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Hi, This model I was contracting with breaks almost all 2022, but I did not finished it earlier then few days ago, so it will be No 1 of 2023. The construction started in April within Big and British GB, but I did not manage to finish in time, so then a separate WIP was created. Earlier I asked on WW2 section many question clarifying my doubts and choosing the exact scheme. Here is WIP thread and inside it you have links to two more earlier threads (the GB and WW2 sections). Here it is The machine is K3160, SJ-T, belonging to 70 Squadron of RAF operating in the Middle East and North-East Africa. This seems to be the exactly that machine on which the Abyssinian Emperor Haile Selassie was transported on 2nd September 1940 (following the records in archive of @Sandeha Lynch - many thanks for help! ) The scheme is thought to be Light Earth/Dark Earth (Humbrol 84/29) and bottom of Sky Blue (on photos looks more blue the it is, I mixed 1:1 65+64) . There is some discussion in WIP and WW2 why it is not alu dope, like mostly is given for Valentias of that time. I am sure that for some time they were also black from underside, like tropical Wellingtons for instance. Decals - upper B from Matchbox Heyfors, lower A from Matchbox Stranraer (both+ 40 years old!), side A1 from a Modelcollector RAF large roundel set (courtesy of @rossm many thanks for help also!), fin flashes from 6 Airfix Lancaster Fin Flashes C, codes from 1/48 Techmod Wellington... I have trade on BM the Contrail vacu as an incomplete set - so a lot of scratch work as always in case of old vacu was done (details in WIP), but perhaps even more then normally expected... Rigging, what is a sort of important part here , is by EZ ... Here it is: Some close-ups: Tail Comments welcome Regards J-W P.S I have to made photos inside with limited daylight, the outside today is that as p photo from my window below, hard to compare with summertime in Egypt:

Well model builders, giving a go at converting an Italeri BJ44 to an FJ45 Land Cruiser: The FJ 45, on the left seems to be ubiquitous around the world, but less commonly seen in the US - they are considered something of a treasured find if you come across one of them. Italeri makes a 1/24 kit of the BJ 44, which is also commonly seen, but also, less so in the US. I like pickups, so am going to convert the BJ to an FJ. This will also include a complete rebuild of suspension, axles, engine swap and so on. First steps, comparing the two in a diagram: You can see the most obvious difference being one has a covered area in the back and the other (what I am building) is a pickup. An important feature of both tho, is the rear, wrap around corner windows - thereby eliminating the idea of "just" cutting off the unnecessary roof behind the cab, and instead, cutting off the roof over the cab, and cutting and reusing the rear portion of the roof and back doors: I've got to say, I use Tamyia tape for so many things in addition to masking - among them, setting guidelines for cutting! Embarrassed to say, keeping these cuts on the straight and narrow - more of a task than a guy expected - they're mostly straight lines along flat surfaces - maybe too much coffee that day! When all was said, puttied, sanded, and so on, the cab turned out fine - barely discernable splice! The Italeri kit doesn't have too many parts - at all. The floor pan, truck bed, bottom of the engine, and chassis are all molded in one piece - not what I'm looking for. Rather than fret, a quick trip to the junkbox, and a replacement frame was found. Feeling full of confidence, I cut apart the cab floor, filled some gaps, added the rear facing corner edges (cut from the rear of the kit provided part), added a firewall, and thought we're good to go! As part of my ongoing effort to create my own heavy duty Dana 60 axles, back to the junk box I went - finding idlers from a Bradley and various bits to make up the diff cap, and pinion, then evergreen and alu tube inserts. Had a nearly built engine on hand, which is fine - as the hood won't be openable, but you will be able to see the side of the block and headers between the chassis and fenders, so I need something, and a small block Chevy is a fairly common conversion - funny bit of info, the small block Chevy is lighter than the Toyota I6 - how about that? The Toyota engine BTW is a great runner - I just like adding the V8 😀 Then began trying to get the body to sit correctly on my donor chassis. Problem number one is that the area of the chassis beneath the cab isn't flat - and the base of the cab is - easy enough to fix, but would require some thought - then, I noticed - the FJ and BJ trucks share a similar body mound, below the center of the grill - note the pic in the upper right with the red circle - and that brutal gap.....