This is the completed kit.  I did not intend to do any weathering, but I wonder now if I should maybe try a pinwash and/or some dry brushing to try to bring out some detail.

My first real challenge - and screw-up

Had to drill some holes for the racks.  Thought I was being clever, and glued from the inside, but put too much glue on, it ran through the holes, so now I have some great big fingerprints to sand off!

The rack was also broken while still on the tree, so I am not quite sure how I will get it to glue together solidly.  Build and learn.

The interior is pretty sparse, just not much there.

The dash is mounted to the body.  This is not much of a picture of it.

Hello!

I don't think I would buy a model kit that has a die-cast chassis if I had other choices - it's so much harder to glue and my favourite liquid glue wouldn't glue it well. I don't really understand the point of this.

As for the Sky color - it's a color that once had been used on British aircraft, for the underside. The name still seams strange, but that was the official name. Once, during WWII there was a regulation requireing the british aircraft to wear a fuselage band in that colour (around the aircraft tail), also the prop spinners were often painted this colour.

Good luck with your project and have a nice day

Paweł

Now that's a vehicle we dont' see every day!  Very interesting....I'm keeping an eye on this one!

Yeah, good luck with her, looks like a really cool subject there.

Looks like you're off to a good start, keep us posted.

That Sky color is probably their best match for a color modern armor modelers know as Sea Foam Green. It is a pale green color often used as the interior color of modern AFVs like the M113, M2/3, etc.

Well the instructions call for Tamiya XF-21 on the interior, which they call "Sky".  I have no idea why they call it Sky, because it looks like a kind of celery green. I mix all my own colors, so I am just looking for something I like. I am not sure I like this, or if I want to go darker green. 

I plan on painting the exterior a green/black that I have seen in some pictures.  For a modern vehicle I have had very poor luck finding reference pictures.

It is a pretty cool kit. A friend gave me one around 2003 or 2004, shortly after it was released. I think the diecast chassis was a nod to the thought of selling this as a pre-built display kit. It was one of the first JGSDF vehicles to be deployed outside of Japan.

The diecast chassis also protects the crewmen better than plastic in case of a scale model IED attack by resin insurgents.