New Arivals on the Painting Table

I've been doing a lot of terrain work for the last few months, but not much in the way of figure painting, though not for a lack of interest.  Just that all of my time and space has been occupied with the terrain.  But, over the last week, the bug to work on figs finally overtook me, so here is what I've started working on (In addition to another terrain project).

Late last year, I picked up a number of items, including some Zvezda Soviet trucks, some SA6 launchers and radar from QRF, and my daughter got me some M35 trucks from Old Glory for Christmas.  Over the last few days, I've managed to get these assembled.

The Ural 4320 trucks are my first zvezda kits.  To be honest, I'm not a big fan of plastic vehicle kits for 15mm.  As with my 20mm Vietnam stuff, I find the plastic to be too light, sliding down slopes and unable to "mash" a small piece of lichen , such that they end up "floating" above the table, when moving through brush.  Due to my style of games and terrain, they do not perform as well as metal and resin models.

Whining aside, they went together quickly and simply, were masterfully engineered and manufactured, and are beautifully detailed.  I got three of them for about $4 total through a credit card promotion and couldn't pass them up, as I have a truck shortage.  I'll deal with the weight, or lack there of, and am very happy with the models.

1/100 Zvezda Ural 4320

Next up are the Old Glory M35s, these were supposed to be the version with pintle mounted HMG on the cab roof, but the contents of the bag were without the HMG, and had soft canvas roofs.  Not a big deal, and otherwise are fine models.  There we as a little cleanup around the fenders/ running boards, and some evidence of mold decay on the front wheels, but easy enough to clean up and the parts fit together nicely.

15mm Old Glory M35

Last are my favorites out of this batch of models, the QRF SA6 Gainful SAM launchers and Straight Flush radar.  The SA6 launchers may look a little intimidating to assemble, but ended up being easier than I thought.  The two little tanks fit in locator holes on the back of the vehicle, that needed to be drilled out a little with a pin vise.  The travel rest for the missles mounts into two small rectangular protrusions on the raised engine cover.  I drilled locator holes for the rest, glued it in place, and then tilted it to the rear of the vehicle as I intent to have my launchers in launch configuration, rather than travel.  Next, I pinched the tabs at the hinge end of the erector inward slightly, such the they lightly grasp the hinge  pin, cut a short piece of .0625 brass rod and bent it slightly for the leg of the erector, and glued it to the base.  The upper frame of the erector was then glued into place along the hinge and at the leg.  The missiles were left off, and will be attached after painting.

15mm QRF SA6 Launcher

 

15mm QRF SA6 Gainful Missiles

The Straight Flush radar vehicle has a bunch of pieces, and again can be quite intimidating. I just went off of photos of actual vehicles, and hopefully, my pics might be of some help for those with questions about construction.  the general arrangement of the dishes and cylinders is relatively obvious.  The upper cylinder can rotate independent of the lower cylinder based on photos, and I mounted mine offset to the rear of the large cylinder.  I attacked the rectangular dish to the large cylinder using the two little supports included in the kit.  These supports are fiddle, so take your time, and once past this stage, the rest of the kit goes much more easily.  A boxed affair with a flat deck attaches to the right side of the upper cylinder. Once the upper dish and it's supporting structure are assembled and attached to the top of the upper cylinder, there is a roughly "L" shaped gizmo that extends off of the left of the upper dish structure.  There is no obvious locator hole for this part, and it seems to be of a different design on every picture that I found, so I just drilled a hole in about the right place and glued it in.

15mm QRF SA6 Straight Flush radar

I also made some modifications to the radar and left side gizmo.  I added supports the the both radars wish roughly .015 inch brass wire.  The large rectangular dish receive two, generally "V" shaped supports, and two short straight pieces were added to the round dish.  These aren't necessary, and can't really be cast in tin alloy, thus they aren't provided, but dress up the model a little.  Additionally, I added a short length of square cross section plastic the end of the left side gizmo.  Again, this part has apparently evolved  much over the years, changing shape considerably.  I just arbitrarily picked a design based on being able to see the approximate mounting point, and went with it.  My modifications may not be exactly right, but I'm happy with the result.

15mm QRF SA6 Straight Flush radar from the rear.

Now, if I can just find my paint brush, I can get some paint on these guys.