Hello all,

I am planning out the build for the Meng Panzerhaubitze 2000 with add-on armor and was wondering if anyone had any ideas for an effective way to lay the painting ground work for the tracks?

Is there any efficient way to paint the tracks the color you want and then the rubber parts a rubber color using an airbrush? Also, does anyone know whether the camouflage for the Russian green + sand tones (desert variant) was hard-edged or soft?

Thanks!

Hi;

AS for the tracks, its what-ever works best for you, I prefer to paint my tracks by Hand, and then it depends which kit I am Building. There are really no reason why you should not be able to use your Airbrush. As for the Camo; Hard Edge is more often seen. Check Your references for A Specific Vehicle and then Go from there.

GOOD LUCK; MIKE.

Mike, the issue with the track painting is that they are metal with rubber pads. I would like to do both with an airbrush. I was wondering if there is any effective way to do that.

As far as the tracks it depends what you want to depict.

Are you building a deployed dusty vehicle? Are you building a vehicle that has been travelling on hard surface roads (concrete/asphalt)? Are you building a vehicle that has been sitting idle?

You can for sure use an airbrush for painting tracks. Use it for the primer and base coat. You can then use thinned washes applied with a brush to add dust and our surface rust to the center guides and end connectors. You can then either use a brush to lightly dry brush the track pads with a faded black. You can also use an airbrush with well thinned faded black on a very fine setting to touch up the visible track pads.

For the inside if the track pads mask off the end connectors and airbrush the flat inner surfaces with faded black. This gives the impression of the road wheels continually travelling over the moving inner track pad surfaces.

Depending on how much you want to weather the tracks you can apply pigments/pastel chalk to blend in the weathering.

Don't forget to add a bit of silver to the centre guides.

Don't rush it...think of it as adding layers to the tracks.

Take a look at these images...the ground weathering very clearly absorbed into the entire track surface.





Here is a good example of the clean and almost shiny looking inside of the track pads commonly seen on hard surface travel. See how the end connectors carry the same weathering as the inside of the road wheels.

Hi;

If you are useing Metal tracks like Fruils; then the Black-n it method is most Preferd. this product is A Railroad Modelers product, and is A Liqued that you can Soak the Metal in too make it Black. Any Dark Earth Tones will work, its just up too you How much Weathering you want to depict.

CHEERS; MIKE.

Thank you both for the responses and advice. The reference photos are quite useful for me. In this case I will be using the kit tracks which are cement-free, workable, Meng tracks.

My style for doing tracks on tanks is as follows:
Entire tracks are painted in a metallic color, either gun metal or dark iron. A rust wash is then applied for most vehicles, but usually not for the modern ones as much. Mud is then added with pigments and pigment fixer, followed by finer dust.

In the case of these tracks what I wanted to do, though I'm not aure how doable this would be, would be to paint the tracks and pads with an airbrush but to have the track metal and rubber look completely distinct before any rust or dust is added. Overall I am aiming for very light weathering on my panzerhaubitze and terminator builds as opposed to the WWII vehicles.

Is there any way to mask the pads from the track without losing hair and sleep over it? I spent 10 years painting tanks by hand, and am now delighted with the airbrush. My aim is to make each paint job flawless and to minimize hand painting, as long as it makes sense to.

I think your approach likely works well for all metal WWII style tracks but modern tracks that combine both metal and rubber components need a different angle.

I can't recall seeing or hearing of a track pad mask.

If you airbrush the entire tracks, weather the metal parts (they don't need to be shiny silver), mask the inner surface and re-airbrush the inside of the pads, touch up the centre guides, and then re-paint the outer surface of the track pads (this can easily be done by light dry brushing with a paint such as Tamiya NATO black).

Here are a couple of more images for you to consider...

Surface rust common on all Diehl tracks when the AFV has been sitting idle or driving on roads. Only a touch of bare metal is visible.



This image shows light weathering with a combo of road dust, a bit of surface rust, and a bit of bare metal.

Hi!
To answer your question on hard or soft edges of the camo: The vehicles were sprayed, so soft edges are the way. Here, you can see a picture of the spraying process:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6090/6055304917_28fe5992bf_b.jpg

If you google "pzh2000 isaf", you will find a couple of more pictures.

Greetings
Andreas

Since it is a NATO vehicle the basic colours are NATO olive, black and brown. In case you use the Tamiya set it is just fine. The camo we used was a sand color and, during the first mission, local lime!

Thanks, guys!

Judging from the picture of the spraying process, it looks like the model will look nicer than the actual howitzer camo.

Question for Paul: why add a green part to the paint scheme for a desert vehicle?

It is the other way round. These vehicles were flown in ( due to their vulnerability during road transport from a seaport to their battle station they were transported by one of the largest airplanes in the world, one howitser per flight!) in the standard Nato olive colours and later on oversprayed (proper English?) with a sandy color pattern.

P.

duplicate this

Tracks

That makes more sense. Strange that the Meng manual for the kit listed 'Russian Green' as the green color rather than the appropriate one.

Another question: why does a howitzer, which is a long-range vehicle, need to be camouflaged? Things such as tanks see combat one on one, but howitzers are well out of sight of enemy lines (usually?)

David, it's not about duplicating the tracks, the issue was about separately painting the pads and metal. The reason for this is because I am attempting to do a series of modern AFVs that look pleasing to the eye yet have very light weathering. I personally think it's much easier to make a WWII-era vehicle look amazing compared to a modern AFV that doesn't have paint chipping, scratches and shell holes.

(Easier for me, not a generalization)

I am currently working on the BMPT Terminator and PzH2000 with add-on armor and both share the same goal.

Good question!
Modern artillery is mostly highly computorised. Thus it is not always necessary to line up all guns(read: or howitsers) for a longer period in a battery, which was not seldom completely camouflaged, as in the past, when either all guns in a battery followed the same directing commands or each gun had to be calculated individually if a more concentrated impact was required.. (That was how I grew up). This way of mathematical calculations to hit a target made artillery a relatively slow weapon, which stayed for longer periods on one spot. Camouflage was therefore essential to survive. Here, the weapon system's camouflage supported the other stuff which was used to hide it for the enemy's eyes, like tarps, straw, what ever.
Today, as stated, computerized guns and shells enable artillery units to hit and run rather easy with less guns. So, a camouflaged battery would hamper itself in its deployment. But individual guns need to hide as they are not "in use". So, it still make sense to camouflage them against enemy eyes.
The artillery in Afghanistan was well protected by the units they supported when on the way (which was rather rare) or it was located in a base, where protection was part of the total base camp. The large range, with or without propeled grenades, allowed them to use 'fixed' locations. The need for camouflage in those cases can be discussed, at least for these beasts, but since gunners also wanted to be part of the big boys, they camouflaged their pieces like the IFV's did!
And the discussion about the effect of camouflage as a means against infrared camera's and other ultramodern ways of detection would take several pages of this forum....

Painting "neat" tracks.
First choice: Do you require that the edges of the track pads are "rubber" coloured or would it be sufficient if only the surface that touches the ground is "rubber" ?

Wear surface only: Airbrush your "rubber" colour using enamels.
Let it dry/harden for some days. Use acrylics or enamels to paint the "metal" parts (with or witout rust, with or without "road dust"), before this dries/hardens you rub it away from the wear surfaces. Test on a small piece of track first ...

Wear surfaces AND edges need to be "rubber": This will be very difficult with an airbrush -> prepare for a lot of work with a fine brush .... A skilled air brush artist could probably do it but it would be just as much work as with a paint brush ....

/ Robin