Hi guys
We had one of these (and the "Puppchen" 88mm rocket launcher) in the shop so I decided to get one and build it as a diversion from trying to build up enthusiasm for finishing my E25...
The kit's quite nice, apart from a few mould seams, most of the parts fit together very well and it's quite a large bit of kit when finished - the gun on its own is nearly 15 inches long! The instructions could be a lot better, there are several parts with no apparent homes, and the instructions miss out quite a few part numbers and even list the main turntable part number as being a question mark. You do get a nice turned aluminium gun barrel in the kit as well as 4 ammo magazines and 12 shells. The shells didn't seem to fit very well in the magazines, they look too small to me, so I built up one magazine as an empty one. I've almost finished building the gun itself, most of the parts are in primer and the main gun is in matt black at the moment, I'm going to try and find a pencil to sand down so I can use the graphite powder to make it look metallic.
The gun is going to be on a small diorama (or is it not a diorama without figures?) showing it sitting behind a sandbag wall on a road, with lots of empty magazines and shell casings lying around, indicating that the gun has been used to fend off an enemy attack down the street but has run out of ammo and been abandoned. I've spent the last few evenings casting extra magazines out of resin, so far I have 13 extra mags, I'm looking at having a total of 25 to 30 magazines strewn around the place. The plan for the gun itself is to paint it panzer grey, weather it, then paint 3 tone camouflage over it then weather it again, giving it the look of a gun that's seen a lot of use in various places. Only the "outside" of the gun will be painted in 3 tone, ie the more difficult to reach areas between the side frames, under the gearboxes, etc will still be in original grey. I'm not planning to put much rust on the gun as I'm sure the crew would look after it. I'll probably put some brick dust and rubble on and around it as if a nearby building has been hit. I've seen some walkaround pictures of a flak 38 which is in a private collection somewhere and is in a right state, covered in rust and flaking paint, mine won't be like that, it'll be weathered and worn but not neglected.
I'll try and get some pictures up over the next couple of days. I've also invested in some decent paint brushes and a couple of tubes of windsor and newton oil paint for doing the few rusty bits on the gun, a few of the magazines will be chipped and rusty as well. All I need now is some decent weather (In England? Yeah right...
) and an adapter for my airbrish to fit it to my air compressor.
-Steve
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