Looking good Karl, those are very vivid colors it dose look very good though.

karl coming a long realy nice are you going to do a dio or just a small bace ?
dave

Hisham- thanks, much appreciated! One of the paints is still giving me trouble actually- the light grey. It was a kind of stodgy consistency, a bit like regular Vallejo paint, so I had to add some distilled water to it. Sprayed fine right after, then I leave it half a day or so and its just as thick as it was before !

Roman- Cheers mate, I would love to get a look at those figures to see what they are actually like. The parade pose is, for me anyway, kind of useless. I'd just love some normal pose PLA figures!

Scott- Thanks for checking in. The colors were hard to choose actually, I spent a while looking at various ranges and then decided the Model Air ones would be easiest and they matched quite well. However the Blue Angel Blue could be a little darker but the other colors I tried were closer to grey than dark blue so Blue Angel Blue it was. Certainly a change from green and khaki!

Dave- Thanks bud. As for a dio I don't think I'll be doing one, pretty much the only thing I could do is set it on a parade square or a road or something. As I said to Roman, some normally posed PLA figures would go down a treat with something like this. I think what I'm going to do is mount this on a long piece of wood so I can then put a couple of other Yongshi's in different camo beside it.

After finishing up the airbrushing and removing the interior masking there was a bit of overspray to clean up. However the main work was to extend the camo scheme to the metal frame that is visible on the interior. I'm not sure whether they would actually spray the interior metal from the stock color (which I assume is green) but I thought the green would look a bit weird against the blues and greys.



Once that was done I moved on to the light lenses. When I'm working with clear lenses that go into the small holes in the kit I always paint the interior of the holes in a bright silver. I use Mr. Hobby Chrome Silver but Vallejo Natural Steel also works well. Then I coat the lenses in their respective color (if any- for headlights I just leave them clear as the silver color will show through). PVA or Glazing Glue/Canopy Glue sets the lenses in place and then dries clear.
Some of the small round lenses don't fit as snugly as others but I already had them off the sprues before I realised and they are too small to accruately sand so my advice is give them a couple of quick swipes of a fine sanding stick before cutting them off the sprues. I used Tamiya Clear Red and Orange for the brake lights and indicators- applied while the lenses were still on the sprues.





After that I glued on the sun visors that fell off during the painting stage and then glued the seats in place- these are a great fit and just need a bit of glue.



So, still a few things to do. Hopefully more updates soon.

Thanks for reading.

-Karl187-

Nice paint !
not usual colors for army vehicle....
Good job...

Cheers Olivier- its a Navy vehicle- I don't think the army would want to stand out quite that much !

i want say :"military" not army....excuses me for my poor english...
lol

No problem mate !

Beautiful kit and great build of this one so far, since my last visit here!
I also had plans to buy & build this kit and use an interesting camo-scheme.

greetings...
Soeren

Thanks for the comments Soeren.
There are two more interesting schemes not detailed on the kit instructions- the digital version of Plateau Camouflage and the Chinese airborne digital scheme.

Airborne Digital (some call it Type 07 but there are other schemes by the same code so I'm not sure about that):



Unfortunately I only know of one picture of the Yongshi in Airborne camouflage and, of course, when I go to look for it I can't find it!! I will post it up if I come across it again.

Plateau Digital:



-Karl187-

I forgot to mention in my last post that the Silly Putty gobbled up the two towing hooks below the winch housing! Silly Putty seems to have an insatiable hunger for PE parts!! Anyway, I replaced them with some 0.5mm brass rod.

Next things to do were to add the last of PE parts, which were the light guards and the wing-mirrors. The wing mirrors are one of the nicest touches on the PE fret and look a lot better than some silver paint- perhaps other kit makers will go in this direction?

The instructions also say you should bend the front light guards but I found they went in fine without bending them.











As you can see in the photos I've also added the front windscreen. Prior to doing this I dipped it in Johnson's Klear (making sure to let the excess drip off one edge onto a paper towel) to protect it from handling etc. For some reason my windscreen wanted to spring out on one side so I resorted to taping it down while the canopy glue dried. The wipers were added after this.

A coat of Johnson's Klear has just been applied to the model and hopefully I should have some pictures of the decals soon enough.


Thanks for reading.

-Karl187-

Looking good mate.

Cheers bud!

The last time I built a Chinese AFV from Hobbyboss I didn't have much luck with the decals- they were mis-printed and the carrier film didn't cover all of the colored area- consequently half of them fell apart in the water.

Decals in this kit are much better though- still a little brittle but very thin and with some Micro Sol and Set they go on very nicely.









The decal instructions for this Navy vehicle suggest you use a black number decal. However, all the Yongshi's I've seen in this camouflage use white numbers, so I did here aswell.

You actually get some spares in the decal sheet- numbers 8, 10, 11 and 12 all have extras which is quite nice.

