Requesting Figure Suggestions! 1/35 Hetzer-Starr by Trumpeter - (New Airbrush Practice Piece!)
I got a new airbrush recently. It's an iwata Eclipse HP-CS. It's gravity fed from a 1/3 oz. cup (big enough to prevent even me from sloshing paint out!) and it's a double action. I've never used a double action before, so before I attacked my MaxxPro kit with it, I wanted to try it out on something I was less involved in. I got this Hetzer kit from a local hobby shop, 50% off for about $26. I even looked online and couldn't find a better deal on that specific kit especially when shipping was taken into account, so needless to say, I was pretty happy with the purchase.
I'd always like the low profile, geometric look of the Hetzer and I remembered a cool camo job our own Karl Logan (the doog) had given one back in the day (and he linked me to which was very convenient) so I decided I'd try my hand at replicating a similar vehicle... even though according to my quick reference, all the Starr configurations had a hard-edged scheme. The Hetzer-Starr by the way (Starr meaning rigid, as in the AT gun was mounted rigidly to the hull with no recoil system and required the vehicle to be in neutral, breaks off) was produced towards the very end of the war, maybe 15 built at the most. When all was said and done, all were either converted back to standard Hetzers or destroyed by the end of the war.
Here was the first test of the iwatat- the (almost complete) engine kit offered by Trumpeter (missing some tubes and things in a few spots. Plus I'm sure all the other stuff I don't even know about).
I did it up in a heavily weathered "Hull Red", as I'd seen somewhere that the older, gray engine interiors had changed color out of the factory to hull red towards the end of the war. Or... if that's not really true, then my model is actually of the 16th Hetzer-Starr built in 1946 and they wanted to make that one hull red. Whichever works? Here's a pretty thorough build review that's helped me out along the way- pretty much where I got my hull red inspiration as well as all the colors of the engine bits.
Mock up:
The rigid mounting system didn't prove to be very effective as it really shook up the crew and the optics to the point of making it, for all intents and purposes, a one-shot vehicle with no reliable follow-up capabilities. So given this near-paper-panzer history, I figured maybe with a little less Allied pressure on the Germans, or a little more luck in the rigid mount system right off the bat, the Hetzer-Starr could have been a more successful design. Maybe more could have been produced, and maybe one of them could have fallen into the hands of a vehicle commander, Heinrich, that was nostalgic for his earlier camouflaged Hetzers with soft edge patterns. Who knows...
But by 1946 the quality of the German paint had really declined, and as Heinrich had improperly mixed his paint-to-gasoline ratio when he applied this soft edge pattern over the older, hard-edge scheme. Not to mention he failed to fully wash the hull with soap and water, and allow it to properly dry. So it eventually chipped off in places. Even a simple drive through thick woods to a sweet ambush spot scraped off chunks here and there... what a shame.
(Yeah, read as: I was watching a few step by step AFV videos put out by Villejo and Mig on youtube and definitely found myself going overboard on the chipping... I guess after the decals, washes, dust, mud, streaks, rust and other things, I'll have to make the call if it was so bad that it couldn't be toned down by further weathering effects and write it off to poor late-war paint quality and Henrich's half@#$ application in the filed 
)
I used some hull red chips in places, but that just looked strange, so I used the darker gray to give it a look more people are... accustomed to? Can't think of how I'm trying to say this. But I think the darker gray with hull red edges adds a little more depth, like the paint went through the primer to the steel or something. Will probably add some silver edges around the hatches and on some big angles in the final steps...
Ah, right. Tracks... 
Oh man! Well. I'm glad I painted it all up first, then decided to worry about the tracks... because the indi link set they give you in this kit made me want to pull my hair out. It's designed to be workable, they give you little pins... I don't know. My blood pressure was up...
I got one side done. Gave up on the pins pretty early on and just used their jig to glue all the links together, then molded them to the wheels while the glue was still set... No longer workable but I never asked for workable tracks so it's all good 
The one run of track took me the better part of today (4-6 hours) to complete. Thats from "on the sprue", to clean up, then jig assembly, glue, mold, prime, and finally paint. I will weather them along with the rest of the vehicle once the other run of track is done. Not sure when I'll get to that. Hopefully I don't put it off and just tackle it over the week, a few hours at a time after work.
BUT! I really need a figure! I left the hatch off so I could stick one either half out, or sitting on the tank dangling his legs in, or something like that. If anyone has a link or some photos of a figure they think could really do a stellar performance as Heinrich, I'd really appreciate it. If he winds up looking defeated or sad, that'd be cool too. Either upset with Germany's war effort as the Allies surround them, or at his own application of paint on his Hetzer-Starr as he really should have primed and prepared the hull surface better... tisk tisk