Another United Nations project on my workbench.
It all begun during an email-conversation with Andreas Kirchhoff (thx again Andreas, for all your valueable information!). He told me that he has seen an image of an M109A2 in UN service with UNTAES on the balkans. The M109A2 were operated by Jordans. I was hooked ;-).

If you want to know more about the UNTAES Mission in former Yugoslavia - follow this link: http://www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/untaes_p.htm
If you haven´t heared about the M109 you can get some information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M109_howitzer

Unfortunately there is only one image known which shows the jordanian M109A2 in UN-white. The image was published in the Book "Les Blindes de l'ONU" by LtCol Paul Malmassari (La Plume Du Temps). This book isn´t available since years. I was looking for it for ages.
But last autumn I had really luck. During the Euromodel-Exhibition in Ried (Austria) a very keen modeller from germany saw my UN related models on my desk and some time later .... he sold me his copy of the Malmassari book. That was really amazing and thanks a lot again for this Jörg!!



After I had this book in my hands there was no way back and I start my project with this ...



The M109A2 Kit from AFV Club is quite new and you can find a lot of reviews on the web. Here is a good one from Darren Baker: https://archive.kitmaker.net/review/8989

I started with the lower hull. It´s not made from one piece like many other manufacturer do it - you must glue 8 pieces together. You have to be very careful to align them all correct otherwise you have to use some filler later ;-)



There is a nice moveable suspension with torsion bars - you can easily adapt it for your diorama needs.



If you haven´t built an AFV Club Kit already you might be surprised by the lots of parts. Even the roadwheels consists of 5 parts with lots of sprue attachments. There is quite a lot to sand ..



I used a little chisel from "Master Tools" .. this tool is quite handy to scrap ejector pins away



Also the upper part of the lower hull consits of 5 parts. Be careful with part C64 ... first I glued it in the wrong way, but could correct it in time ;-)
The hulls details are excellent - even when comparing with images from the real thing you can´t find any big mistakes.



All hatches can be build open but the kit is lacking the interior. You have to build your own, go for aftermarket items or simly close the hatches as I did.



I have to say that the level of detail is excellent and to put the kit together is really a pleasure! I have also bought the Voyager PE Kit für this build ... but there was no need to open it so far. Maybe this will become a OOB build, we will see.

Thats all for today ... wish you all well.

cheers
Walter

http://www.fast-webstore.com/www-vt-models-cz/eshop/0/0/5/599-M-109-interior

Some progress on the hull.
The cable reel on the rear door ist empty .. I added some thin wire 0.10mm from an old electric inductor.

On the sprats spike I first thought there is some seamline to remove ;-) but on images from the real thing this casting line is quite evident. So better don´t sand it away. I´ll say the spike was heavily used.



On the spike I also added a small detail .. some kind of wire lock. Maybe someone can tell me the right term for this and what its good for?



On the image of the white UN M109 you can see some kind of mount on the right hull side. It don't look like straps .. more like metal rods. I added this with some Evergreen strip. The PE mesh on the exhaust comes from the AFV Club kit.



On the caps I added small PE chains from ABER .. nothing great but it adds a nice touch to the model.



On the headlight protections there are the seamlines missing .. I added them with Magic Sculp.





If you wonder about my modelling jig .... it is a cheap mini photo tripod ;-)



The tripod is very useful when you have to glue small, tiny parts to your model. You can easily adjust the model to your needs and nothing slips away.





I drilled a hole into the hulls bottom and fixed it with the screw and on the underside there is a larger washer too. You can also use 1/4 " UNC screw nut.



You also can fold the tripod and have a nice holder for painting and weathering.




Thanks for watching.
In the next update we will talk about the AFV tracks.

cheers
Walter

Gute Idee.
Never thought of that.

Regards,

Robert Jan

the chain lock between the spade and the support keeps the support to the vehicle during movements. It avoids any uncontrolled movement of this support.
Before driving the gun back on its spades, one has to unlock the supports.
It is on both sides.

I hope this will clear your question about the purpose.

Walter- so great to see you tackling another UN vehicle- your previous builds have been very inspiring and you are off to a great start with this one. The tripod idea is excellent- I have a similar one- will have to dig it out now and give it a try. Have you a scene in mind for displaying the M109?

Paul ... thanks a lot for your insight and comment. Very appreciated.

Karl ... thank you for your nice words. I will put my M109 on a wooden base to fit in my collection. Maybe in a later project I will risk to build a diorama ;-) I still have a lot to learn and your diorama builds are a great inspiration for me.

Completing the hull with the tracks. I had the AFV Club T-136 tracks in my stash and wanted to use them in my project.



