After a long time, I've finally completed my M88A1. This depicts the vehicle from my old unit, 4/20 FA, which was one of the last FA units in the USAR before all the R/C Combat Arms units were reallocated to the ARNG. As much as I enjoyed (and learned) doing this build, I doubt I'll ever do as much work detailing another one!

What a splendid result.
And what an amount of details.

Chapeau!

Very nice build but there is something not right about the paint, too much brown?? I think the color pattern is askew, I think the brown should be black and visa-versa?

Totally amazing work. A man after my own heart with all that detail!

As to the camo - I don't know, maybe just tone down the brightness of the red brown color with a slight weathering wash???

Still A++ for all your detailing!

The engine bay is superb!

Cheers,

Christophe

Sweet! You obviously have personal pride involved with this model project. The detailing is outstanding. I also share a concern for the camo colors as described above

very nice work,and all the great detile work. great build..

kewl

Looks awesome. Great job on it.

Wow!!! Very nice!

Vry nicely done. You put those engine bay photos to very good use - it looks great. I hate to be that guy, but it would look even better if you filed those seams off of the boom.

Thanks all for the comments. A special thanks to Bob Skipper. He sent me a series of about 40 some "walk around" photos of an M88A1 engine bay with the power pack removed which were absolutely CRUCIAL to being able to do the detail work. Even having all of the TMs didn't provide that level of fidelity on where things went and how they looked.

You're right about the color. I used the Tamiya NATO Brown (thinned down to air brush) and I also think the color came out too red. I cross referenced the color scheme from the back of the Squadron M88 book with the TM and as far as the patterns go they match, so I think the total area and location of brown v. black is correct, but the color doesn't look "right". Other than some rust on the tracks I haven't done any weathering, so perhaps that might help to tone it down.

And yeah, I totally forgot to do the seams on the boom. I'll have to see if I can sand them off without a) messing up the paint job, b) breaking off any of those fragile rungs, and c) breaking any of the other fragile details from handling. That was a real nightmare as I was finishing up, as handling the mostly completed model to add the final items to the exterior led me to have to repair a few things.

I also noticed some molding marks on the underside of the exhaust louvers in the photo. Guess they didn't figure anyone was crazy enough to cut them, off and then scratch build hinges to expose the underside.

I guess it looks funny because the brown and green are reversed, is that the way the unit painted them? Would be neat to see some photos. Used to seeing mostly green. (photo from Prime Portal) Lovely job on the interior details.



Jim

Well, NOW I have an embarrassing dilemma on my hands!! That's what I get for not cross checking my references! While the pattern shown in the Squadron Signal "M88 Armored Recovery Vehicle Walk Around" matches the patterns shown in TB 43-0209 with respect to how to mark off the vehicle, evidently they mixed the numbers. The TB CLEARLY shows that

1=Black
2=Green
3=Brown

and the way the colors are shown in the back of the Squadron Signal book (which I followed without checking ) they show that

1=Green
2=Brown
3=Black

I didn't check the TB first, and as Jim's photo clearly shows, the vehicle in the photo was done per the TM.

I have got a real problem now, and will certainly have to re-paint by hand as masking the completed model or attempting to disassemble it so that I CAN mask, is pretty much out of the question.

Thanks to all for the help. Now to figure out how to fix it!

HI

Is your heart set on NATOFlague? Why not repaint it in sand?

Echo other comments, nice detailing.

Tom

My original plan was to make the vehicle one of the ones in my old unit, 4/20 FA. It was one of the last FA units in the US Army Reserve before all combat arms units in the Reserve Component were allocated strictly to the Army National Guard. I was Bn XO at the time and our vehicles were in NATO 3 color. Unfortunately, I never took any pictures of any of our vehicles except my own, or perhaps I might not have made this blunder.

While painting overall sand would certainly be easier, regardless of what re-painting I attempt, I'm pretty much locked into a major disassembly because of all the detail items on the exterior, and having to get the underhull/suspension painted. And airbrushing the front glacis needs to be done without the blade which is now secured to the winch frame and hydraulic cylinders. Even the boom is pretty much impossible to take off now that the hinge pins are inserted.

Masking with all this stuff is out of the question, and as I discovered during final assembly, even handling the model to add details can cause damage to some of the detail parts if you're not paying attention to how you hold it.

Right now I think I'm simply going to put this one into a box on a bottom shelf in the basement and move on to other projects. I've been working on this project for such a long time, I just don't think I'm ready to jump back in to a major overhaul on it right now. Maybe after I've completed some of the other projects on my workbench, I'll find the enthusiasm to re-tackle this.

But I'm proposing a corollary to the old carpenter's rule.

Check references twice, paint once.

Don't give up! It really is a great builds with great detail, figure something out, but don't pack it away in some deep dark place!

I'm sure that at some point I'll dive into it and fix it. Let's face it, you're talking to a guy that super-detailed parts of the interior that other than photos, nobody will ever see.

But I gotta put this one aside for a while since it's been occupying most of my energy for a long time. The best thing is to take a break on this project and move on to something else for a while.

That will allow the problem to "soak" in the back of my mind which almost always leads to more creative solutions.

I WILL fix it, but not for a while.

Too much work to not get it "right".

Why fix it ? Buying a new kit and starting from scratch
will probably be a lot easier than trying to disassemble
without damaging the parts. Now you know how to do it
and where all the pieces should go, just make a copy but
swap the colours back. That is what I would do, and then
possibly painting the first one sand all over ...
/ Robin

Great job on the interior. Considering the amount done to improve this kit, I guess it's really painful to know you inverted the colors.
Good luck for repainting this beauty!

Believe me that thought crossed my mind but I immediately dismissed it. I didn't keep track of the hours I spend in doing scratch builds to improve the interior detail kit, or the time I spent scratch building the main winch. But that combined total was at least as long as the time I spent scratch building the items in the engine compartment. That was over 130 hours and DOESN'T include the time it took to scratch build all the engine cover hatches as well as the exterior hatches and the APU.

So I estimate I have somewhere north of 800 hours minimum in this project. I'm lucky if I can find 8 hours a week to work on modeling so you can see why regardless of difficulty, repainting is going to have to be the fix.

As far as an overall sand color, I suspect that the increased difficulty in repainting the 3 color correctly isn't going to be TOO much harder than repainting in a single color. Repainting at all brings a set of problems that I'm not sure gets a whole lot more complicated by choosing 3 colors as opposed to 1.

But I could be wrong about that and it wouldn't be the first time on this project.