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The venerable Tamiya kit, I've built this beastie before, straight out of the box, Sgt York 3 by phil da greek, on Flickr This is typical early eighties Tamiya, I remember building this as a teenager a long time ago. I can't find anything on the box or the instructions to tell you how old, but the blurb on the front of the instructions talks about "the first batch of 50 vehicles will begin construction in May 1982". So it's dated. A bit of history then. The vehicle / system is named for Sgt. York who won the CMH in the first world war. It was also the first tracked system not to be named after a General officer and was also the star of a really bad Eddie Murphy movie years and years ago. In April 1977 the US Army announced a bidding process for a vehicle mounted AAA system to complement the M163 Vulcan and replace the very old M42. Five bids were submited and ultimately the design by Ford Aerospace was chosen in May 1981, with a fixed cost of $6.97 BILLION. Initially called DIVAD (Division Air Defence) Ford used two 40mm L/70 Bofors guns with a modified Westinghouse fire control system, using elements from the system installed in F16's. Initial tests were good and showed the system to be about 40% more effective than the West German Gepard. Something I've also built; Flakpanzer Gepard 3 by phil da greek, on Flickr The system is mounted on a modified M48A5 chassis and has a crew of 3, driver, commander and gunner. It was envisaged a total of 618 vehicles would be produced and each armoured division would have 36 M247 and 12 Chaparal (Low Altitude Surface to Air) (AIM 9 Sidewinder) systems with the M163 Vulcan. The system generally fell out of favour after it encountered development problems and the realisation that the Warsaw Pact forces were bringing on line new attack helicopters that could engage the M247 well beyond the range of the 40mm guns. The project was eventually shelved in August 1985 with 50 vehicle / systems having been produced. But I like it, it's an ugly brute and the kit comes with very little detail, i guess being developmental when the kit came out they wouldn't know too much about it. So a bit of room to explore then. What if, for instance, the Israeli's had taken a shine to it. This ties in nicely with my continuing interest in the IDF, what if they had taken it, made it work and continued to improve on the idea. Say a new fire control system, better engine, more stowage etc. Well let's see what happens.

A couple of Tamiya classics, that is to say, old. The girls got them for me at Christmas, finding them on ebay, both for a tenner! They gave me them almost apologetically, afraid I wouldn't like them! Being Tamiya they pretty much fell together and only needed glue and paint, the only problem I found was the age of the decals, most of the Gepard ones were okay but the Sgt. York ones fell apart. They were both brush painted in Humbrol enamels and it was a first for me, painting a more complicated camouflage on a vehicle. The Sgt. York is in "European Winter" and the Gepard is the NATO tri colour scheme. Both are completely out of the box and I have to say were great fun to build. So my first two totally 2017 builds completed. Sgt York 1 by phil da greek, on Flickr Sgt York 2 by phil da greek, on Flickr Sgt York 3 by phil da greek, on Flickr Flakpanzer Gepard 1 by phil da greek, on Flickr Flakpanzer Gepard 2 by phil da greek, on Flickr Flakpanzer Gepard 3 by phil da greek, on Flickr Hope you like them & please share any comments but as always, the number of rivets may not be correct!