Hi all!

I have just joined the campaign as I was trying furiously to make it in time and didn't want to be listed as AWOL.

This is the Dragon T-80 kit with ERA in 1/35 scale. About the kit.... Well, I can just say it shows its age. Plus, it is not what I would expect from a Dragon, yes I know it is the third kit in the whole 1/35 series Dragon ever produced, but I also built the T-72 with ERA (that was the seventh) and it didn't come up with this many problems. If you have patience, you don't mind bending, carving and reshaping, this kit comes together with some hard work. Looking for nice and easy fitting, a walk in the park model kits? Then I would recommend something else.

The construction took me about 3 weekends. 2 were spent for the lower hull (especially the road wheels) and a complete weekend was spent just putting together everything in the turret.





I then decided to try my hand in preshading. It is my first ever try to preshade anything... I first painted (quite roughly) the areas that would receive less light and should look shadowy with flat black (humbrol 33), then I highlighted areas where I thought should receive more light and stand out... The beast looked something like this:





Finally I started to paint the main color (Testors Russian Armor Green no:2129), I thinned the paint and worked in layers. In about 6 layers, the main color seems appealing to the eye (Shouldn't use white flourescent light, the colors look wrong):





Hope I can complete it in my remaining time...

Welcome to the campaign Emre! Looks like your build is coming along well. Your pre-shading effort does look like its paying off.

Based on your progress, i am pretty confident you will be able to complete it in time for the campaign so dont worry too much.

You know, given what you get in the kit, (and believe me, I have been eating/breathing/sleeping T-80 lately) you have really made the kit look a lot better than it simply comes OOB. I know there are a lot of mistakes with the kit straight OOB, but a good build that address' fit issues and the like really helps that old dog of a kit look representable.

Your preshading, as mentioned, also looks to be paying off. Keep up the good work and see you in the bar just past the finish line...heh heh heh.

PS. I am aldo doing my preshading right now on my T-62M m2005. I am adding a KMT-5 mineplow (Skif) to it for pizzaz.

Saw this beast today closely and it really looks good up to now. GO EMRE!!!:}