I have read that all Leclerc T6 tanks deployed as part of UNIFIL (Lebanon, 2006) had black/white striped antennas.Evidently, the crews wrapped white tape diagonally around the antennas to create a 'corkscrew' effect. I am hoping that this was not carried out on all of the tanks, because trying to recreate this on a 1/72-scale model is proving to be near impossible. I have seen 1/35-scale examples, where the effect has been recreated by wrapping cotton diagonally around the antenna to form a mask before spraying with the second colour ... a clever technique, but not easy in small scale.

All of the Leclercs in Lebanon definitely did not have the striped antennas. I built a UNIFIL Leclerc several years ago and all my references of the initial deployment showed solid green antennas.

Jason,

That certainly makes life easier ... and you mention green ... so the antennas were not black (as most modellers show them)?

Paul

Correct....dark green....like NATO green.

Indeed

http://olivier.carneau.free.fr/photoengins/france/famille_leclerc/leclerc_liban/index.htm

H.P.

I`ve seen images with both variants. Striped antennas in the beginning and dark green later in the deployment.

In 1/72 I would wrap around a EZ-Line oder very fine fishing line instead of masking tape.




In the book "Landing Zone Lebanon by Moustafa El-Assad" you can find several images which show striped antennas ;-)

For my UN Leclerc build with striped antennas (which I did in 2010) I used reference images taken by Patrick Winnepenninckx. You can find these images also in the modelling magazine Abrams Squad No.8, page 71

Another image with striped antennas http://i.auto-bild.de/ir_img/1/0/1/5/0/3/1/LeClerc-729x486-1d53505b9cd05032.jpg

cheers
Walter