Thats right Somewhere in Afghanistan is no more ,,, it's been getting at me for ages now ,,i've been an unhappy person because of this diorama i am building for my friend Andy,, HeavyArty was the frist to pick out the problems this dio had with what goes where in the way that most of the vehicles in the dio are NOT in Afghanistan at all ,I like so many other model builders can be pretty damn picky when it comes to how and where our models are going to end up and the more i have read on this forum the more i see you blokes making sure that the vehicles are in the right place at the right time ..this dio of mine just got to me more and more and i begun to hate it .
So i sat down with its owner and had a talk with him and managed to change his mind mostly thanks to all you guys .now i'm a happy person again so i owe all you guys a huge thanks for that ..now i am building something which will be right and that makes me happy

Cheers guys
Phill

Oh by the way ,,its now called Somewhere in Iraq lol

Sounds good. I'm glad you went the route of historical accuracy. What is the current plan?

Good luck on it.

Heya Gino .well the plan remains along the same lines as before but with alittle moving around of the vehicles ..the bradley and hummers will work as protection for the hemtt ,,the abarms is covered also and its pretty well protected but there is going to be a sniper team on a roof top with troops at every corner and in side the buildings checking them out ..one hummer i am going to build with a gunner in the back on a home made weapons mount sporting a .50cal ,,i have a pic of the hummer i am going to copy and its so cool i could not resist it lol ,,the other is an M1114 heavy hummer with IED detector and PE turret ( high armour verison ) ,,thats the plot so far ..i think this one will remain as everything now ties together and nothing is there that shouldnt be there .

Cheers
Phill

It sounds pretty good. The only issue I still see is the HMMWV with home-made armor. It would not still be around with the TUSK Abrams and M2A3 Bradley with ERA. The home-made armor was only used for about 6 mos in late '03-early '04 until enough M1114s could be fielded. I would go with another M1114 or an M1151.

AMS

Advanced Modellers Syndrome

I suspect you are being exposed to this biohazard way to early.....

Monster dioramas take years to complete if they are going to be totally accurate to history. imagine working hard on it and having someone declare the inconsistencies over such a wide subject? the pockets on the soldiers dont match with the era.. the antenna mounts a re wrong.. the unit call signs dont match the vehicles working together... the tactical positioning of some vehicles not in line with doctrine.. the helmets are from wrong era, the number of rivets on the road wheels doesnt match.. etc etc..

all that time is consumed doing boring menial tasks that next to no one will notice, only hardline model builders will notice the lack of things to pick. and offer some kudos then.

I say, something as ambitous in scale as this, keep it generic, keep it "plausable", keep it fun. so what if the m1114 has the wrong markings, or the abrams has mismatched tusk comparedto other vehicles.. If everything s built with precision, mould lines sanded, gaps filled, painted correctly, weathered consistently across all the vehicles, the figures match up, then if the scenario is a "long shot" so be it.. sometimes need to stretch imagination and truth a bit to achieve a goal of having such a collection on one base.

I see nthing wrong with that. As long as you offer it up as something of a representation of vehicles performing their roles, and not a specific action from the pages of history, we as model builders should be able to admire the audacyity to create such a beast and turn green with envy your willingness to take the risk to put such a collection together in spite of potential inconsitencies.

I salute the independance of thought and artistic liberty to attempt such a thing! Its fantastic you reconsidered your orginal proposal, as it could of looked like a 5 year old kid got into dads model collection and stuck em all in the sandpit.! At least your are goving some regard to era, nationality and that word again "plausibility".

Once you get AMS, it is terribly difficult to remedy the disease. And dioramas become works of worry and stress about crossing every t and dotting every i.

Leave the fun in it, dont get bogged down too much with hostorical precision. Draw a line in the sand at the level of precision you can afford, you technical skills allow, and your reference and research abilities allow, and create what you like within that sphere of reason.

AVOID AMS! hope this wasnt preachy , but gives you food for thought.

Adam,

(Hi my name is adam, and I suffer from AMS..)

Adam, thanks for that! A few of us needed to be talked off the ledge there.
Gino, thanks for your valuable insight as well. It's nice to have knowledgeable guys like you around to bounce ideas off of.
Phill, keep at it! Do the fun things, and don't let the tedious things get you down. I like to alternate from the tedious parts (road wheels, masking windows, sanding) to fun tasks and back again, so I don't get burned out.
Cheers!
-Sean.

Adam,

A quick thrush shot of resin in the vain will remedy your ails. You have the acceptable and managable side of AMS. I must confess, so do I. Remember, keep sniffin paint and gluin them fingers together!

Cheers, Ski.

Thanks for that guys ,, AMS is serious and i try to manage it but i am only human so i am limited right from the get go

Gino ,, that home made hummer is used for convoy duty ,the pic i have of it show it with tank transporters and other vehicles ,,I doubt its used for patrol work ,,it dont look like its been built for it ,,the way the .50 is set up on the rear looks like its there for field of fire only ,,so i am thinking that since the M1 ran out of fuel they needed to get the fueler out there ASAP and the home made hummer joined in ..I'm working this dio around the Broken Arrow principle ..once call out and everybody turns up lol

Adam ..totally agree with you there mate .. this dio is being built for a customer and its to what he wants ..I did manage to change his mind on where it is but he's like a big kid lol he went to Lucky Model and went nuts .. he saw Legend PE sets and " Oh Crap" ,,he did it again yesterday so now i will be building him another dio but least this one wont be a problem and even I dont have any issues with it ,,its will be a Bailey bridge with a Sherman Crab using the Legend converison set in france ,,that came around from looking at Bronco and Tasca lol ,,this guy loves his models but has little skill when it comes to the complicated side of modeling ,,I will be building him a "what if" vehicle soonish and its armed with 4 ,,count em 4 Master Model M61 A1 Vulcans lol , 4 sets of tracks and thats just the start lol ..quite like this one to be honest

Sean,, trust me matey its the only way i am looking with this dio ..just do it for the fun side but at least keep everything as semi uniform as possible

Phill

I don't want to keep harping on it, but...

That is still not feasable. Once M1114s were available, no homemade armor was allowed out on the streets since it was not as effective. They were not allowed off the FOBs and most were taken off and the unarmored M998/1025s turned in. Also, the homemade armor was not around at the same time as M1A2s with TUSK and M2A3 Bradleys with ERA. They were not in the same time periods in the war. I really don't care what you use, I'm just trying to help keep it historically accurate for you. You can do as you want though.

Gino you win dude lol .. no home made hummer .. 2 M1114's will be used ,,when i told the owner of this dio how picky you blokes are he caved and he has already got another Bronco M1114 so i am nicking that of him ,,they wont be the same vehicles tho ..one is a slightly standard M1114 and the other is the up armoured M1114 with IED detector so least they match in the time line which is good and for some reason even the owner seems more happy about it ,,which i find strange cause he don't know bugger all about this stuff lol

Glad you and the buyer changed your minds. It sounds like it will be a really nice, historically accurate piece.

Gino ... well to be honest mate we didnt really change our minds ... you did that lol ..once i told him that his dio is being shown on here he just said " oh man " ..and me telling him what you guys are like for things in some cases its better to be closer to the real thing and he is more happy now about this model than he was before ,,got no problems with that ,,He dropped off the other Hummer yesterday so now i have them both ,,first time i have done a dio with 2 of the same vehicle in it and both are getting the Legend O-GPK turret set and both will be using .50's with the RB Models .50 upgrade sets ..those are sweet little items they are