I'm going a diorama set during the Gulf War and was wondering, what sould I put in it to make it a little more interesting? I've seena bunch of pictures from the Gulf War and the vast majority of the time the landscape is pretty flat with very little brush. I know that this isn't exactly thrilling to the eye, so what can I do to spice it up?

The landscape is what it is. It's like a giant beach - without the surf. Adding a shrub or a rock would probably look nice, but it wouldn't represent reality too well. I'd consider adding a man-made feature. How about a stretch of oil pipeline ? You could easily remodel a piece of PVC pipe that is used to host electric wiring. But even without adding any features the sand can be made to look interesting. Add tracks and footsteps, and just the slightest change in elevation ?

Grasshopp12

Add a lot of rocks and pebbles in it as the most desserts consists of 20% sand and 80 % rocks.
This can be easily done with cat litter. just cover the whole base with a white glue/ water mixture and sprinkle the rocks and pebbles (cat litter) over it. while the glue is still wet also sprinkle your sand on top (very fine sand) here and there a small dry plant. et voila a nice dessert underground.
And if you put in a tank... remember that a tank is quite heavy so you could make some track trails in the ground made by the track of course. or else it will look like if your tank came there flying and landed as a harrier :-) :-)

Maybe you could do some iraqi bunker or a dug in tank

my two cents

1.a well made of stones
2.a camel
3.a date palm
4.a meshwire wall section of a petroleum facility
5.U.S road signs-verlinden has one

How about the infamous "berm?"

Have to agree with Faust on this one. ROCKS and more Rocks..Havinjg live in North Africa and S. America for many years, I had easy access to some of the harshest deserts. At night the desert looks like millions of diamonds on the floor. Quite amazing.

I don't think Southern Iraq is very rocky... Kinda more beachy, if ya know what I mean...

well it depends on what models you are putting into the diorama. in all the books written about the SAS in the gulf war they spend alot of time hidden away or traveling through Wadi's, or dryed up river beds. wadi's could give you elevation for your dio. or perhaps if you are thinking more south you could try and scratch build an oil well. how about an irrigation ditch?? perhaps a built up area in kuwait.

Cheers,
Paul

The diorama is going to have an M1A1, an HMMWV, and a total of 7 or 8 figures.

Aahhhhh it's if I'm reading a book by Chris Ryan about his "adventures" in Iraq. Don't know if you were refering to his book (amongst others ofcourse), but he describes the landscape and atmosphere perfectly.... In his book he was also talking about rocky soil , that was so hard it was impossible to dig theirselves in.......

Ah, well you talked me into reading that book again..... If I run across some landscape details I'll let you know...

eagle,
"the one that got away", Chris Ryans book, is deffinetly one of the best. it is truely amazing that guy survived. My personal favorite regarding the SAS in the gulf is "Sabre squadron", its by a guy named Cameron Spence. These authors, plus andy mcnab all talk alot about trying to use the wadi system in western iraq, they also talk alot about the billiard table features of iraq. Plus all these books have some photos in them...

Cheers,
Paul

thanks for tipping me on those books paul. I definatley gonna search and buy the Sabre Sqn.

Thanks !!

Danny

I've seen a diorama in a magazine with a sheridan parked off a 2 lane blacktop (no 55 chev's or GTOs in sight) with some verlinden modern iraqi signs. It looked really good, even with the rest of the diorama essentially being sand.

Jeff

i just thought of one other possibility for an interesting landscape. during the gulf war some of the sas patrols had to contend with snow in iraq. now i know you are using americans for your dio. but i think that delta force was used in the same area in west, north-west iraq with the sas and probly had to contend with some of the same weather problems.

Cheers,
Paul

i found that in VP gulf war eyewitness,wish it helps.
https://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0QwDhAkAUEbfMZWrRybbIFL1aGd0QpI!Js4fV9NchtNBZsErdxT8mP8RDa6MPs4pBq9BruMPbtAl2xBf5Dy7bbfZVjUnNobrDaT2QCV36Zpg/desert.jpg?dc=4675413336557590560

sorry just learning adding photos :-)
linkname

Orrr there are several other options:

1 is that you could make it where your troops are in Kuwait and are next to the beautiful blue sea on the beach there.That gives you two different forms of terrain to work with.

A simple 1 to do would be having your guys on the infamous "Highway of Death" and have some Iraqi or Kuwati signs on the side of the road.You could make it to where you guys have disembarked off the vehicles because there is a huge bomb crater in the road that they have to go around.

And another idea is that you could have some old building ruins and some palm trees aorund it,making it look like your guys are either entering or leaving a Iraqi village that has been there for years.

go out and get some real dirt. I've got jars full of different shades. I use a couple of different shades, but first I paint my board a representative color. If i"m going to have any contour, I'll use real thin styrofoam. this is geat if you're going to have a road because you can run several vehicles over it and create tire tracks. I get a super-fine shifter and sprinkle my dirt onto a newspaper. Then I hand sprinlke the shifted dirt onto my base. Wet it down with white glue spray, let it sit for a few hours come back and do itagain. Rocks need to be done sparingly. It's hard to get them that small. Cat litter looks like boulders in 35th scale.

how about a dead cow..HEHEHE #:-)

it would look nice and eye catching if you didn't pay attention to the dirt like if you put some surrendeing iraqis.