Paulo Mendonça, Porto Trombetas, Pará, Brazil
Paul built Dragon’s 1/35 scale T-80U and placed it in 1988 in the Russian city of Ussuriysk, close to China and North Korea. He says, “At first I was going to model it as brand new, as if ready for a military parade,” he says, “but after spilling a bottle of glue on it, instead I changed the tone of the vehicle and weathered it more to make it look heavily used. So it went from Moscow to a more inhospitable region.” Paulo says his project was part of a greater plan. “I have a lot of kits waiting their turn in the box (who does not?), and in 2012 I decided (at the suggestion of my wife) to accelerate my building with a goal of four kits per month. This T-80 was on the shelf for years, waiting its turn. Now I have opened up space for more boxes!”