Jump to content

LST-4151 Miura JMSDF 1/700


bianfuxia

Recommended Posts

Hello, 

Well, the worldwide chaos has somehow found me with a little time on my hands! After flaming out of some GBs last year and not building anything for months, I managed to isolate some time for it now.

 

I picked this little kit from Skywave. In my mind, there's a diorama in it - the LST rolls up to a remote island to deliver supplies of much needed toilet paper under cover of the 76mm twin gun turret and the tanks it carries aboard...

 

I took these just before I started - so far I've assembled the 76mm and twin 40mm and painted the deck, that's it. Hope to do more tonight and post again.

 

I hope everyone is safe and keeping those hands as clean as a brand new unsealed model kit! 

 

IMG_20200318_112033646-2048x826.jpg

 

IMG_20200318_112041370-2048x957.jpg

 

IMG_20200318_112227130-2048x1713.jpg

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

tonight I painted most of the parts. I left them all on the sprue for the moment just to make it easy to keep track of things. This one is going to be a quick build so I'm not going to town on it. The fun on this one will be finishing it up.

 

Not exactly sure what the exact colours should be - the instructions just give a code number with no indication, at least not in English, of which paint brand they refer to. So I used dark sea grey on the deck and a light grey for the sides - both Vallejo brush-painted.

 

The real thing carries two large landing craft which the instructions call LCM - I guess it's this one (34 t of cargo or 80 troops or a great deal of toilet paper). The kit has four of these and they're quite nice - I tried to get a decent pic on my phone. The real thing also carries two smaller landing craft which the instructions call LCVP which must be similar to the smaller ones used in the RN and USN and carry about 36 troops or slightly less toilet paper. That's it for boats although the sprue has two life boats, not needed, and lots of life raft pods.

 

The 4151 Miura has the open fire control radar just behind the main gun, while the 4152 Ojika and 4153 Satsuma have that under a radome. I might make one of those two, I think. 

 

There is a cool photo of all three of them here.

 

IMG_20200319_180741292.jpg

 

IMG_20200319_180706676.jpg

 

IMG_20200319_231128891.jpg

 

 

 

Edited by bianfuxia
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's roughly where I finished up tonight, though I have also put the mast on now too. the unpainted gun mounts at either end are not installed yet, nor are the boats (they're just in place to show where they go).

 

 

IMG_20200320_225247461.jpg

 

 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Problems, what problems?  Not readily apparent to the casual observer either, you must be being really hard on yourself, it looks pretty good to me.

 

AW

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha no I just mean all the bits of paint I still have to touch up and the seam line on those tank turrets. Magnified like this they kind of stand out but in real life they're invisible and I won't worry about them!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apart from two radar dishes which are drying, and two bits on the rear of the hull, I installed everything tonight. There is a bunch of touching up to do, mostly painting, but also a couple of little sinkmarks or moulding defects which I kinda couldn't be bothered fixing when it would have been easier but now feel maybe I should have. The life raft pods up front are really supposed to just stand there like that - that's not a mistake.

 

By the way davits are the worst invention ever. I mean - great in real life for launching lifeboats - but I hate installing those things and it's often where my ship builds stop for ages before I finally force myself to proceed. These ones turned out a bit easier because the boats actually sit on the main superstructure. I hate the ones where you somehow have to get a tiny lifeboat to actually hang from a davit!

 

IMG_20200323_001237226.jpg

 

Such a cool looking ship I think!

 

I have done the bridge windows with a very thin black marker pen. I can only do it using the maginifying glass, and that's the only way to photograph it. But it looks pretty cool I think so I have tried to show that here. It was done after the photo above was taken. 

 

It looks more subtle when you aren't viewing it at 10x from a centimeter away - as you will hopefully see at the end when I take some decent photos.

 

IMG_20200323_002840465.jpg

 

 

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My ship is nearly finished. I added the radars, only to see that there isn't actually room for them to rotate. Not changing it now. I've done most of the touch up painting but one more round, which will include the radome on the bow.

 

Next is to do these little vehicles. Remember, the idea I had was that the ship is bringing much-needed relief supplies - mostly toilet paper - to a remote community affected by Covid-19. So the little convoy is driving out under protection of the two Type 90 tanks (Japan's second latest tanks) and then with the smaller Type 89 armoured vehicle in the truck convoy. The 6 wheeled little armoured cars are the Type 82 command vehicle. I don't know a single thing about how that would actually be done, but that's what it'll look like.