Two completed number plates are included reading '广K 55406'. To read this I found an interesting article on wikiepedia. Usually I stay well clear of wikipedia but since this is a fairly mundance and inconsequential thing I thought I would share the article because, if it is accurate, allows you to read the plates and figure out what ones you can make from the blank plates, characters and numbers that are included in the decal sheet.

Artcile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

As far as I can decipher the supplied plate, '广K 55406', is a Guangzhou MR vehicle, thats what the character '广' indicates. I'm not entirely sure what the red 'K' means but, going by the civilian plate type, it could refer to a city within Guangzhou MR. Numbers seem to be generated at random, according to the article.

I wanted to do a numberplate but I didn't because the character in Chinese, according to the article, that means Navy is '海' and it is not on the decal sheet. When I went searching for pictures of PLAN vehicles with number plates I couldn't find any on either ZBD-05's, YJ-62's or YJ-83's- nor on any Navy Yongshi's or Dongfeng's. So, to make a long story short- I didn't include a number plate!!

Lettering for the writing on the wheel sidewalls is also included- my advice is to cut this decal in half before applying it because the writing is only at the top and bottom of the wheel yet the backing film on the decal continues in a circle and it curls up very easily. Cut it and you can apply the two pieces of lettering as separate decals. I'm going to drybrush the wheel writing with white paint which gives much the same effect as the decals.

Limited pin wash and dry brushing is still to do.

So...anyone need a beer? Yeah, me too!

Thanks for reading.

-Karl187-

Its all coming together now mate, it is going to look very good. You have me wanting to try this kit now

Thanks Scott- I really would recommend the kit- I'm definetly doing another one in a digital camo.

I was thinking the same mate looks like a PITA to mask tho.

This looks great Karl! The paint job is excellent. Are you going to add a crew/figure to it?

Can't wait to see you do one with the Digital camo. Have you considered printing your own decals for it?

Anirudh

Scott- it'll be a PITA alright- but they look so cool I have to do one. Dylan did a great job on a tank a while ago and he explained how he went about it- I'll have to take a look at that again and really plan ahead.

Anirudh- glad you like it mate. I would love to add a crewfigure but it would mean a lot of sculpting on some driver figure. I just wish they'd included a couple of figures. My plan is to display it on a long wooden base with other Yongshi's in different camos. Digital one is up next. I would actually love to print my own decals but I'm not entirely sure how to go about it- what sort of printer, paper, ink, software etc?

So- the Yongshi is finally done.





















I did a very limited wash yesterday using AK Interactive Dark Wash. Due to the color of the vehicle (and the fact any example I have seen is very clean) it has to be quite restrained so it meant removing a good bit and making sure it helped details stand out instead of making them look too dirty.

After it dried I did some drybrushing, not so much to represent wear and tear as just to bring some of the detail out. I also thought of how dirty my own car looks if I drive it around right after washing it- not very dirty but not exactly show-room clean either and thats really what I was going for here.

Then it took a thin coat of matt varnish (making sure to mask the windscreen off as it will go cloudy under varnish) before the frame/roll cage was attached. Wheels were next- some drybrushing brought out the hub detail and then some very light drybrushing with white (for the writing) and black-grey (for the tread) before they were attached.The front wheels are articulatable when finished.

So thats that build done with.

Once again, thanks to everyone for reading and for all your comments- you guys help make me a better modeller and it was great having you along for the build.

Thanks for reading.

-Karl187-

Hi Karl
Very nice production, I really like this car.
Off-topic: But I called on the Marine Corps' Marine camouflage "camouflage effect skeptical (combat uniforms and vehicles), unless they have to stay in the water. If they are completely on the battlefield is a very visible target. God bless them.

We need some practical young officer.

Well done Karl it looks great! I will be keeping an eye on your build with the digital cam, I will do one some day but I have another WMIK to do first

The base idea sounds good, a comparison of different Yongshis would look awesome. It would be cool to convert one into a hardtop version for the display.

Im not that experienced in making decals, but this thread has useful information on the subject.
Printing decals

The finished one looks excellent!

Anirudh

Blackwater- much appreciated> ! I think I get what you're saying about the camo scheme- it would be easy to spot on land. I think there are some ships in the PLAN that use the same scheme and on the sea it would probably be quite effective, on land probably not so much but it does make for an interesting finish on a model!

Scott- Thanks mate. I hope to get some work done on a Landy too whenever someone decides to release a plastic Snatch in 1/35. I might take a crack at the current hard-top from HB though, perhaps a battered one in desert camo. There are sometimes very weary looking examples for sale at Witham's Tender with a lot of paint chipping and stuff- would probably be a good exercise for the hairspray technique.

Anirudh- Thanks for the kind words. In the kit you can choose three final display options- the one I went for with just the windscreen, one with side windows in place and then the final version is the hard-top. I'll probably end up doing one of each! Thanks for that link too.

Hey, Karl.. it turned out very very nice.

How did you glue those SMALL PE screens for the headlights and taillights? I'm worried about those when I build mine!

Hisham