Turret basket with basic stowage painted, tarps formed last night. Tarps will come off for painting.

I'm on hold, waiting for decals.... I went ahead and order up an Echelon sheet for Merkavas in Lebanon, looks like it will be very good, but I'm pretty much stuck until I can get some markings on.

Gloss, decals and gloss.
I used some really fine Echelon decals, and I even managed to get the Yanush stripe on w/o messing it up too bad. The two tanks on the Echelon sheet are still from the 7th, but not the same sub-unit as the one in the pic I was working from, but I've got to go with it, too late in the build to do anything else. Pics as it is now, glossed up and waiting for a light shot of clear flat, then dust.



The Echelon decals are really nice, lots of small stuff for the tool box doors, fire extinguishers, etc supplied. I'll buy then again.

Modeling mystery #72: After getting my air recognition panel painted and ready to install, I moves some things around on my bench in preparation for mixing my pigments and then couldn't find it. I looked for at least 20 minutes, but it's gone. So I decided to do one from wine foil:

It needs a couple more coats of paint, but it's close.
And speaking of close, here's my pigment mixture, consisting of a medium brown, gray-green and gray:

I needed to get my base color more "gray/green" to better match the IDF sand/gray color from circa 1982, and blend in a little road dirt and masonry dust, which will give you a very good idea of my idea for a base. So after a few applications with flat clear in-between, I'm here:




I would like to darken up the exhaust stains, and possibly show some evidence of paint wear on the stored extra track links, but I may leave them as-is, since they were painted with the tank originally. I also need to add a tie-down to the one end of the tow cable that's not secured to the turret side, but it's getting very close.
Not sure about figs yet, I have a show the middle of Sept and I want to take this one but that may not be enough time to source and prep two turret crew- if not, it'll go with closed hatches as all three are either removable or operable.
Thanks for watching!

Impressive work

Thanks, Rob.

Close enough to smell like it's done.....
Air recog panel on, lights and insides of periscopes painted and I've begun filling them with Micro Crystal Clear. I sooted-up the exhausts some more too, recalling the one time I saw one of these things goose the throttle how much black smoke was made.
I have the loader's MG prepped and ready to install, but will wait until I actually have a loader fig as I may want to position the Mg to suit. I still have to decide whether or not to use some Academy IDF crew figs or hold off for something else. Prob is that this model is going to a show in two weeks and I really don't have time to order up a couple of better figs. Hmmm. Anyway, pics as is is now:




Thanks for looking, and if anyone sees something I'm missing, sing out, please!

Figs begun. I'm just gong to use some more Academy figs on this one for now, outta time.

Color and gloss:

I also started a simple base this morning, no pics yet.

Figs in, base begun:


Still lots to do on the base, but the tank is finished.

All done, finished pics to go in IDF board.
Thx!

Russel,
The tank looks great but seems disconnected from the base. the tank looks dry and the base wet. Since the tank is finished, I think you should dry out the base, with the track guards missing, this tank should be a muddie mess. My two cents, please provide exact change thanks.

Kurt, looking at the pics, you have a valid point. I posted pics in this thread with the base un-finished, oops!
Take a look at the finished pics in the IDF board, it looks quite a bit better.
And thanks for looking, it's appreciated!