I got to confess. I was 100% sure, this campaign ends on 1st of October. You can imagine my joy, when i realized i got some more time to finish my build
So i relaxed, a little bit. I haven't done much on halftrack, as it is nearly finished, spent last few weeks on trailer and extras. Trailer is completed, paint, filters, washes and the flat coat is on. I have made ammunition inlay, simulating full ammo load, with few removed boxes. I used kit ammo boxes as master, molds were made using silicone sealant, epoxy - regular 10min stuff mixed with microbaloons (great stuff btw, that can be also used as effective snow imitation, as well, bought from composite suppliers, it is cheap).
Now i got to chip everything (20 pcs flak18 ammo boxes , and same amount of double clip boxes, then spare barrel and accessory boxes, and the trailer itself). This part of build is exhausting. Painting, varnishing, weathering every separate piece is very time consuming, and not most interesting occupation. Decals on ammo boxes? paradox, but you dont get enough of them. You only get 8sets with trailer, and only 12 with flak kit, leaving 4 boxes without decals. I wanted to use "Abstand 30m" decal on the trailed, as it looks somewhat cool, but guess what, it is not included in decal sheet anymore. It should be decal nr 5, but there are only 4 positions on my sheet. Probably most difficult part was painting ammunition in open flak18 boxes. I chose to paint interior dark gray, or primer color. I use brass color from Mig, and the paint is very translucent. It takes several coats to achieve good coverage (easy with airbrush). But once you try to paint ammo box, you also coat the shells with darker color... Then it takes several coats with brush to fix it. I made 4 open boxes, 12 shells to paint in each... Ouch. I wish shells were molded separate from boxes, just like they did on ready ammo clips.
I dont know where i will use all the boxes in the end, most likely will put kit on some sort of vignette base, with figures from dragons gen 2 set (Luftwaffe field division). Altho few reviews state, its same boxes as used for grenades, this is not true. These boxes were only used for 3.7cm shells and empties. Grenade box are different size and shape of imprint is different. They do look alike, but that's the same as using mp40 magazines for stg44.
And heres the progress picture. From now on everything will start coming together, no more work on separate sub assemblies!
