- Member since
September 2004
- From: Burke, Virginia
|
M-1151 HMMWV- backdating the Academy kit
Posted by tellis
on Friday, March 2, 2012 2:46 AM
I bought the 1/35 Academy kit when it came out and decided to backdate it to the version my unit fielded in Afghanistan in 2007. This began with modifiying all the armored shields around the gunner as our vehicles did not have the ones with the bulletproof glass.I scatchbuilt these from sheet styrene, the most challenging part was the actual gun shield as it has a unique shape. I also had to discard the Duke antenna and replace it with 2 small antennas on the left rear to model the MMBJ ECW system. The only other modification I made was to install the tall air intake, typical on USMC versions but all ours had the tall intake too. The kit went together with no issues. The interrior was well detailed with radio and Blue Force Tracker equipment. I fashioned some CVC (spaghetti cords) out of speaker wire and a scatchbuilt headset for the gunner. The vehicle was sprayed with Model Master sand, given a gloss coat for the TF Phoenix decals (they came with the kit and are the ones correct for my unit), sealed with Dulcoat and given a light wash of burnt umber acrylic, finalized by a pastel dusting for the desert effect. I wanted the weathering to be mostly dust as these were brand new vehicles.(they still had the new car smell). The base has a map of Afghanistan with a light coat of sand and a commerative dog tag from the TF CSM. comments and questions appreciated. Tim Ellis.
|