Daniel, nice to see the Canberra started. I'll be keen to know what you find about the number of seats. It would help me when I come to do mine.
Will you be building it with the wingtip bomb racks?

As for my O-1, I've started painting earlier in the week and will post some pics when thats done.

According to Warpaint Series #60: "English Electric Canberra", the Mk.20 had 2 seats.

Thanks for the comment, Matt. I use a paintbrush. It is difficult, but this time I had luck with it.
You can also check the Aeroscale forum. There is a technique for using string. I did not use it this time, but I will definitely try it at some point.

Good luck with the individual links, Rob. A couple of evenings before the TV will often get them done. That is what I normally do. It is one of the more tedious parts of the hobby to cut and clean up track links, but worth it in the end....

Now my Phantom II is actually looking like a Phantom II. I have added some double sidewinder rails from another Phantom as the kit had bomb rails combined with the sidewinder rails.

It is a beautiful bird. More to follow.

Yeah,
I know the tracks just take time, I am going through a bunch of older Dragon kits I got at a swap meet some time ago just to get back in practice after so long an absence. I just finished the tracks on the original Dragon Nashorn and have 4 more sets of Panzer IV individual tracks left to do as well as this and an SU85M.

Anyways there is some progress.

Cheers Rob.

Hello All!

Life has been pretty hectic ever since we received our extremely short notice for our upcoming deployment so the time available for me to work on this project has been quite minimal. Because of this, I opted to forego completing the dead NVA/VC that I had started to sculpt and sent with creating a wedge-like part of a dead VC to give the viewer the impression of a dead enemy Soldier while keeping within the limits of the base. Finally it is done! I wish it could have been completed by the time of the Lone Star Figure Show so I could have had my wife enter it by proxy since I had to be at Camp Shelby at the time of the show, but at least it is finished. Unfortunately, this will be the last project I complete until I return from deployment.

Below are pictures of the vignette from various angles and sizes. The American Infantryman is wearing the 2d pattern jungle fatigues and standard M1956 web gear along with jungle boots and a locally purchased ERDL camouflage boonie hat. The ejection port cover is still open and the bolt is forward after having fired some rounds at the VC that his unit came across while on patrol. It took a little while for the exchange of gunfire between forces ended allowing a pool of blood to start forming under the dead VC. He is giving the "thumbs up" sign to one of his fellow Soldiers to indicate that he made it through the firefight OK.

In the pictures you can see the exact pattern of the ERDL camouflage that I had copied directly from a boonie hat that my father brought back from Vietnam, the markings on the smoke grenade, dirt on the uniform, dirty scuffed up boots, exit wounds coming out the back of the VC, and the pool of blood forming under him.

The groundwork is terra cota miliput textured with an old toothbrush, paper jungle jungle plants from J's Work, and various dried flower and plant products from craft stores.


Here are the pictures.





























Take care and have a great day.
Cheers,
James

Fantastic work James! The attention to detail is mind-blowing and I really like the ground work. I may have to get me some of those plants.
Again very best of luck on your deployment.

Thanks, Stephen.

The plants from J Works are reasonably priced at around $5 US a set from Lucky Model.com and are pretty easy to work with. I used some very thin brass wire for the stems and they seemed to work out fine.

Thanks for the well wishes concerning the deployment. The timing is bad since so many cool Vietnam kits are coming out this year. I just saw the pictures of the Bravo 6 Tunnel Rat kit. Awesome. Plus Vladimir Demchenko is starting his US Army Combat Infantry and MACVSOG series. Masterbox is coming out with the "Charlie on the Left" and their MACVSOG kits. Callsign is coming out with Australian figures and a Lambretta 500. All of this and I have to look at dirt and rocks and an occasional Taliban or other insurgents.

Cheers,
James

Rob: Good choice and thank you for choosing an NVA T-34

Jesper: Excellent!

Gary: Thanks for the intel

James: Stellar work, especially with all that's been going on!! I know it's not what you intended, but your vignette is actually better for it as it brings more attention to the focal point. A full body would have been awesome, but also distracting the viewer from the US soldier. Godspeed to you

James,

Excellent work, your vignette gets the figure into life ! The ground color is spot on ! And the wedgie is a well addition.
What's the dead leaves are made of ? Natural ? they give a nice rendering.
Have a safe tour. maybe you'll have some spare time to glue some plastic bits when there.
Best,
Julien

Thanks Jeremy and Julien.

Julien, the dead leaves are a natural product that I stripped off the stems of a plant that I do not recall the name of. I will look through my stash of vegetation and find out what the plant is called.

Cheers,
James

Jesper: nice work on the phantom

Rob: good work and good luck on the track cleaning!

James: awesome vignette!!! The plants and ground look just as good as the figure. Glad to hear the J's Works stuff is easy to work with as I have a few coming up. Best wishes on your deployment and keep safe. We'll pray for you.

Happy Modeling, -zon

Got it pretty much done, except for the tracks not a lot of pics have been building this at work during my breaks.

Cheers Rob.

The T-34's looking pretty good. You never see much North Vietnamese armour done so I'll be interested to see how this one turns out.