First view ... a sinkmark in the middle of every pad. I sanded them down a bit an now they look a little bit like worn pads.



Really annoying are the TWO ejector pinmarks on the inside of every single track link. I suspect they will be quite apparent after painting the tracks. A tedious work to sand or scrap them all out :-(



Here is the sequence how I assemle these single link tracks:

Step 1 - Cut the links from the sprue and sand them.
Step 2 - Half of the connectors stay in one piece but cut from the rest of the sprue.
Step 3 - Put the single links into the connectors.


Step 4 - Use an assembling aid for fixation of the segments ( 2 similar pcs square wooden slats and 2 rubber bands)
Step 5 - Now put the connectors into the other side. Two or three in one piece works good for me.


Step 6 - Cut away the sprue attaching with a hobbyknife.


Step 7 - Sanding the outside of the connectors.


After this I did a first testfit with the completed indi AFV track with 79 pieces. The fit around the sprocket is well .. BUT .. the completed track is too long.



Then I counted the pieces on the vinyl track ... there are 79 pcs. I did a quick testfit with the kits vinyl track but the tension is quite strong and the typically sag is not visible. Not that good either.



I compared the two tracks - AFV indi (79pcs) above and vinyl tracks (79pcs) below on this image. The indi Track are too large and therefore the track is too long for the kit.



... annoying ... after I removed one link the track now looks ok to me. I hope this was not due a building mistake of me.



There are alternatives available from Italieri, Friul or Spade Ace ... anyone used them on the AFV Club M109 yet?

Sorry for this boring track update. I promise the next update will be more interesting.
Thanks a lot for stopping by. Your comments (good or bad) are always appreciated.

cheers
Walter

Hi Walter,

I sneeked in only by chance as I just recently saw an extremely muddy/dirty UN tank which caught my attention because of the nice contrast between the white paint and the brown dirt.
I like your build so far. And those track stories will offer very valuable information for anyone who puts his hands on such a kit. So do not hesitate to share your insights.

Looking forward for more

Michael

PS: nice idea with the tripod. I s´pose I will steal it.

@Michael: Thx for your nice words .. very apprechiated. I always liked the nice contrast of dirty white un vehicles. It's a pity that the fewest modeller paint their models in UN finish. Haven't seen much of them.


Back again for the next update.

The gun is turned alu barrel. Very nice detailed but the Gun Muzzle reqiures some filler.
Surprisingly is there a spring to mount with the gun barrel. Maybe you can build it in recoil position but the instructions doesn´t say anything about it.



So far the build went nice and with ease. But with Step 18 and Part D22 came trouble ... really great trouble :-(
Part D22 was heavily warped and didn´t fit into the corresponding holes of part D5. I tried to straighten it out with hot water. But that didn´t work. I thought it would be a good idea to cut off the the warped pins and glue them (yellow color where the pin should be) ... but it wasn't.



Afterwards the geometry of the Axle was spoiled. Nothing fitted right anymore, wrong angles and gaps was the result. Even Part D36 has to be cut in the middle and the nasty gap there was filled with Magic Sculp.





Also on the upper part of the turret were gaps to fill. I used Perfect Putty .. it has minimal shrinking and is easy removeable with Vallejo Airbrush Clean and Q-Tips. Unfortenately I had to glue the barrel in a fixed position ... every movement bend the framing around which was not good.



On sprue C ... there is a bit of nasty flash ... it has to be sanded away very carefully.



Generally SANDING ist the key issue with this AFV Kit. You get great and excellent details with this kit but you must spend a lot of time with carefully microsanding. For example .. the turret baskets are great and assembling seems really complicated ...



... but the fragile basket parts fit togehter perfectly. But cutting from the sprue and sanding (with flat nose pliers and skinny sanding sticks) makes you definitively hold your breath.



But you are rewarded with a wunderful stowage basket ... without any use of PE of wire.



Another highlight from the great details in the kit is the cal.50 MG. Even the barrel is hollow, no need to drill it out. BUT .. you already know ... delicate sanding again ...



.. there are 18 sprue attachments for this MG (without gun carriage). I´ver never built a model befor which required that much sanding ;-)

There is a thread to represent the tow cable. I replaced it with a tow cable from Karaya.



Be careful with the length of the tow cable. Instructions call out 75mm ... after cutting and glueing I found out it was too long. 65mm fits much better. I had to cut the already glued tow cable and hide it somehow ;-)



After a while even the turret becomes packed with some fragile parts. Handligs gets more delicate. The heavy barrel doesn't make it easy at all. So I built another little handlig jig ;-)
It's made from an old DVD spindle box, screw and nut.



