Tinkering with ..... Battlefront Iranian Chieftains

 

Yet more Chieftains! Iranian reinforcements!

Following up on the ArmiesArmy Chieftains, I now have a load of BF plastic Chieftains and am most impressed, generally....

 

So, 

The pros.... 

• plastic format allows loads of conversion potential, 
• excellent detail, 
• nice crew set, 
• separate track guards.  

The cons...

•  ( just my opinion) the turret front angles need sanding over as they have too prominent an angle, 
• the smoke dischargers are awful. 
• Only one hatch open

 

The plastic format allows me to depict some very tired and abused vehicles as seen in reference photos of the Iran Iraq war. The mods so far...

• Removed all smoke dischargers ( am making new ones)
• Filed the turret fronts to remove the pronounced angle 
• Opened up some additional hatches
• Added crew, so far just from bits box, but more to come
• Added numerous tarpaulins and crew stowage 
• Added an initial layer of sandbag armour, more to come on this front, stalled until the dischargers are complete
• Distressed and removed track guards 

 

So very much a work in progress and a "flavour" of things to come at this stage

 

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Tinkering with.. Berlin Camo Chieftain

The progress so far.... Just finished the basic masking and airbrushing stage, these need to dry and be sealed before the detailing and weathering.

Here are two Armies Army Chieftains with pre shade prior to base coat, these are the Iranian ones so a slightly different approach to the Berlin two, below.

These have been also been preshaded but then had their base coat of white applied, now comes the masking.

The Berlin camo is a fixed pattern and applied universally, therefore both tanks needed to look the same. I've followed references so they should be spot on.

Masking being built up, these is really laborious!

Next up the light blue, you probably can't tell from the pictures but there's two shades in use, as usual mixed by eye using tamiya paints.

The blue is masked ready for the top coat brown.

Again another by eye mix, for the brown and green, it will darken on weathering.

The debris! 

So back were I started, pretty pleased with the result so far, a few errors in masking, but I'll rectify that later. 

Weathering to come....

Tinkering with....15mm Chieftains - Armies Army (Kickstarter)

If you're of a certain age, and growing up in the UK then there's really only one iconic tank for us... that's the Chieftain. 

A package arrived this week with some lovely goodies from Keith Armstrong's Armies Army Kickstarter. I ordered a number of items, but will focus on the iconic Chieftains here.

If you follow my blog, you'll note my interest in the middle east, primarily '73 October War, but on the advent of Chieftains becoming available, a slight "scope creep" into the Iran Iraq War. So these two will be the first Iranian tanks, no real mods just added some crew from the spares box, I was originally going to have soviet tankers headgear, but it looks like they used American or British tankers helmets (which would make sense I suppose with electrical fits etc). I did add a Peter Pig figure in peaked cap to add some irregularity. 

Of the pictures of non-destroyed Iranian armour, there seems plenty of tarpaulins and stowage crammed on the turrets mainly. I augmented the supplied stowage and racks with some grey-stuff stowage, hopefully to make these as ramshackle as I can.

For the next two Chieftains, with something special in mind later, I built these as they came, one opened up with the AA crew, one closed down, not to much stowage, which will become apparent later.

These four are now primered and curing, it may be while before the get their livery, so watch this space, there's an email subscribe function on the right ----->

As always, any suggestions, errors or corrections welcome, Chieftains are fairly new to me, modelling wise.