I shall be building an M1114 of 1st Platoon, D Company (anti tank) of the 501st PIR during OEF, the particular vehicle will be D14 painted in the blue, black and yellow finish with the Misfits fiend logo. Ever since I saw this vehicle with the Misfits logo I had to build it.
As well as sharing my build notes, i'll also point out any era's and problems with the Bronco kit in this blog.
I will be using the Bronco kit and Echelon decals, with some basic interior detailing and some other scratch built details on the outside.
First up I focused on the interior(sorry the pics kinda suck):
As you can see I replaced the gunners platform with a Lionroar part. Behind that Bronco has you fit a box (part D22) which I discovered is the AC evaporator unit, I havent seen any of these fitted on M1114's so left it off and instead fitted the more common 40mm ammo can rack, this was a spare left from a Tamiya kit. The plate which these are all mounted on (part D23) goes too far forward to had to be cut down, from my references this plate does not extend all the way to the radio stand mount as in the kit.
The seat belts are made from lead foil with resin bits from Pro Art and etch attachments from Lionroar, I copied their exact placement from the M1114 tech manual.
Bronco did a reasonable job on the radio set up, but the junction boxes (parts Ec6 & Ec4) are located in the wrong place. Instead two speaker units should be mounted below the radio on a shelf. I used the etc part P29 and just mounted it flat with 2 Pro Art speakers glued onto it. I have seen a junction box mounted on occasion, but alongside the speaker units, and not located how Bronco show it. Ive added cables made from thin electrical wire, as left of the FBCB2 screen as the vehicle im building doesnt have one fitted.
I did however decided to mount the GPS receiver, I dont know if this is correct, but thought it looked kinda cool. The kit doesnt provide any info on placement suggesting it can be thrown around any place. I have generally found however that its mounted some place within reach of the passenger on a special mount.
Moving onto the outside:
I have modified and detailed the weapons ring. The 50cal is from Blast with an unkown metal barrel. The gun shield is made from plasti card to a more accurate scale thickness. The secondary M240 is from Blast as well, as i couldnt find any reference to show how its mounted I just took a guess. Note as well the turret hatch support struts, these are molded flat to the gunners hatch, but if the turret is open these can be folded out to support the hatch.
One other comment I should make at this stage is that on the inside of the roof Bronco tells you to fit parts D17 & D18, these are insulation padding and are actually optional and are not always fitted, the padding doesnt seem to be too common so its probably best left off. Leaving it off with also allow for some extra head room to try and squeeze some crew figures in.
More updates shortly!
