Leopard 2 A4 1988 1/35 Meng

[echen]

Very nice work.

[robgizlu]

Very impressive 

Rob

[Keeff]

Fantastic work so far!  👏 

 

Keith 😁 

[Bullbasket]

A neat piece of work on the main gun there Dmitriy.

 

John.

[Dmitriy1967]

Thank you, friends, for your kind words. It's very pleasant.

🙂

[Dmitriy1967]

I have a small update in building.

I broke off the left mudguard. 🙄

 

 

 

 

And the most annoying thing is that there is no one to shift the blame for this. No one comes into my workshop except me.

 

[Dmitriy1967]

On 16/08/2023 at 10:47, Mippie said:

Damn...I missed that important fact when I built mine 😭

 

I have good news for you. I found a photo where the bars on the Leopard are installed "correctly"! 🙂

This tank is a bit unusual, it has an extended exhaust system.

 

Maybe the conclusions I made earlier were wrong.🙄

 

 

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Dmitriy1967

[Dmitriy1967]

I'm assembling the gun rotation mechanism.

Here is his diagram in the manual. And again, poly caps are required, which were not included. But I have already solved this problem.

 

 

 

This is how it looks assembled.

 

 

 

Homemade poly caps.

 

 

 

In order for the gun not to fall down from its gravity, it is necessary to increase the friction on the axis. To do this, I cut the pads out of sandpaper. With their help, the gun should be held better.

 

 

 

 

 

Glued periscopes. The instruction from MENG suggests painting them blue. I have never seen periscopes and other optics blue. They are usually black or have a glass sheen.

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Dmitriy1967

[Dmitriy1967]

Now it looks like this.

 

 

[Dmitriy1967]

A moment of humor.

There are such beautiful pictures in MENG's instructions for assembling Leopard 2. But there is no translation of what this brave German tanker says in Chinese. My knowledge of Chinese was only enough to assume that in one picture he explains that this is a shooting simulator for training shooting. In the second picture, he says that on early tanks there was a hatch for loading shells, then it was brewed, and on later tanks it disappeared altogether.

But this is not exact. 🙂

 

 

 

 

[Dmitriy1967]

I installed smoke grenade launchers on the tower.

 

 

 

He covered the glass of the surveillance devices with masks.

 

 

 

Several photo etching parts have been installed.

 

 

 

 

I made this white part on board the Turret myself. Because the original part flew away in an unknown direction. I'm thinking into space.

 

[Dmitriy1967]

I started to cover it with a primer.

 

 

[flyboy2610]

29 minutes ago, Dmitriy1967 said:

I made this white part on board the Turret myself. Because the original part flew away in an unknown direction. I'm thinking into space.

 

 

Parts have an annoying habit of that, don't they? I had one fly to the back of my workbench today. Despite moving everything several times I never did find it!

You're doing a great job with that Leopard! I have Tamiya's Leopard 2A6 in my stash I want to get to one of these days.

[Terry1954]

8 hours ago, Dmitriy1967 said:

Because the original part flew away in an unknown direction.

 

I reckon there are enough small parts spread around my hobby room to make a small kit!

 

Great to see some primer on this one Dmitriy.

 

Terry

 

 

[Dmitriy1967]

I wrote earlier that when building this tank, my primary objective is to learn how to paint with an airbrush. And learn how to weather the model. I bought an airbrush, paints, various airbrush cleaning devices, liquids… And I'm already starting to like it all. At first something went wrong, but now I'm already disassembling, washing and assembling the airbrush, like a brave soldier with his machine gun! 🙂

It's probably funny to you, but for me it's all new and for the first time. I like that in my life a person can discover something new until old age and study all the time.

 

The tank will be in German NATO camouflage. I applied the basic green color. I am using TAMIYA NATO GREEN XF-67. Since the real tanks in all the photos look a little lighter, I decided to add a little white color to the green so that the tank would appear lightened in the sun.

 

Now it looks like a tank. 🙂

 

[Stef N.]

Good for you Dmitriy and I am happy that you are enjoying your new experience. Airbrushes look scarier than they actually are and don't take long to get used to.

[Dmitriy1967]

3 hours ago, Stef N. said:

Good for you Dmitriy and I am happy that you are enjoying your new experience. Airbrushes look scarier than they actually are and don't take long to get used to.

 

I admit, just in case, I even bought two airbrushes. One with a 0.3 mm nozzle, the other 0.18 mm. I still don't know if I did the right thing. 🙄

[Stef N.]

35 minutes ago, Dmitriy1967 said:

 

I admit, just in case, I even bought two airbrushes. One with a 0.3 mm nozzle, the other 0.18 mm. I still don't know if I did the right thing. 🙄

You will find yourself using the 0.3 all the time and the finer one will be used rarely. But you will be happy you have it when you need to paint a fine camouflage scheme. 👍

[Keeff]

Good work on the painting .... you'll soon get used to the airbrush and discovering what you can do with it.

 

Keith 😁 

[Dmitriy1967]

Tankers suddenly climbed out of the hatches of the turret!

I looked at them for a long time and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Everything seemed to be fine, but something was bothering me. And suddenly it dawned on me! Colour. People can't be that light gray!

 

 

 

We'll have to paint them.

 

Does anyone know what kind of uniform the German tankers had in 1988? Is it as spotted as on the box with these figures or another one?

 

 

[Terry1954]

10 hours ago, Dmitriy1967 said:

Does anyone know what kind of uniform the German tankers had in 1988? Is it as spotted as on the box with these figures or another one?

 

Hi Dmitriy. I've asked a colleague who may know the answer. I'll get back to you with what he has.

 

Terry

[LeeM]

13 hours ago, Dmitriy1967 said:

Tankers suddenly climbed out of the hatches of the turret!

I looked at them for a long time and couldn't figure out what was wrong. Everything seemed to be fine, but something was bothering me. And suddenly it dawned on me! Colour. People can't be that light gray!

 

 

 

We'll have to paint them.

 

Does anyone know what kind of uniform the German tankers had in 1988? Is it as spotted as on the box with these figures or another one?

 

 

As far as I remember it was Flecktarn for the tank suit.

 eng_pl_GERMAN-TANKER-COVERALL-WITH-LINER-FLECKTARN-USED-16188_1 by Lee Massey, on Flickr

 

Excellent work so far on your build. I have just built the same model but not to your standard. Currently just finished the nato cam.

Edited October 5 by LeeM

[coneheadff]

According to the official Bundeswehr website Flecktarn was introduced in 1991.

 

Unfortunately the link is in German, but here's the link Flecktarn

 

Alex

[LeeM]

3 hours ago, coneheadff said:

According to the official Bundeswehr website Flecktarn was introduced in 1991.

 

Unfortunately the link is in German, but here's the link Flecktarn

 

Alex

I stand corrected.😉 I thought I had seen it in the late 80's or some thing very similar 🤔 

[Dmitriy1967]

4 hours ago, coneheadff said:

According to the official Bundeswehr website Flecktarn was introduced in 1991.

 

Unfortunately the link is in German, but here's the link Flecktarn

 

Alex

 

Thank you for the link. Google Translator helped me.

Looking at old photos, it also seemed to me that the uniform of the tankers was then monotonous, but I did not know in what years the change took place.

Do you know what color the tankers' uniforms were before the adoption of Flecktarn?