I drilled a hole into the spindle and a screw was glued into the hole. Into the turret I glued a corresponding nut. Now I can screw the turret on to this jig. It's now very stable and I can easily maneuvre it around without damaging fragile parts.



Currently I am experimenting with the tools mountig. On the one hand I won't do another detailwork on the other hand I really don't like the simplified tie down straps;-) Foolishly I haven't removed the tie down footman loops before assembling the turret.



Maybe some of these medic tapes can be used as a replacement for the plastic straps on the tools. But they might be a little bit overscale. I found this in my medicine chest - left to right - Hansaplast Classic, Leukosilk, 3M Durapore, Leukotape K, Leukotape. Anyone of you used these tapes to replace the straps?



Sadly I couldn't find good reference images showing the mounted tools and straps on the M109.
On most walk arounds they are removed.

Thats all for this update
Thanks for stopping by and I wish you all ... Happy Modelling.
Walter

Lieber Walter,

Danke schoen! What an excellent build.
As a M109 battery guy I can tell you that these howitsers only stored their gear in either the baskets or in the following supply train. All standard equipment (hammer, wreches for the tracks, alu cleaning tubes) were stored on the places, indicated in the world wide standard handbooks! So, acc. the build instructions. Their structure doesn't allow too much differantiation. Maby a big tarp against weather influences during long rests, and/or camo nets were stored on the roofs as well.
Having participated in some EU, UN and NATO missions, with M109's, the stowage was not too spectacular since these monsters were used to impress at road blocks (Kosovo), to impress local war lords (like f.i. in Bosnia) or as a (possible) fire support from pre calculated positions.
At the end of the day, M109's are not like tanks and need quite some support via thebattery support train. And these guys were always very close!

Looking forward to see your M109 growing!

Thanks for sharing,

P.

great build so far.i love the idea of the tripod.

Walter--very nice build so far, and good job on the fixes for the problems with the gun carriage. I'm building the same kit right now (I'm at the final painting stage) and I had virtually the same problems as you did with those parts. It seems that sprue D is to blame. Some kits have a "good" version of this sprue, which means those modelers lucky enough to get those kits don't have any alignment and fit issues, but other kits have the "bad" version (probably because AFV Club uses two different molds, with one being cut wrong). If you want to see how I dealt with the same issues on my kit, check out my build. I'll definitely be following yours!

Great build so far and nice to see all the build details. Love the tripod idea.

Rounds Complete!!

@Paul: Thanks for your comment and insight it will help me with this build.

@Lucas: Thank you for stopping by. I also follow your great build with interest - very nice camo work ;-). Strange to see that you had the same problem - seems really to be a bad production batch.

@Roy @Mike: Glad to hear you like the litte tip with the tripod. I hope it is useful

Thank you all for your interest and comments.
cheers
Walter

Great build so far. it's always goos seeing a 109 being built

When you had problems with step 18 and another modeller had the same problem and had to go check mine.



Not to be critical but judging by your photo it looks like part D22 is 90 degrees off from where it should be.

Ian, thanks for your comment and good to have you on board.

You are right, when I took this image I didn't see that they were wrong aligned. However they were warped in my kit.
Here another image with the right alignment.



Cheers
Walter

unfortunately Walter that is still wrong. The 3 pins should line up with the recoil cylinders. your pic shows D22 upside down with one of the recoil cylinders lining up with the direct fire sight.

What the heck! ... yep ... thats right Ian ... but you get the idea and the problem that occured with the warping

unfortunately, no. i had no warping issues, everything on my gun mount went together very well. The kit as a whole is going together very well.

It took some time but here is the update to my build ;-)

I like to put crews on to my models. It shows the size of the real thing compared to human and it makes the model a little bit more interesting.
The jordan M109 crew on my reference foto, even the driver, wear M1 helmets and some sort of flack jackets. I took some Hornet Heads with M1 helmets but unfortunately their size didn't fit to most of the figure sets in my stash. The heads looked much too small and completely out of scale.
After quite a while I found some hands, legs and a torso in my spare box.
The torso is from an US soldier in Vietnam. It has a similar flack jacket and I made 2 resin copys for my crew. The hands and legs came from an old Academy Mortar Crew Set.



After some minor modifications the gaps were filled with Magic Sculpt, smothed with a brush moisted in alcohol. The little pedestal helps the driver to look out of the hatch ;-)



As a fast drying base for further painting I like to use Skull White Spray from Citadel.



At this point the crew can take a rest in the shelf until the model is finished. Why? If something goes wrong with the model I can use the figures for another project ;-)

I decided to replace the straps for the tools on the turret with Leukosilk (medical Tape). Therefore I had to remove the moled straps from the tools. I found the chisels from MasterTools very helpful for this job. They are available in various forms and sizes and the scraping was a lot easier than with a scalpel blade as I did before.