 

IMG_20200326_135757381.jpg

 

IMG_20200326_135828808-2048x1546.jpg


 

 

 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gidday Bianfuxia, I like the work you've done on the ship, but I think your scenario is a bit implausible. That convoy of trucks probably has adequate protection if it's carrying a mundane cargo, such as gold bullion, but for something as valuable as toilet paper I would expect you'd have a battlefleet in the offing, and several squadrons of fighter-bombers overhead. 😁 Regards, Jeff.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha, oh my goodness you're totally right! 

 

I'm radioing back to HQ for back-up. 

 

The reply came back:

 

"Captain, support is inbound. Hold the line.

 

And if you screw up just this much, you'll be sailing cargo ships full of gold bullion outta Hong Kong!"

  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brief update today. I painted the tanks and trucks - not finished yet, that's just the first go. I'll use a marker to do in some fine lines of black and still have to do windows and wheels/tracks. On the ship, I painted the radome on the front too. 

 

 

IMG_20200329_220512892-2048x1949.jpg

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The vehicles are slowly being done. Not sure about that howitzer! I mean, it makes sense to have some fire support to protect the toilet paper supplies, but somehow that seems overkill. There's only one in the set, too.

 

Mainly touch up paint to go on this build, plus the decals, which I have managed to misplace. 

 

IMG_20200403_001437460.jpg

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The howitzer looks massively out of scale to me though I am probably wrong - at least an 8" barrel diameter if not more. For something that big I would have expected a large tractor to tow it. According to Wiki the largest Howitzer the JSDF used was the M110 long barreled 8" but that was self propelled. It looks as if they have moulded the long barrel from that on to the towed chassis of the short barreled M115 8"howitzer but the carraige looks rather big.

 

Hey, it's your kit but I would leave it out.

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/5/2020 at 11:20 AM, PeterB said:

The howitzer looks massively out of scale to me though I am probably wrong - at least an 8" barrel diameter if not more. For something that big I would have expected a large tractor to tow it. According to Wiki the largest Howitzer the JSDF used was the M110 long barreled 8" but that was self propelled. It looks as if they have moulded the long barrel from that on to the towed chassis of the short barreled M115 8"howitzer but the carraige looks rather big.

 

Hey, it's your kit but I would leave it out.

 

Pete

Yeah I agree, it's way too big.

 

The ship is finished now - I did the decals tonight. I'll keep working on the vehicles before I call the build finished though. (The decal softener Mark Fit stuff is still on that front decal, it'll dry up - I'll also trim that flag)

 

IMG_20200411_002636836.jpg

 

 

 

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry I missed this before, another fine-looking ship, very good work on the tiny vehicles as well. 

 

(Thoroughly agree with you on the davits, suspended boats in 1/700 are the devil's work!) 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The vehicles are basically finished now too. 

 

IMG_20200415_233440123.jpg

 

Bear in mind these things are really tiny. So in the pic I can now see a couple of things I missed (like inking in the truck windos and two wheels there). 

 

The larger tanks are the Type 90 tank, and the smaller ones are the Type 89 AFV. The 6 wheeler is a command car. There were two of those but one flicked out of the tweezers when I was painting it and is presently lost. 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dang, those are so small the hairs on the back of your hand are small tree compared to those vehicles! :yikes:

 

I have problems with 1/350, so this is really outstanding work!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I have now finished up the vehicles - fixing the little blemishes I noticed in the previous photo. It's on to the beach-head for the landing.

 

I cut out this cardboard landscape and was all set to cover it with this really cool air-drying modeling clay I had. But when I opened the "air tight" box I was keeping it in, I discovered it had totally hardened. 

 

So I will probably just use some papier mache on here to create a few little hills, then paint on some scenery (beach, a little road, etc).

 

IMG_20200420_232809693.jpg

 

 

I found a good photo of the sister ship of this at a beach unloading trucks, at this link.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gidday Bianfuxia, have you considered plaster for the beach? I used to smear it over packaging foam then paint it for landscapes when my son had a train set. Just an idea. It'll be interesting to see the final lay-out. Regards, Jeff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...