The Duke's Tribute to Absent Friends.

[Dukemaddog]

I'm adding my project to this endeavor:

Stay tuned. I expect to be starting this in a couple weeks.

[JCON]

Excellent kit to use Mark!!!

[BUCKY]

Cool selection, Mark! Looking forward to your progress!

[Dukemaddog]

Thanks guys!

[ARMORGUY]

Carl would have loved to build this kit I'm sure !!!

[Dukemaddog]

Thanks AG. I'm not sure if he hadn't already done so. I just hope I can do enough justice to this to honor him and his skill.

[BUCKY]

I'm sure it will be just right, Mark!

[Dukemaddog]

Thanks Bucky! I do have a whole SoCal AMPS club to help me out in person as well as the tips here online.

Coming soon!

[feldgrau23]

Looking forward to seeing you do 1/35th scale Mark. Heck that turret will be as big as,, if not bigger,,than some of your braille scale tanks LOL

[JED]

Looking forward to this Mark

[Dukemaddog]

Thanks guys. Best laid plans did not come to fruition. I took longer than expected finishing all my seven eight-wheeled trucks so this remained in the box. Hopefully soon.

Rich, you are right. That turret will overshadow at least 1/8th of my collection.

[JCON]

When you can works fine Mark!!!

[Dukemaddog]

Okay, I have begun. First a bit of context.

This past year, I lost four good Forum friends; three of whom I wanted to meet in person. All were decorated veterans and overall outstanding modelers. Some of you may have known them from past Forums. They are:

Chad Lebo aka Zod
Cliff aka New Mex
Rich Durham
and Carl aka Shellback,

This is the model I am building as a tribute to them all. I chose this particular model because it is:

-> One of my all-time favorite tanks.

-> it fits in my SoCal AMPS chapter's Patton Group Build for the next West Coast IPMS Nationals.

and -> Carl himself did such an outstanding job on one of these models.


I can only hope to do as well.


Here is the kit:




Here is my progress on this model. All this work was done on both Hobby Days Friday and Saturday.

The first thing I did was to assemble the two drive sprockets and then match up all the roadwheels and assemble all the return rollers:



I'll paint the tires separately and add them before I install the roadwheels. I left everything on the sprue so I wouldn't lose them. That is a chronic problem I have...

Next was to add all these detail parts to the lower hull. I'm not quite sure exactly what they are, but they are all on there now:



After that, I added the return rollers to the upper hull, making this look like the wildest lowrider I have ever seen:



Letting that dry, I moved on to do the basic assembly on the turret:



Later on, I cemented the upper hull to the lower hull, adding the turret to this to see how it looked:



That does look really funky with the unfinished rear area. I just had to take this further by assembling the rear engine covers and louvers:



That's where I stopped in order to move forward on some of my other projects. You can see them in my usual thread.

Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

[JCON]

Good start Mark!!!

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Wow! That Turret looks dispraportionet to the body.

[JCON]

Once the fenders go on it will look right!

[Dukemaddog]

Joe is right Bruce; once the fender are on, it will look right.

Thanks for the comments guys!

[BUCKY]

Fine looking start, Mark! I have full confidence this will turn out well!

[Dukemaddog]

Thanks Bucky! Hopefully more to come soon.

[ARMORGUY]

Wooooohoooo what's not to like ?