Joe; you are making me blush. Praise from Mother is high praise and not sure if I am deserving, but thank you.
Makush; Tamiya chrome silver. I might have primed them underneath, but I am not sure. If you look back through the build log you can see if there was any prep other than the sand colour underneath, but again I am not sure.
Thank you all for the kind words, there is still more to do and I am considering adding some pin washes, now that I have slept on the idea, I think that they will be nice around the transmission and suspension areas. Cheers.

Ok; managed to get some time today to work on this and managed to get the dry brushing, and some pastels put on. I had done some pin washing earlier this week, but did not get any photos so did not do any updates. I went over the kit with a thinned mix of Tamiya Nato Green and Black about 2:1 ratio thinned with water and used as a dry brush. I found that thinned paint does not work so well as a dry brush medium. Better to have full strength paint, mixed how you want ahead of time. So did some with this but then went back to areas that I wanted to show more wear on with Tamiya Olive Drab over areas of heavy wear and tear. I found that this gave a more convincing look of rubbed off paint as the Nato green was a bit too light when applied like this.
I also added some pastels (pigments to you lot) mostly black, yellow earth, light yellow and light ash grey as well as some graphite. I have found that the graphite is best applied, NOT as a pastel powder, but rubbed on straight from the pencil. . . . lesson learned. The other pastel powders were shaved from the stick with a razor blade, then applied with a brush (a cheap one). The black for the exhaust was firstly rubbed on with a chunk, then my finger then the brush. I think it works well, although, I will go over this again before calling it done. The lightest yellow I used when mixed with the light ashen grey works really well as a layer of dust. I used this on the tires and gear firstly. The yellow earth color was intense for the gulf sand but it conveys the colour that some of the dust had and this was used as a secondary colour on the tires, gear and antenna. Pics below should show what I have accomplished. I am down to adding the rest of the stowage and final pastels and then finding a base for it. Cheers.

hello again damon ,
looking good there , your weathering seems quite subtle but very affective keep it up . in my opinion the only thing i would change is the weapon m240 or to me over this side of the pond its a gpmg (jimpy). it looks a little bulky to me , i know dragon do some nice examples and im sure theres otheres out there , just my pennies worth , but good work .

Ian;
agreed on the 240, its the Trumpeter one that came with their LAV. Better than the M60 that comes with the Esci kit. Gonna leave it as I need to finish this up for the Command Campaign and that ends Dec 31 at midnight. But thank you for mentioning that, I appreciate the critical eyes, makes mine more observant too. Cheers.

Latest update:
Managed to get some stowage on the LAV today. Added the water bottle boxes, MRE's, sea bags, two cots, the cargo net and a pair of binocs with a scratched strap. I also put together some 30 cal ammo boxes today, one got paint, future and decals and just needs a sealer of future, matt and dust. The other is the rack of cans from the AFV Club set and need a second coat of paint and the rest before going on although I have a place carved out for it already. I think I have a couple of water bottles somewhere that I will add as well if I can locate. Here are the pics and I am looking to Sunday as my next update. Maybe Santa will bring some free time for Christmas as well as kits. . . .cheers.








Here you can really see where I have started to repaint the netting, this will be dusted soon.


I really hate the straps on these Tamiya seabags. I think this is where the air marker panel will go. . . .






From all of the handling and bending of the net the paint got scratched off and am repainting in place and then dusting again.


The hole in the cargo net here is where the end of the 7.62mm cans will go, perfect spot, no?

Added the water cans yesterday and just added the decals to the 7.62mm cans. Waiting for the decals to set and then another coat of future followed by dusting, gonna skip the dull coat so that I can make my deadline. Might add some more cots to the opposite side of the super structure to hide the hideous straps that don't strap to any tie downs. . . I think.

So I am calling this one done (for the most part). I have added the ammo cans that I wanted and feel that it is properly dusted and weathered to where I want it to be. I may add a few more stowage items to cover some of the areas that I feel are not "up to snuff" and a few figures, but in the future. For now I am calling this one. Here are the pics, thank you to all of you who have participated and commented. Cheers.









Fin.

in the process of making an air marker for this from lead (tin) foil. Will be adding that and hopefully a couple of figures for this as well as some other items that could not make it on by the Command Campaign deadline. Will post update pics and an after action report soon. Happy New Year.

hey damon
looking good there hope you got it in on time for the campaigne ,looking for a few mysself this year and hope to finnish a few as well ,lol

Agreed. I think that if the Campaign didn't have a deadline, I would be incessantly tweaking in. Even now, I am still tweaking. You think this might be something serious?

Update 1/19:
Made an air marker panel but I think it needs to be lighter in colour. Will do a repaint and post photos when it is not so bloody cold in my garage. Still considering adding some more cots to the other side of the super structure and some other items.

Update 1/20:
Still need to change the colour of the air marker, but took some test photos with the new lights and diffusion. Let me know how it looks. Cheers.