If you can’t tell i don’t mean modelling as in fashion i mean building modelling kits, i started a few months ago and so far its turning into quite the hobby. my first kit was a russian battle tank by revell which i found easy enough to build (except for my first run in with tracks!). painting it was a whole other story, i think the paint went on way too thick but then it was only my first try and i expected it to turn out much worse.
The following kit is a set of russian special forces known as vimpel, the kit is by zvezda and went together realy well, even the painting seemed to be less complicated than the previous kit. i changed the colours slightly to make them look more like the irish special forces unit. the vimpel were formed as an elite team to deal with terrorism against the soviet union and its states.
Israel's main battle tank came next, the merkava mark III. like the russian tank above it too was a 1/72 scale model by revell. this time there was a few little problems, the main one being when the top part of the tank had to attach to the bottom a gap was left so i made a sort of tow-bar out of left over plastic and filled the gap in, it actually worked. the next problem was the decal sheet that came with it, the decals fell apart so i had to paint most of them by hand. other than that it was a good build and i’d build it again in a bigger scale like 1/35.
The next kit i tried was a german artillery vehicle known as the panzerhaubitze 2000, popular in modern warfare combat zones such as afghanistan. again the kit went together with very little problems and there were no issues with the mould itself. the pzh is quite a remarkable vehicle that has enough firepower to take out the competition the move away without being detected. i spent a long time painting this kit because i wanted it to be as close to the real thing as possible, in the end i think i did a good job with the modern german camouflage scheme.
Finally i’m posting some pictures of a rather quirky camo design i tried, mostly i wanted to see if i could do something different so i picked another modern german kit by revell. the leopard 1A5 is one of germanys main battle tanks so it looks a lot like many other tanks used in modern combat, i figured i might as well try unique camo on something i could always paint properly lately and there are a few different versions of the leopard. for paints i used a mixture of brands from revell/tamiya and even games workshop.
Completed kits in order of build
Russian t80-b tank (Revell 1/72nd scale)
Russian vimpel antiterrorist unit (Zvezda 1/35th scale)
Israeli merkava mrk III tank (Revell 1/72nd scale)
German panzerhaubitze 2000 (Revell 1/72nd scale
German leopard 1a5 tank (Revell 1/72nd scale)
German leopard 2a4 tank (Revell 1/72nd scale) (pics TBC)
German ksk commando unit (Trumpeter 1/35th scale) (pics TBC)
To view larger and more in-depth images of the kits mention head along to the following set on Flickr
An afterthought.. i don’t see war as the answer to any of the worlds problems nor do i support any specific armed forces. i’m simply busying myself with the kits provided by companies like revell and such. on another site someone questioned my liking of palestinian's because i built the merkava tank – not the case. that kind of backwards thinking is something i like to avoid.
