Mugabia's New Air Defense Weapon

With my eight month long infantry project all but complete, I got the bug to clean up some of the many half finished projects setting all over the basement.  One of the little heaps of pieces that keeps getting moved around is a number of T34 conversions for my African imagi-nation Mugabia.

Mugabia's air force is somewhat out-classes by Uwanda, and though they have a wide range of anti-aircraft weapons, they have little self-propelled ADA. 

Mugabian air defense, 57mm, 23mm, and 14.5mm guns.

Their dozen or so ZSU-57s  are spread pretty thin, so Mugabia's fledgling arms industry has started converting  T-34 chassis, producing self propelled anti-aircraft weapons from existing stocks.  The first of these is the "ZSU 23/2".

Here are a few pics of the nearly completed prototype:

The ZU23/2 turret is scratch-built from styrene strips and brass rod.  The T-34 chassis is one of my own post-war T-34 castings.  I'm still debating whether to put stowage racks on the hull sides or on a rack over the engine deck.  I will probably stop at two of the ZSU conversions, supported by a single ammo carrier also build on a T-34 chassis.

A minor victory, but at least a few less loose bits are floating around the basement this week.

15mm PostWar T34/85

I know that there are a lot of nice 15mm T34/85 models already out there, but since I need a bunch of these for various armies of the Cold-War era and for my fictional African campaign, I decided to make my own. 

Over the years, I have read about various differences between wartime and postwar production vehicles, making mental notes about some of the differences.  I ended up referring to information from private owners of T34/85 postwar tanks and found that much of what I had read was not exactly true.  In the end, my T34/85 only has a couple of obvious features that might distinguish it as a postwar vehicle, but regardless, I'm pretty happy with how it is shaping up and thought I'd post a couple of pics.

The only obvious postwar details visible (almost) in the top photo is the sharp edge to the hull front and the arrangement of the headlights.

There is still a fair amount of detailing to do, and the tracks don't look like much yet, but if I can get a couple more hours free, I should have it done.  I'm not sure that there will be enough interest to offer this one for sale, but I'll probably need about 60-70 of them for all of the stuff that I want to do.