m109 paladin

I haven't built it yet, but I have 2 on the shelf. I served in the first Paladin-equipped unit at Fort Sill, OK and am eager to build it. Fortunately I took lots of photos to use as references. Here are links to a few Paladin-spottings on Missing Lynx
http://www.missing-lynx.com/gallery/modern/m109a6_hyoungmin.html
Kevin Kenny's great looking Paladin is at:
http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/modern/kkpal/kkpal.htm

bill

Revell M109A6 Paladin is a reboxed Italeri Paladin and a great Kit. It builds up nicely OOB. Can look really great with a little TLC.

I have built four of the Italeri Kits and can say that they are an excellent kit to build. The lower hull has not changed from Italeri's earlier M109 kit and still has the flotation kit molded onto the lower hull. I have yet to see and M109A6 with this and it could be removed and filled in. The turret does do a nice job of covering this up and if you leave off the air hose connections you will not see them too much as long as the turret is not turned.

With a little hard work and dry fitting the travel lock can be fully functional. Pay very close attention to mounting the gun tube to the turret. I had to shim it on all of them to get the correct placement. Also, the front left corner needs some strip stryene to fill in a gap forward of the battery compartment. The air vent on the turrets front left door needs to be re-worked to have bolt heads in an offset triangulat pattern to the rim. The instructions for the headlights are wrong. They should be painted the same way on each side (headlight on the left, when facing the front, and the blackout drive light is on the right). I replaced the kit supplied mantlet cover with one made from tissue paper so that the gun could be elevated.

I have a few more notes lying around but am not sure of Revell is using the same instruction sheet or folows the same part numbers. If it does, I can tell you what I modified, left off or what not.

Skybow makes a really nice set of tracks for the M109 family and if you can find one, it will make a nice addition to the kit!

I have pictures of each one, but have not yet figured out how to post them here. Good luck on your build!

I've built it and I have pics posted of it and I'm also an artilleryman in the 7th field artillery. I posted a lot of refference pics of paladins for people to use.
There are a lot of things you would have to do to the kit if you are trying to keep the kit as reallistic as possible, when you look at the ref pics you'll see what I mean, the biggest is the haul, we don't have those things that make a "V" shape that would e just below the front of the turret. The rest are easy corrections ?

Gday,
I was wondering about who'd make a good Paladin kit after seeing so much footage of them in action during the war in Iraq.They looked very cool,so I was glad to see this entry and the replies containing the links.Thanks guys!
Sulo

As stated, the hardest thing to fix is the air trunk under the turret's 'chin'. Get some reference photos and have fun. For modelers, the nice thing about Paladin is that it fires buttoned up and is seldom emplaced (with the spades). One of these days, I'm going to do one of 'my gun' with a full interior and stowage (cut away?).. maybe even with the old guy (me) in the Chief's seat.

My best to all the other 13B's out there!

Ron.

HOAOH!

I unfortunatelly, or at least since I was switched to another section have been thrown back to the CAT ( FAASV for you non arty types )

hey arty thought i might have lost ya..havent seen you inna while...back to the fassv huh...glad to know that...time to build mine again...Thanks Ray

O- yeah and one important thing, I've seen a lot of Paladins made up very nice but one thing, we don't have all metal tracks, we have rubber pads in the center of the track shoes. The tracks almost always when they come to us new are coated in a tar protective layering ( pain in the arse to work with when we put new track on ) so most of the tracks if new would look like a hodge podge of black tar and rust all over it.
but you will not see metal on the track pads, the shoe kinda cups the rubber pad and can be seen, but you can tell a difference in the two.

something else that would help , is what unit do you plan to go off of?

Hey Redleg,

I'm assuming the conveyers are long gone in your CATs?

Ron.

Ron,

most definatelly.

I think we still have some of the mounts floating around inside? and my alltime fav for layouts are the rivets we still have to lug around O-yeah and the mending plates, gotta love'm?


(I think all the conveyers are rusting in some shed somewhere?)