I know Longmoor, did some pre deployment training there years ago. Out of 22 years in the army i spent 12 in an Armoured Inf battalion and probably 2 of that on the plain on and off. We often had people stopping on the roads to watch what was going on and it was fun moving a full battle group across one of the roads which run through the plain.

My battalion moved to the armoured role in 95 just as the last Chieftans were being replaced, so never got to work alongside them. Though we did find a load in storage waiting to be sold off and liberated some of there side bins which made nice additional stowage to te 432's

Bish

Steve, not sure where you are in Hampshire, but if you can, get yourself up to Salisbury plain during the summer, hopefully when theres an excersise on. You will soon see how dirty they get. A couple of days on the plain and you can hardly see the camo for the dust.

 

Hi Bish,

Salisbury isn't so far away, I'm near Guildford so maybe an hour for me. Have seen a few when I did a short job over that way maybe 10\15 years ago. I grew up in a small village next to a large army training area (Longmoor/Bordon) where a lot of new recuits were trained, and they taught them to drive tanks/APC's so saw many, many of those on the roads, bu they were pretty clean most of the time.........even threw a few snoballs at them when they went past the school bus stop all those years ago!! (used to make my pocket money as a kid going over the ranges and picking up all the brass and selling for scrap!).

I'm only fairly recently returned to this hobby, so still doing stuff OOB and watching others builds on this forum and trying to imitate their results, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

Done a few planes, couple of tanks and even a Guillows balsa model my father in law gave me. It keeps me busy when I have one to do.....wife not so keen as shesays she becomes a model widow during those times. Thinking maybe it's time to try a ship next 

Hey Steve,

Great looking Chieftain. The camo looks very nice and I like the dusty weathering of your AFV. It looks like it wasn't playing in the mud. I especially like how your barrel thermal shroud came out. Nice work there.

They certainly put on a good show, but seeing an armoured Battle Group rolling across the plain is difficult to match in a museum. And you get a much better idea of how armour looks when its been out for days on end as opposed to going in doors every night after a nice wash down.

Bish

Steve, not sure where you are in Hampshire, but if you can, get yourself up to Salisbury plain during the summer, hopefully when theres an excersise on. You will soon see how dirty they get. A couple of days on the plain and you can hardly see the camo for the dust.

 

Steve, not sure where you are in Hampshire, but if you can, get yourself up to Salisbury plain during the summer, hopefully when theres an excersise on. You will soon see how dirty they get. A couple of days on the plain and you can hardly see the camo for the dust.

Ah the Chieftain was one of my favorite MBT kits when I first discovered Tamiya!  Gotta love the poses of the crew.  I built mine in 1979 or so.  I acquired another a few years ago for a nostalgia build.  Takom has a bunch of Chieftains in various marks, but I decided to stick with the Tamiya to keep the build fun.

BTW your weathering is not over the top.  

This M1 is in three color camo somewhere under there...

Thanks for your kind words and encouragment Gamera, Stik and Bish. Seems like my idea of dirty is really not dirty :)

And yes, think I'll be trying a few more tanks in the future as this was fun to build.

Thats come out nice, i like it. And good to se more British armour. And its certainly not over wearthered.

Looks good to me! That really is a fun kit. And regarding your weathering, considering how filthy that tanks really get, your weathering is on the light side. That’s where you can REALLY have fun on armor... 

Nice work! The camo looks really good. 

Pretty awesome for your first tank. Looks like you've got the basics down, my only advice is just to build more, practice makes if not perfect at least better!