🤨 How would that get resolved??? Well - a different donor chassis was selected, and a piece of the Italeri part was cut up and modified: As you can see in the left, this was not a pretty job. The Italeri kit part (uni chassis/floor pan) was pretty chunky and not at all realistic. I cut everything in front of the floor pan off, and happily, kept the remnant part handy. I cut the cast in-place, bottom of a motor, out and separated what looks like a chassis from the "flat" front part. Then went about splicing the cut up Italeri part to the other chassis. I didn't take pics of all of this - the process included adding several segments of thick fill material to make what looked like a really big, blocky chassis. Once the glue was set up, went back and cut off all the blocky parts and began filing, shaping, and sanding until it looked something more like a credible chassis. Unhappily, the Italeri kit - does not include a transfer case! 🤨 annoying - instead, the kit would have you insert the drive shafts into opposing ends of a skid plate. The kit isn't bad at all, but the level of detail/parts count, might suggest it's aimed at newer model builders, which is great - wish I'd have found this years ago! But now, well, I want to build in more detail. So, I'm going to make up a NP 208 or 205 transfer case facsimile to suit my project, will add a doubler, and attach it all to the transmission. I will eventually make a skid plate below the transfer case, but mine will be made from thick styrene rod to represent steel tubing, not adapting the kit part. The next tasks will include narrowing the rear part of the chassis, and making the front axle. From there will being locating and marking the axle centerlines relative to the chassis and fender openings. This will ride on front and rear four link suspension so we have a long way to go. Thanks for having a look, and on we go - Cheers Nick

Hello dio builders, I built this in 2017 - and it was quite a fun project. It started with one, Takom T-55 AMV. I did some research on the kit and found out about where it was/is used, and discovered Northern Syria. Along the way I found out that various US SOCOM operators were engaged in the area. This led to a project - You'll see three of the T-55's. One the Takom AMV kit and the other two received scratch built mods to make them into the AMV. The GMV started as a stock M1151, but was converted to the M1165, with Group 5 GMV elements. The BRDM was a really cheap kit that I needed to find a use for, the recovery trailer from Takom, and the cab a modified Aoshima kit - (4x2 to 6x2). I'll get into the dio a bit more later. First up, some character images and vehicle WIP: I used these as fundamental reference for the project. Vehicle WIP: For a while, I was on a GMV kick, and just kept building them - some aftermarket bits and lots of scratch - same for the BRDM: I really liked the bar armor, so made some up for this. The T-55s were fun to build - The Aber t-55 etch kits are great. As only one kit was the AMV version, the others received lots of scratch work: To make the AMV there was lots of etch and strip styrene in general, with Voyager ERA blocks and frames etc and on the two converted AMVS This is one of the T-55s, but they all have the same look - lots of wear and tear. Now, on to the dio. This was to be a an urban street scene with the T-55s and GMV meeting up, after some event. Here are a few of the dio WIP images: As you can see, there is a lot of debris, and more debris, and more debris! And from here you can already begin to see a challenge emerging - the building is only a frame, which means, there is no backdrop, which causes me grief because I like to take outdoor photos of the final build. Below, you'll see lots of what sure look like closeups. This was not really done to show detail, instead, to not show out of scale backgrounds, which always frustrated me about the conclusion of this build. If you look carefully, at the background, you'll see trees, shrubs, a building...which is a bummer, because I really like the content - the colors, weather, and debris really read! but, you never get a sense of what the dio is showing - Please take a look: The pictures are so tight that this doesn't really look like a dio, which was really frustrating. Recently, I figure out how to digitally "cutout" backgrounds, and still have some indoor images of the project. Helpfully, they were taken in front of a white wall. So, I cutout the white and added some backgrounds: While not too dramatic, the backdrop above allows the project to stay in focus. This photo was taken before the project was done, but I do like the looks of that GMV on the little hill. For others, looking in the opposite direction, across the dio, the results are more interesting: While these photo changes are probably not as good as those done by someone who knows what they're doing, I like them, as you can now see a bit more of the full project - which is good! I feel much better about it now! I might see if I can find the original uncriopped outdoor pics, and see what I can do with them too. That said, I've already discovered, I haven't figured out how to "cutout" irregular edged - like trees! I might try anyway - Thanks for having a look, and happy dio building - Cheers Nick