This is my SP Designs ASU-85 M1970. This was a fairly nice kit to build: good fit and pretty accurate model. Having said that, I did replace more than 40 rivets on the hull (casting isn't as good as I would wish...) and redid the rivet configuration on the rear engine hatch. I also added the mesh and a vent screen from a Tamiya rally car (the very black stuff on the 1st photo) The headlight guards were made out of brass wire. I added all of the "ribs" on the front of the sponsons and replaced the stock unrealistic mud flaps with ones out of foil. I drilled out the muzzle break and the coaxial MG (?) and added armor on the front of the driver's hatch. And I thought the kit unditching beam looked too wide so I made one out of a wooden rod.

I painted it with Medium Green but in the end I wasn't sattisfied with the color - I am trying out different greens on my models to find the one I think best matches Soviet pait. So far I think the best one is MM Russian Topside Green but that's only available in enamel. The vehicle is supposed to represent a vehicle in Afghanistan, so I tried to make it look very dusty. Unfortunatly this was my first time using pastels and it didn't turn out as well as I wanted it to.

Anyway, this model, along with my GAZ-67B got Bronze at the 2004 AMPS East - my first medals.

What do you think? Any comments are very welcome.

Paul, nice build of a not so usual subject. The only other offering of this kit that I have seen in1/35 was from AEF... Where did you find this at? Are the tracks individual links or ???? I would like to do another one of these some day. I did do the AEF conversion several years back, but it was aweful. Long story here. Once again, nice build. "Q"

Thanks Matthew. This set is from SP Designs a Ukrainian resin kit manufacturer that is officially distributed by Jacques Duquette (callsign Jacques) in the Western hemisphere. The tracks come in sections of I believe 6 and 8 links - this was my first all resin kit and I had trouble getting the tracks around the sprockets - you can't really see this from my pictures but I couldn't fit the tracks very well around the back because of their stiffness so for the front, I decided to separate a run of tracks into single ones and glue them individually.

Also, Armo produces this kit - from the pictures on their site I can see that it is better than the SP but it is also usually much more expensive. I think the SP Designs kit is OK, like I said - it has good dimensions and good fit of the hull. However I have recently bought their AZM engineering vehicle (based on the MTLB) and I'm sorry to say that the hull has very bad fit. It must have come before the Skif kit and some major mistake was made during the creation of the masters because there gaps are more than 1mm in some places. Still, I would recommend the ASU.

Paul, thanks for the info. I'll have to look for one some time. Thanks again. "Q"

Nice build to me.
I built some of SP kits and I agree with you about the cast especially when rivets and things like that are concerned. But Sergej provides us with so different and original kits that it's not that important.

You could weather a little more your model. Just one or two points : the black searchlight should be glossy like all IR lights and you missed the vision ports (on the right side it is the oval shaped part under the log, on the left one it is the one in front of the spade).

Thanks for sharing this one and your experience with the AZM (one I wanted to build !)

olivier

Thanks Olivier. I don't think I will weather it any more - not the best weathering and it certainly doesn't look like a vehicle in Afghanistan, but I don't really like redoing old stufff and I don't know how to improve it. However I will paint the searchlight gloss - I just thought that it was a cover over it and painted it as fabric. The vision ports on the sides - I don't know if they are supposed to be glass, from the pictures it looked like those were metal hatches from the inside of the vehicle.

I agree that SP Designs provide some very good model lubjects: the radar MTLB series, the BTR conversions, and with some work they can look as good as any other resin kits.

Oh by the way Matthew, I forgot a very big point about these modes - they are now out of production (or soon to be). When I was buying mine, Jacques told me that he had the last batch and after that they'd go OOP because of low demand. The site has them out of stock but you could try reaching Jacques to see if he has any left that are just not listed in stock.

If you want I can contact you both when I continue working on the AZM again for a closer look at it.

Looks great! Why not enter it in the "Seeing Red" contest?

Thanks Peter. I think you can only enter models that you build during the campaign and this has been done for a few months now. Anyway, I can check with the staff or campaign leader about this.