Just caught this one Troy.

Your model looks grand! I'm always impressed when I see how you and others can use an airbrush freehand. I don't have that talent - yet.

Such a good looking armor model! I do envy your skills.

Hi Svenne, thanks.

honestly, though I’ve walked past many times, I’ve only been to Hearns once. Found the staff rude and how they hover over every customer like they’re there only to steal stuff is a disgrace. May have changed now, but I haven’t been back. In the city I go to Metro Hobbies, or when home in Narre Warren, the HobbyMan, but because I’m a timepoor joe, I must admit most of my kits are bought online from BNA model world who are also here in Melbourne. Thanks for checking out my build.

Hi Troy,

sorry to wake up late on this, excellent build!

Need to walk through your blog from start but hey, this looks just - very good!

Where do you get your kits in Melburne these days, Hearns still open?

Svenne 

That's a good kitty.

Sorry for the long time between updates. I've kind of been distracted lately and not much work had been getting done.  I have however now finished the Leopard this afternoon.  Please let me know what you think.

My collection of Aussie Armour is growing with a few more to come in the stash.

Ohhh, the camo looks great! Almost to the finish line!!! 

Btw: Envy you guys, it's cold and wet every day up here. Guess we'll be switching around in six months though... 

Work is really quiet this time of year, so I took the opportunity to have a three day weekend and took yesterday off.  This allowed me to gloss coat, apply the decals and seal them.  I love this warm weather and extra daylight. The Leopard is really looking the goods now.  Not long to until its finished, though there is still some work to do. 

That Leopard is looking great! 

I didn't get the gloss coat on, but I did get a lot done on the stowage gear. I modified a fridge left over from an ASLAV kit to fit in the left basket and painted up some fuel and water jerry cans for the right.  I also found I had one of Mouse Houses milk crates and gas bottles tucked away in a box, so on they went too.  I need to make up a sandbag sack to have the bottle sticking out of in the crate, but haven't figured out I'm going to portray that yet. I'll need to order a set of Mouse Houses carbon fibre antennas and bases, as I stuffed up the two bases I had trying to drill them out.

Detail painting is underway and the tracks have been assembled and fitted.  I decided to model, C Squadrons call sign 33 "Cunningstunt"  The only problem being that the decals that are available from Mouse House for this tank, don't match the photos I have found of this tank and until I put a call out to the Leopard AS1 facebook group for someone who was in C Squadron 1st Armoured Regiment in the time period I was modelling, I did not know the ARN.  A guy came along and said to the best of his recollection 33 of C Squadron was ARN 27742.  Good enough for me. I didn't have a decal for this ARN, and the decals I did have were not in the correct format colours.  On top of that, the decals for chevrons on the side were not the correct dimensions going by the photos I have. So out came the silhouette cutter and I made up new chevrons, call sign numbers for the turret, and the ones I'm most happy with the ARN numbers and bridge classification rating, which in all the decals I have (which are a lot) are yellow circles with the number 44. In their later career, the bridge classification number is subdued and painted in the same colours as the ARN.

Anyway, enough chatting, here are photos of my progress to date. I'll hopefully get a gloss coat down tomorrow morning, so I can get the Leopard head, Christmas tree and 1st Armoured regiment badge decals on tomorrow night. Stowage and tools will follow after that.

Great job there on the camo!!!

And interesting difference between lighting conditions. I tried mixing my own colours under incandesent bulbs years ago and wondered why everything looked waaaaaaayyyyyyyy off under sunlight. Some figures I did had skin that looked almost as yellow as Homer Simpson...

Beautiful build and that bustle rack looks great.

 After my porterhouse steak dinner last night, I was feeling quite energetic.  Surprising after a day chained to the desk, so I popped into the office and started masking up the Leopard. The Panzer Putty and Blutac techniques were not working out for me, so instead I decided to attack the next two colors free hand.  Low pressure, minimum needle retraction, two airbrushes. 2.5 hours later I was feeling very happy with myself as the camo was looking exactly how I wanted it.  The SMS range of paints are amazing and the colours spot on compared to the paint chips I have of the real things.  Dinner at my folks place tonight, but I'll be back at the workbench Thursday night to paint up the tracks and start on some detail painting. 

Its amazing the difference in the colours when shot under different lighting conditions.  the first two photos were shot under cool white LED's, these next few outdoors in the early evening dusk.

Had to get a pic with the painted up bustle rack on to. 

Looks pretty darn good to me. Love that colour green and congrads on getting all those track links assembled. 

The first colour of the three colour Aussie Camo has been put down. I'm using a localy produced paint from Scale Model Supplies (SMS)  This is their Camo Green. 

A couple of hours over the last two days has also seen the tracks assembled. 

From this...

...to this.

Back to work tomorrow for the first time this year.  It's been a great couple of weeks off where a lot has been achieved.  I'll put the next two colours of the cam down over the week and then begin the detail painting.

Thanks.  It's a little out of shape, but that can be attributed to being bashed against a few gumtrees.

That bustle rack looks great! I always mess something up and have to cover it with storage or a tarp but that looks perfect.

With the completion yesterday of the bustle rack, the majority of assembly is now complete.  I still have to do the machine guns on the cupolas and fit the antennas, both to be done after painting, but the next thing to be done is to start on the tracks, which I plan to start on today.

Yeah. the extra parts are the cherry on top!

Always good to see her come together ready for paint.

With the Chinook finished, I've spent the last few days back on the Leopard. The body is finished assembly wise and work on the turret is progressing well.  I think I have made a mistake putting the side skirts on so early, without the tracks being fitted yet, but I wanted to fit and paint them at the same time I painted the chassis. Fitting the tracks will be fun, but not impossible.  More to come next year.

I'll make up a jig for assembling the tracks. Always fun, but you know I like to torture myself with something on every build.

Happy and safe New Year, everyone.

She's coming along great!

Last day of leave, back to work tomorrow. Spent a few hours on the Leopard.

Although I'm not really into modern armor, I'll be following your build because it looks like an interesting subject and you have gone to a lot of effort to describe what you're doing with this kit, so I'm interested to see what's next.

Hope you enjoy " They shall not grow old". It looks fascinating. Hope to see it someday myself. 

Oh very nice work there!!! I've seen some really good reviews of the Meng Leopards and look forward to following along with you. Always admired the looks of this tank, a very clean and streamlined design.