Well, they got me again. So. Cal. AMPS is doing another online GB contest. This time the theme is vehicles, wheeled or tracked, that have some form of rocket or missile weaponry, either as a primary or secondary weapon. I selected this Dragon M270 MLRS kit that I’ve had for ages in my stash, figuring this would be a good reason as any to finally build it
Over the past few days I’ve built the suspension and started on the front plate of the cab
This will be a secondary project until I wrap up a couple more, so updates will be intermittent for the near term…
I didn’t have any problems, of course it is individual links for the track, so take yoour time. Plan your painting of inside the cab, and that adds a lot to it. I left the driver’s side shutter up, and the doors open.to showoff the detail. The one I have here was like a 2nd release, because it had the seperate missile bundles, which could be posed being loaded.
Ok, sounds good. I knew that the cab interior and the link & length tracks were gonna be speed bumps for this project. I’ll have to muddle over how to show off any interior detail on this via the side doors… I wanted one of those releases with the rocket pallets, but never could find one for a decent price when I had the spare change, so here we are now.
Thank you. I’m still kinda up in the air as to what I’ll do, as this is something of a spur of the moment choice compared to the usual long research and accessories lead in…
I agree with Carl. I have built a bunch of these over the years and had no real issues. If you leave the doors and top hatch open, you can see a lot of the interior.
If you want to add some extra details…
There is the Royal Model set that includes a lot of extras for the interior.
Our own Jacques Duquet has an update set for it as well. His set will also bring it up to an M270A1 (TC’s railing and GPS antenna), but you would then need new T157I (square block, Bigfoot) tracks.
Thanks for the heads up on those items Gino. I like the idea of leaving the top hatch open. I am planning on making this as an 80’s vehicle when they were first fielded. And there is a time limit for this AMPS GB, so I will be trying to be as much OOB as I can be aside from what I’ve already planned…
Woohoo! More progress! Saturday was AZ AMPS meeting, and yesterday was IPMS build and bull, so I made more progress on my MLRS project. I finished up most of the cab construction, exterior and interior.
I’m all ready to start airbrushing on paint now on the cab interior….
Today I had a good airbrush session and was able to get some base colors on the interior and part of the exterior, as well as getting some detail painting started in the interior
Not too much more to paint before I can get the cab assembled….
Since my last update I’ve made progress on this project
I went thru my decals and found spares that would work as placards inside the cab. They are not accurate but the do give a decent rough approximation of that part of the interior
I also did detail painting on the fire control panel according to reference photos and added some decals to represent the gauges on the instrument panel, and completed detail painting on the overhead fixtures
I also painted up the radio boxes and other stuff on the cab rear wall, but without knowing what the actual gear looks like it was only a best guess scenario
Next I got the cab exterior sidewalls assembled… I left the top and dash area off so I can install the armored windshield glass
and I tinted the clear acetate that will be the armored glass with Tamiya Clear Green
Next I built the engine box area and some other sub assemblies and test fitted them onto the chassis
The next stage is to start construction of the launcher unit assembly… stay tuned for that…
