Afghan T-55, Panjshir Valley, 2001

When I bought this kit from ACE I didn't imagine it was such a hard work to build it up! It's a short run kit, so as you can think I had to do lots and lots of improvements to make all parts fit correctly. All the road wheels have to be mounted in a different position than how the axles are located; the tracks detail is basilar and the internal side of them is not even carved, all the handles on the turret's sides are not included in the box, as the guards for the front headlights are not... so I scratchbuild them with iron wire; instead, for the tracks I used the photoetched kit from ACE (not very easy to build but far off more detailed from the original!). The gun is coming from Part metal barrels. Just to complete my model and make it resemble a "war machine" similar to the ones employed by the talibans, I cut away some mudguards and added two gun shells on the engine deck, scratchbuilt with plastic rod.
All this stuff has been painted with Lifecolor acrylics by airbrush, then weathered with rust washes and lightened with pastels powder. The arab words on the sides are hand painted using a 0.3 rapidograph for technical drawing.
Comments are welcome.

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