I also had to replace some Tie Down Cleats (Footmanloops). It would have been much easier to do this before assembling the turret ;-) Therefore I was quite inconsequent and removed only the needed cleats for the straps. (I know I am lazy ;-)



For replacement I used PE Cleats from ABER (Tie Down Cleats 35A59). Their various sizes makes it easy to find the proper size. The PE parts were bent over a strip of evergreen ...



... and then glued into place with CA-glue. Don´t forget to mark the correct locations. For glueing I use my own tool - a thin wire put into a hypodermic needle and into that I plugged a shaft from an old paintbrush.



Don´t worry about messy CA-glue ... on the real thing the welding spots are quite chunky as you see on the image of an M109 I took at the Historical Army Museum in Vienna.



There are some vinyl parts in the kit (mudflaps and a tarpaulin) which I replaced with scratchbuilt evergreen parts and for the tarpaulin I used PE parts from the Voyager M109 set and Leukosilk tape.



Now the parts are ready for painting. Before priming I always clean all parts with isopropyl alcohol to remove sanding dust and sweaty fingerprints.



Because of the fabulous and warm spring weather here in Austria I can do some paint work on my balcony :-)



Next time we will continue with the painting of the M109.

Cheers and always happy modelling
Walter

Great Job on your 109!!,Liking this very much indeed!!,Great idea with the mini tripod looks excellent,Am using the same putty as you and its rather good,
Watching with interest.
Happy modelling from Richard

Its fantastic to see more progress on this Walter. I like how the crew is shaping up and the detailing of the kit is coming along brilliantly.

Thanks a lot for all your nice comments :-)


I did a lot of work done during the last weeks but didn´t find enough time to make regular updates on this build blog. Sorry for this massive update ;-)

This is my planned painting/weathering sequenz for this UN vehicle.

- Cleaning the model
- Priming
- Basecolor white (Tamiya XF-2 white + Tam Buff)
- semi gloss acrylic coat overall (better flow for filter and washes)
- Decals
- Semi gloss acrylic coat over decals
- Painting details with variations of white color
- Filter overall (orange enamels or oils)
- Chipping with sponge and fine paintbrusch - acryl colors
- Pinwash with darkbrown enamles or oils
- Mounting tools, details and straps
- Streakings with "Balkan-Streaking-Mix" enamels
- Dusting with highly diluted "Balkan-Dust-Mix" Tamiya XF-57 und XF-52
- Dirt on lower hull, roadwheels and tracks with MIG pigments
- Grease, oilsstreaks an wet areas

Quite scary this to-do list ;-) ... so lets go on.

I will show this steps with some photos from my build.

Priming
After a good clean with isopropylic alcohol I primed the model with Vallejo Polyurethane Primer Grey. I sprayed it straight from the bottle and received a smooth finish. VERY IMPORTANT when using this primer: you must let it dry at least 48 hours or more to get it completely hard. If it has not dried enough you can peel it like a latex skin and you cannot sand the model if necessary.



Basecolor UN white
For my basecolor I mix Tamiya XF-2 flat white with a little bit of Tamiya XF-57 buff to break the bright white. Be careful not to use too much XF-57 otherwise your color get too creamy and look like vanilla icecream.



Semi gloss acryl coat
To protect the base color and get a smooth finish (for the decals and a better flow for washes and filters) I spray the model with a semi gloss acryl coat (Gunze Aqueous Hobby Color H 20 und H30 thinned with Tamiya X-20A thinner).

Decals
On the reference photo for this UN M109A2 you can only see the right and front side of the vehicle. On the door the UN marking in black letters is clearly visible. Because many soldiers are biased to symmetry I suppose there wase the same marking on the door on the left turret side ;-)Also a licence plate and a sticker with numbers is visible on the vehicles front.
I´ve got a lot of UN decals in my stash .. but as always I couldn´t find markings in proper shape and size. So I decided to print my own decals. I did this previously a couple of times with quite good results but this time I got in serious trouble ...

First I got horrendous printing results with three different printers (ink and laser).



Then I used a decal sheet from ipms austria which showed excellent printing results. I put the decals on the model and used also Microscale Micro Set and Sol. First it looked good, but after a couple of hours the edges of the decals furled up.





After some attempts to get the edges down I gave up and sanded the decals off from both turret sides with some skinny sanding sticks.



I had to go one step backward and repainted the sanded area :-(
Next day I tried another printer with better results, but this time the decal film was very thick. The result is not very good but I can live with it.

