From this:
From the left:
Accurate Armour's Samson kit
Fruilmodel Tracks
Echelon wing Mirrors
Spares left over from Scimitar build
Spare PE from the Eduard Scorpion and Scimitar sets left over from previous builds
Evergreen and Plastruct plastic strip!
Now this isn't as daunting as you might imagine since I completed a bar armoured Scimitar a few weeks ago - you can see photos of this in my sign area underneath. This required a huge initial research project into the dimensions of bar armour then a long time experimenting with trying to build it which used up a very large amount of plastic strip!
With all that discovery out of the way, I now know how to build bar armour - this time its just building to a slightly different pattern! The big difference here is the Scimitar I built was a 2006 vintage one, before the ECM upgrade was added. What this did was add the "spoiler" to the rear of the vehicles along with a plethora of aerials and antennae, plus those very peculiar looking "pods" that stick out the front, along with some other bits and pieces.
Now the Samson from Accurate Armour is of the old hull, which has differnt grilles AND most importantly has the commander's hatch in the middle. The Mk 2 hulls in use now have the commander's hatch behind the driver, just as in the Spartans, so this will need changing.
So as you can see the bar armour will be the least difficult bit of the job since I've already done it and know I can do it again
My first task has been to create a plan of the shape of the bar armour on the Samson. What is interesting (and a bit easier!) about the Samson is it doesn't have the bar armour over the rear because of the deployable earth anchor. I know the general measurements of the bar armour from the Scimitar build, but the shape and extent of the panels on the Samson is different.
No sooner said that done!
This was a much easier task than the hmmm I think it was 6 different versions of the plan for the Scimitar I went though as I learned more about it and got better research materials.
My main source of research are the Tankograd Task Force Helmand book plus the great blokes on the Plain Military forum and their superb photos from the Sailsbury Plain exercise areas such as one series of photos covering a Scimitar 2 recovery exercise in Pashtun Dawn Ex recently.
I wasn't originally planning to launch straight into another bar armour build so soon, I was going to build a Hasegawa Phantom FGR2, but I think I'm addicted to the smell of Tamiya Extra Thin cement!!!