Just a quick question as it is Nam related. Has anyone ever released a 1/72 decal sheet for the the A-1 Skyraider that dropped a toilet in 1965? I've always wanted to do this with an old Airfix A-1 I have stashed away since seeing a picture of it in the Squadron walk-around book. I now have the required 'ordnance' (if you could call it that lol) courtesy of the spares from the revell cutaway Rotodyne I recently finished, just need the decals now.
In the meantime work continues on the 0-1.

Hi to all!
My entry to this Campaign will be the Braille M113s from Trumpeter:

To validate my start date:


Sprue shots of the M113 ACAV Version:
Bogies/Driving Gear/Idler wheels:


Turret/MG Shields, Hull Section,Mud Shield and Tracks:

Need to look for a replacement for the M60 MGs - the ones that came with the kit definitely are not M60s!

Top Structure/Benches/transmission/Engines:

Marcos, always good to see some more small scale stuff. Will you be planning on a diorama with them?

The main painting is now done on my O-1. I used humbrol 129 US Gull Grey, hand painted as I didn't see the point of airbrushing such a tiny model. Just a couple of thin coats were all that was needed. I think the black panels on the bottoms of the wings are heat shields as this is where the rocket tubes attach. Just some touching up and detail painting to do and then its onto decals.

This might help with the Canberras

http://www.adf-serials.com/2a84.shtml

Pretty sure it was a three crew arrangement but the actual crew was usually only 2

Have started my M113 build and will be posting my build photos soon...

Let me introduce my second entry to this GB...

I've an ACE 1/72 T-54 in the stash but other than the decal, this early ACE kit would be a challenge to build nicely. The 1/72 Trumpeter Type 59 MBT kit was available in my LHS. The Type 59 was the Chinese-built (licensed by the Soviets) T-54 MBT:



Sprue Shots:








decal:

I'll be using the Quang-Trung 729 decal to model an NVA T-54 captured by the South Vietnamese Marines at Dong Ha during the 1972 Spring Invasion.

Canberras only had a crew of 2. during bombing runs the navigator in the back seat would go forward to the bomb aimers postion.

Rob: Looking good, you work fast. Let's see some more

Stephen: I don't know, but I'd love to find out! Keep up the good work on your O-1.

Marcos: Excellent choices!

Daniel: Regarding the Canberras, Gary and Matt are both correct. They generally had a crew of two regardless of cockpit type. The B.2/B.20 could accommodate a third crewman in the bomb aimer's position, so keep the third seat.

Keep up the great work everyone!

This is supposedly a B(I).6





I believe yours to be similar, but I'm not 100% certain. I think this was the general layout for the first and second generation Canberras.

Thanks for the comments on the Phantom, guys. I have made slow progress on my F-4 Phantom, but the base coat is on, so hopefully things will speed up now.

Nice progress on the T-34, Rob. Cool, that you can build during breaks at work. I think people would look strange at the office if I pulled up a kit during lunch.

Nice choice with the M113s and T-54/59, Marcos. I have never build a Trumpeter kit in 1/72, so it will be interesting to see how they build up.

Hi guys

It has been a while since I visited this campaign, but from what I have seen so far, there are a lot of cool build. Congrats to those who have finished, and have fun to those that are still building.
Anyway, I thought I share my latest diorama with you guys. Unfortunately, there is no WIP for this as the model was 50% built before the Vietnam campaign started. Hope you guys enjoy it

Muhammad that is AWESOME!!!! I'd love to know how you suspended the helicopter above the scene. It looks to me like its balancing on its skids on that thin branch!

As for the Canberra dilemmna I'd have to agree with everyone else in that the RAAF B.20 (as did all bubble canopied Canberra's) had three seats but usually only flew with 2 crew over 'Nam. Might be something to do with the shorter distances they flew and therefore not needing a third crewman. Same reason they removed the tip tanks and sometimes carried bomb-racks in place of those. If it had been a specific RAAF operational requirement I would have thought they would have built them as 2-seaters. The only versions I know for certain that were built as 2-seaters would be the fighter-type canopied BI.8's and similar, PR.9's and of course 2nd gen B-57's.

Decalling is ongoing on the O-1 but not as well as planned. The decals are VERY thin and delicate so I gave them a good couple of coats of liquid decal film which usually does the trick. Did stuff all to help this time. Some of the smaller decals split up turning into tiny jigsaw puzzles and the national insignia are peeling off. Strange that the stars are the only to do so? Must be a bad batch as I'm not doing anything I don't usually do. I might be able to salvage the stencils but I'll replace the US stars from a sheet full of them I have for just this kind of emergency.
Plus the bloody tail wheel broke off AGAIN!

'Stephen ; thanks for the input. As the tree was made from a 4mm electrical cable, I used one of the coppers as a mount. I then drilled a tiny hole in the skid and pushed the Loach onto it

A little more progress on my F-4 Phantom. The missiles are almost done. I want to look around my spares box for some stencilling for the Sparrows, but otherwise they are ready to go on.

The base grey color is on and next is masking and then white.

This is a big bird and I hope it will look impressive when finished.

More to follow.