Team Yankee - Bringing back the green

I started with a base of NATO green on all of the modern vehicles. As I added the Matte Black and the NATO brown, the green started to get a bit lost with the overspray. In this next session I went back in and went over the green again. I originally considered going in with a slightly lighter green but in the end went with it straight from the bottle. I also added Olive Drab (the modern version) to the tent at the back of the M577 and added some APC Interior green to some of the exposed interior side of open hatches as well as to the actual interior of the M106. I'm still really liking the AMMO paints at this point.

A look at the progress so far:

The paints for the evenings work.

Taped up so I could spray the APC interior green. I'm not quite sure how these should actually be painted now that I have done it. The NATO Green was probably more correct for the hatch interior. It did lighten up the interior though and you can actually see a little bit of the detail inside.

Like I said, this green is very bright. I'll have to check and see if this actually correct or not. It might get repainted.

Here is the M577 taped up so I could spray the back with "modern" olive drab

You can see the NATO green a lot better at this point too.

The Khurasan M113s. The green looks better and now there is that bright spot on the exposed hatch.

The five M1s are looking good. A little detail painting of the stowage and they will be ready for decals .

Team Yankee - Adding some black and brown

With the green in place it was time to attempt the rest of the Nato three color camo to the accumulation of armored vehicles for Team Yankee. I'm still working with the AMMO paints and after I applied the initial NATO Green I'm quite likely them. For the next step I used A.MIG0046 Matt Black and A.MIG0085 NATO Brown.

Since I wanted to do finer work I turned down the pressure on the airbrush to about 8-9 PSI, this would allow me to have the airbrush pretty close to the model and, hopefully, not have to much overspray. The paints performed quite well at this pressure although I did add a drop of my Vallejo Airbrush thinner for this. For the brown the drop was to much and I had to add a little more brown to get a nice line.

In theory, they use templates so that the pattern is the same on every vehicle and there is a different template for each vehicle type. I couldn't fine one specific to the M106 so I just used the one for the M113. I also was not interested in masking off all of these vehicles. So my pattern is roughly similar to the actual pattern with a little modification because of the airbrush. My vehicles came out roughly similar to each other, so I'm happy with that. I feel that I lost way to much of the green on the M113s and M106s, so a I'm going to go back in with the green and re-establish it, maybe with a slightly lighter shade so it stands out more.

You can see here that I really lost way to much of the green and its actually hard to see the brown against the green, although maybe that's actually the point of the camo. I'll still go in and see if I can accentuate the green a bit more.

All of these pictures are just to dark to really get a good look at them. I'll try and remember to take some better pictures before I move on to the weathering phase.

Team Yankee - Prepping M1s and M106s

At this point I'm trying to work on everything at once so that I can prime everything at the same time. Overall the Team Yankee plastics for the M1 and the M113/M106 are really very clean with only a couple of spots that need some work.

On the M1s there is a seam right in front between the upper and lower hull that needs a little attention. I pulled out the Squadron Green and proceeded to fill in this small seam on all five vehicles. 

A little dab is all you need but be prepared to work fast, this stuff dries out quick.

Here you can see the seam that needs to be filled. Its a bit messy right now.

After I finished the M1s I did the same with the M106s. Again the only seam really appears on the front glacis much like on the M1. This is a bit tricky to fill because of some of the detail around it. Had I been paying attention I probably would have filled this seam first before finishing the vehicle.

I also used this opportunity to try and fix the notches in the plastic from where the sprue marks where left from my clippers. The M1s benefited from the use of my x-acto, skipping the clippers.

After the green stuff had dried, which was minutes, I filed smooth the area. I prefer to use a disposable nail file for this has its gentler on the plastic (or resin for that matter). However, I didn't have any available so I worked gently with a file. Most of the file marks are going to be covered over with primer so I didn't get to stressed out about it.

You can see the scratch marks from the metal file here, its why I prefer the disposable nail files for this kind of work. The primer should fill this in.

Looking good so far. I just need some tarps and stuff to add to the vehicles and they will be ready for some primer. I might try a modulated primer style on these just to see if it makes a difference at this scale.

Team Yankee M1 Abrams WIP - Mass Assembly

With two M1s down, I figured I would build all of three of the remaining at the same time just like I did with the M106s. Like the M106 the M1 is a pretty easy kit to build, with a couple of frustrating areas to watch for. I boldly cut out all of the parts so I could just start gluing things together! I did go back to my trusty x-acto knife to do this. In the end I had a lot less clean up to do than with my old clippers. 

Here are the parts to assembly the hull.

Tracks on. These go on quite nicely

The rear engine plate is a key component holding the upper and lower hulls together

The side skirts have nice pin locators but the rear portion of the skirt requires a rubber band to hold it in place while the glue sets.

The finished hulls.

The turret parts, or most of them anyway.

The big issue on the turrets is the storage racks. The locator "pin" is really a strip on the upper side of the turret. Not bad but not great. If you are using the short versions that don't wrap around the back this is fine and your done. With the wrap around version its easier to put on the side racks and attached the back rack to them. If you flip the side rack upside down you will see that the bottom set of bars has indentations that allegedly will fit the bottom plate of the back rack. It sort of works. Using the full wrap around storage is accurate. Team Yankee is set in 1987 and pictures of M1s from the '87 REFORGER exercise have the full wrap around.

Basic turret assembled.

Models Finished!

Team Yankee M1 Abrams WIP - Building

I have slowly been working on the M1 Abrams from the Bannon's Boys box set. The first one I built without the rear turret bustle as that's what the instructions indicated. However, after taking a look at pictures from the REFORGER exercise in 1988 its pretty clear that the extended version with the full rear turret bustle was available and in use.

Note the full rear turret bustle and the overall Forest Green paint job.

So the rest of the box will be built with the rear bustle.

Progress so far:

And the two that are basically finished. They still need some cleanup before I start painting, but I won't do that till all five are finished and ready to go.

M1 with the side racks only

M1 with the rear turret bustle added. It takes a bit of work to make this part go together.

These kits are easy to build and have some pretty nice detail. From a building standpoint there could be more locator pins built into the molds. This would make it a lot easier to line up some of the parts, like the upper hull to the lower hull. I have checked out the Khurasan M1s which are really nice resin and metal pieces but they are a bit more expensive. Battle Front sells a box of 5 plastic M1s for $45, while the Khurasan come in at 13.99 each or 38.99 for a "platoon" of 3.

A few more reference photos by Rene Schatte from the REFORGER exercise: