

/Thord

Hi guys,

Heres a picture of the modified scheme with black and more dark green added, next step now is to create brush marks for the white wash,
hope you like it so far,

Cheers,

Li

That looks so much better. Add some scratches and bit of dirt and lose snow and I think you have a great looking 103 tank.

Nicklas Karlén
IPMS Sweden

Thanks Nicklas for your encouragement, really appreciate it,

Best regards,

Li

Hi all,

In the meantime work is being done on the road-wheels,
IMHO weathering is the most interesting part of model building, one can see the model coming to life in the process !

Hope you enjoy this build with me,

Best regards,

Li

Hi guys,

Here are a few pictures of the 103B undergoing weathering,

hope you like it,

Cheers,

Li

I think this looks really good.
Perhaps you could add a white camouflage net, lying over the front, but they are hard to find...

Looking good.

Paul

Thank you, Kjoll and Paul for your kind comments,

BTW, Kjoll, thats a very interesting picture of the Strv in the snow, think my 103 needs some of those netting and powdered snow to make it perfect.

Cheers,

Li

Li,
Good job on the 103B. Your camo painting looks great! I'll replicate your techniques in painting my 103C project. Here is what I have so far: https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/165067&page=1
For your spare tracks, would there be that much rust? I am not sure. Plus, from the photos I've seen, they were usually painted with the camo.
Anyway, I'll follow your thread closely.

Hi Petition2God,

Thank you for your kind comments, its a compliment indeed.

I love the 103C too, so I'll follow your thread as it plod along.

In the meantime I have the HobbyBoss Strv 122 Leo all spread out (the parts of course) and ready for the GO, by then I can really tackle the 4 tone splinter pattern.

Cheers,

Li

Only three tone on the 122.
Dark green, light green and black.

/Thord

Thanks Thord, you're right, three tones, my mistake.

Meantime tried to do some cammo netting but ended up looking more like entangled spider web, so off it goes,

have a look here,


Cheers,

Li

I would recommend trying a gauze bandage that has a tigher mesh. Make sense?

Paul

How is the Trumpeter kit? The 103 is a very interesting design. It would be a fun build.

The kit is very good and the result is very like the original.
The only thing is that it it’s a bit small, about 8-10 mm is missing. But it is not anything you will notice.