Tinkering with.. Berlin Camo Chieftain

The progress so far.... Just finished the basic masking and airbrushing stage, these need to dry and be sealed before the detailing and weathering.

Here are two Armies Army Chieftains with pre shade prior to base coat, these are the Iranian ones so a slightly different approach to the Berlin two, below.

These have been also been preshaded but then had their base coat of white applied, now comes the masking.

The Berlin camo is a fixed pattern and applied universally, therefore both tanks needed to look the same. I've followed references so they should be spot on.

Masking being built up, these is really laborious!

Next up the light blue, you probably can't tell from the pictures but there's two shades in use, as usual mixed by eye using tamiya paints.

The blue is masked ready for the top coat brown.

Again another by eye mix, for the brown and green, it will darken on weathering.

The debris! 

So back were I started, pretty pleased with the result so far, a few errors in masking, but I'll rectify that later. 

Weathering to come....

Tinkering with...15mm BTR-D SPAAG Armies Army (Kickstarter)

Sometimes I buy on aesthetic impulse, these BTR-D SPAAGs from Armies Army were just that! The ubiquitous ZU-23-2 has some many options, so I ordered a few. First up are two BTR-Ds with the 23mm mounted, one centrally, one at the rear. 

I added some details around the AA piece, primarily crew seats (a crewman is supplied) and mudguards, I'm not going for 100% accuracy, these are 15mm gaming items after all.

The second was mounted more traditionally, at the rear, again only minor mods just for flavour really.

Crew figures are Peter Pig and battlefront, with some additional tarps added on the rear deck.

Not entirely sure on the future for these, they don't fit in my Middle East extravaganzas, so they will probably be paint opportunities for me and then open to new homes.

I sneaked in another quick mod, this time the skytrex BT152, with mod'd Peter Pig crew ( two missed the photo-op). This will probaby embelish an Egptian HQ's element, but can slip in anywhre really.

neil

Tinkering with....15mm Chieftains - Armies Army (Kickstarter)

If you're of a certain age, and growing up in the UK then there's really only one iconic tank for us... that's the Chieftain. 

A package arrived this week with some lovely goodies from Keith Armstrong's Armies Army Kickstarter. I ordered a number of items, but will focus on the iconic Chieftains here.

If you follow my blog, you'll note my interest in the middle east, primarily '73 October War, but on the advent of Chieftains becoming available, a slight "scope creep" into the Iran Iraq War. So these two will be the first Iranian tanks, no real mods just added some crew from the spares box, I was originally going to have soviet tankers headgear, but it looks like they used American or British tankers helmets (which would make sense I suppose with electrical fits etc). I did add a Peter Pig figure in peaked cap to add some irregularity. 

Of the pictures of non-destroyed Iranian armour, there seems plenty of tarpaulins and stowage crammed on the turrets mainly. I augmented the supplied stowage and racks with some grey-stuff stowage, hopefully to make these as ramshackle as I can.

For the next two Chieftains, with something special in mind later, I built these as they came, one opened up with the AA crew, one closed down, not to much stowage, which will become apparent later.

These four are now primered and curing, it may be while before the get their livery, so watch this space, there's an email subscribe function on the right ----->

As always, any suggestions, errors or corrections welcome, Chieftains are fairly new to me, modelling wise.