After the decal disaster I sealed the decals with a semi gloss clear coat.

Next Step is detail painting with color variation of the base color
I used Acryl Vallejo 918 & 837 with a fine brush to repaint some details with different beige colors. At the moment it looks ugly but after the following sequence of filters and washings it should look pretty good .... hopefully ;-)





Filter overall
To tone down and unify the different previous colors I used a thinned mixture of orange or sand enamels/oils. In this case I used a ready to use filter product from SIN.



Chipping with sponge and fine paintbrush
For a fast and fine chipping I first dipped pieces from a kitchen sponge into an acrylic color, removed the excess and dabbed it on the model. Then I repainted some areas with a fine brush.
First I made light chips with sand color but that didn´t look nice. So I used a darker mix (Acryl Vallejo Beige Brown & 822)for the chips and it looked better then. Deeper chips were made with Citadel Mithril silver because aluminum is used for the M109s hull and turret. You can´t find much rust on these vehicles I suppose.







Dark Pinwash
Next step was to bring more depth to the model. I did a dark pinwash with darkbrown enamel mix from MiG / Ammo diluted with white spirit. Seams, gaps, grills, handles, bolts etc. were reworked with this pinwash. After the pinwash dried some time (10 - 20 minutes) I used a clean flat brush moistened with white spirit to clean up and blend the pinwash. I also tried a make-up-sponge for clean up with good results. You can "borrow" it from your wifes / girlfriends / sisters vanity case or make-up-box ;-)



Mounting tools, details and straps
I painted all the tools with different acrylic colors from Vallejo, Andrea and Citadel. For the mounting straps I used medical Leukosilk tape because of its nice texture. I painted it with sand color and cut thin strips. Fasterens were made from PE (Black Dog Fasteners and Buckles E35001) ... a very useful set.
Unfortunately the Leukosilk tape strips are a little bit too thick and very sticky. So it was not easy to get them through all fasteners openings and through the footman loops. I had to impovise a lot ... notice for my next build ... Tamiya Tape is much easier to handle :-)



First glueing the straps in to place ....



... then glueing in the tools and finally wrapping the straps around.
I think the straps look much better than the chunky casted on plastic straps. Also the dust cover of the gun is substituted with Leukosilk tape because I didn´t want to use the kits vinyl part.

Streakings
I made my own "Balkan-Streaking-Mix" :-) from darkbrown and reddish enamel colors. First I painted thin lines on the hull and turret. After some drying time ....



... I blended the streakings with a clean flat brush moistened in white spirit. Make your brushstrokes downwards and make sure its not too dark for the white UN vehicle.



Dusting
After drying of the streakings I airbrushed the model with a highly diluted mixture of Tamiya XF-57 und XF-52 (I call it Balkan-Dusting-Mix ;-). Pay special attention to the hull sides, turret rear sides, accumulation around hatches etc. .



Dirt on lower hull, roadwheels and tracks with pigments
Now its time for some pigments. I used some different brown and reddish colors from MIG pigments. First I brushed them with some color variation dry on to the model. Then I fixed the pigments with a brush and white spirit.





After the pigments have dried I reworked them with an old an stiff brush.



It is important not to forget the tracks and roadwheels. I used the same pigment and color mixes as I used on the lower hull before.





Grease, oilstreaks and wet areas
The last step in my painting sequence ;-)
In this case I used a mixture of brown + black + gloss enamel colors thinned with white spirit. First I make a more thinned mixture an paint older spilled oil and fuel around the caps. When dry I use a less thinned mixture for new and fresh spilled areas. Make sure the newer spills are irregular and smaller than the older ones.





After that I did a quick check if the tracks are still fitting ...



...yep, looks ok ;-)

Now my painting/wethering sequence for the vehicle is finished. I carried on with the crew figures which I primed at the beginning of the project. I painted the figures with acrylic colors from Vallejo, Andrea and Citadel. I'm not that good and patient in figure painting .. anyway I try to put some figures to my models.



The hornet heads were painted with arabic skintones and received typical arabic mustache for the jordan M109 crew. Chin straps for the helmets were made from Tamiya tape.



As discussed in some threads about the M109 there is not much stowage stored in the rear turret baskets (at least in non us vehicles). However I painted some cans and placed them in a stowage basket ... but you can't see much of it.



After the crew entered the vehicle the project is nearly finished. I don´t make a diorama or vignette for this model. I want to place it on a clean base as I did with all my other UN models before.

Thank you very much for following my build. I hope it was interesting on some points and I wish you all the best for your own modelling projects.

cheers and always happy modelling
Walter Lampel

Some images from the finished model: