Just saw this car on my way to work and wanted to share these two pictures with you. First I tought, nice, the driver had a P-40 Warhawk as model, but with those black U.S. emblems, this should be post-ww2. Maybe the sharkmouth design was taken from the Cobra Helicopter or the A-10, many pictures of them with a painted mouth can be found on the web.
A funny coincidence since I made a picture of this some weeks ago.
At the moment I am finishing the BM-13 post, it will go online in some minutes.
After the Soviet forces crossed the inner German border, big parts of Germany were conquered and sucessfully defended by them, while their allied Warsaw Pact forces rushed forward to reach the French border.
It is still unclear, what happened to F-WTMD. NATO and Warsaw Pact accuse each other. An small East German unit was near while the crash happened and reached the crashsite first.
It seems the Eastern forces concentrate in the Rheinland, ready to attack France. Then it is time to get these into service to defend their homeland.
You may know this kit from a previous post, it is the Master Modell 1:100 Dassault "Mercure" which got a closer look in this post. Pictures of the built modelkit can be found in this post.
This was built in a typical manner, some sand, paints and flock, and voila, it was done. Of course, this did not went fast, I spent the whole Sunday on these pieces. Two pieces were already started and two more were built from scratch.
But I wanted something more. I had some flickering LEDs and wanted to install them into some of the wreck pieces. I improvised the LED holders using some metal and LEGO parts and much glue and brought them into place with my trusty hotglue gun.
These things look creepy but they do their job well.
The the rear "smokepiece" is removable to reach and change the battery of this thing. LEGO pieces are used as connectors and this works well. Also a switch was added.
When everything was in place, I added some "smoke" using cotton. This made a little mess, but in the end it works as supposed. Then I gave the cotton pieces a fat layer of clear varnish to add some strenght to the cotton followed by some black to darken the smoke.
How this thing looks now, when it is finished, can be seen in the video below:
-
Originally I planned to post yesterday, but I was in the mood to continue the work on these pieces and to prepare them for today. I hope I will be able to finish and upload the BM-13 and Katyusha posts tomorrow, since they are roughly finished it will not take too much time.
Todays roguish Montagmaler session was nice. While my mate Olli gave
one of his tanks a fine paintjob, he painted a very nice German camouflage pattern, I built the electonics for these
scenery pieces.
Even when I was sceptical while I worked on them yesterday, the result has a pleasing appeal, and I can not wait to see them on the battlefield.
A closer look at the 1:100 Soviet SU-76M self-propelled gun model kit. This kit is produced by the Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame range. But as all 1:00 Zvezda model kits, this model could be used for any 15mm world war 2 wargame.
After we too a closer look at the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76 model kit in a previous post, today let us see, what Zvezda has to offer with its SU-76 kit:
The kit comes in two green sprues made in the same plastic as all other Soviet units for Zvezdas ww2 and ww3 wargames. The casting is without any flaws, there is virtually no flash to remove. The absence of any sinkholes and visible ejectormarks is a very nice feature, and the only mouldlines you would have to remove can be found on the tracks, the barrel and some smaller parts.
The tracks on this kit are made well, it seems that the newer Zvezad 1:100 tank kits do not lack as much track detail as their first released kits.
What was most surprising, is the grade of detail of the crew compartment, as you can see on the picture below. Please note that the gunsight was not installed on the picture.
As usual, this kit can be built without the use of glue, but the plastic takes normal modelglue well and binds fast
With the SU-76 Zvezda offers a nice modelkit with a good amount of details. I could not find any negative points on the kit itself, but the addition of decals and crewmembers would have been nice.
But for its low price and the quality of the kit, I only can recommend this kit as an addition for your Soviet ww2 army.
This kit was built pretty fast and I had no issues with this, but you should carefully read the included instruction leaflet, since the construction of Zvezda 1:100 kits sometimes can be a little, ahm, special (?).
The picture shows, how it looks, when this thing is built and painted:
In one of the next posts, the Zvezda SU-76 will be compared to the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76, which of them would I rather recommend ?
A closer look at the 1:100 Soviet BM-13 Katyusha game expansion produced by the Russian modelmaker Zvezda for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame range. This kit was a nice alternative to the resin/metal BM-13 kits made by Battlefront Miniatures, but BFM recently released a new Katyusha plastic modelkit, you can find a video here.
I bought one of these kits some months ago and used it as a base for my ZIS-6 truck with a 37mm aa gun built, but since I also wanted a Katyusha rocket launcher, I got this kit a second time, but without any more words spents, let us take a look at the modelkit of this game expansion:
First of all, you do not get what you see on the boxart. There is no armoured windshield, the rails of the launcher do not have any holes, and there are only rockets for the upper part of the launcher rails. This sucks, but as we saw in the Bradley review, this happens sometimes with Zvezda kits.
The kit comes in two green sprues, and as usual, this modelkit is made fom the same green plastic as all other Soviet "Art Of Tactic" 1:100 tank kits. The casting quality is good, what I expected, since most Zvezda wargaming modelkits are made very well.
It could be built without the use of any glue, all parts fit and sit well without it, but using regular modelglue works fine on this kit.
I did not find any issues on the sprues, except for some mouldlines which have to be to removed, but there is minimal flash, no sinkholes, and any ejectormarks (if there are some on the parts) would not be seen, when this kit is built.
The frame parts of the launcher are pretty delicate, that you have to take care not to bend them, but they look nice when built.
Once again we have a 1:100 "Age Of Tactic" modelkit, which I recommend, even when you do not get what you see on the box. The overall grade of detail is well done and for its price it could be a cheap alternative to the resin/metal and plastic wargame model made by BFM. Maybe I will get my hands on one of those plastic kits in the future, then I will take a closer look at it.
If you want to built a "real" 1:100 BM-13 model kit, you will have to wait til one will hit the market, you may use the Zvezda kit as a base, but this would take a lot of work, even when drilling up the windows would not be as complicated as it would be for Zvezdas 1:100 Opel Blitz.
Today I do not have a picture of my built and painted Katyusha truck, I keep this for a future post, when I will show the simple modifications I did to improve its look.
Instead of this you can listen to the beautiful Russian song "Katyusha" from which the BM-13 got its nickname.
