I cannot remember if I posted a start picture earlier, so here it is to be safe. 
More to follow soon
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The crew figures for the T-74 are just about done; I’ll dry-brush the uniforms but not overly so; whilst plain black is quite difficult to get right, all too often (IMHO) effects can be overdone. A brief look at pics from the time show indeed, a pretty dense colour. Also evident is a tank helmet which I plan to position on the tank hull, as though the crew still require contact even as they’re outside the vehicle (and away from their officers); I’ve no idea if the earpieces design would enable anyone to pick up any transmission - I suspect not - but I’ll run with the idea:
Finally of course, I’ll matt them down.
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It’s just a padded cloth cap with (removable) speakers over the ears, throat microphones on thin leather straps, and a plug for both that connects to the vehicle intercom. The cable including a big rectangular plug is only about 50 cm long from the point where it attached to the helmet, and it’s covered by the neck flap for about 7 cm of that. No idea how long the cable from inside the tank is, though — I don’t own one of those to go with the helmet in my collection 
The straps for the throat microphones, BTW, are connected at the ends by a rivet that can come out. Given that there’s also a metal slider that goes up the straps to pull the microphones tight, though, I don’t think crews would do that habitually.
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I do know; I too have one (gifted to me in Zimbabwe and taken from one of their T-55s). I’ll still run with the concept.
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Actually that reminds me: back in the day (once I’d returned from my tour in Zimbabwe to Germany) it was notable that most soldiers living in the block had purchased massive stack stereo systems; I was no different. In order that one could listen appropriately to Meat Loaf or Debbie Harry or whomsoever at the time, aficionados also acquired huge padded headphones, probably in order not to wake up half the block when listening when inebriated. A friend of mind, just for giggles, wired up my recently acquired Sov tank helmet to my stereo. The sound quality was ahem, a bit lacking, but God, it looked funny!
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Headphones? I remember an anecdote my best friend from secondary school told me after he had joined the navy as an officer cadet: Once the initial part of their training was over, they were housed in a large apartment block, and because they were paid more money than they really knew what to do with, many of them purchased large stereos too. But not with headphones — with the biggest amplifiers and speakers they could get. The idea was basically that if you lived at top right, you wanted the person at bottom left to be able to listen to your music …
I’ve done that — taken a jack from an AFV intercom box (purchased in a surplus store) and wired a 3.5 mm plug to it, so it connects to a DH-132 helmet’s headset. Not exactly audiophile quality, though
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Can’t beat a good Deep Bronze Green - in my opinion(!) 'Looking very smart indeed.
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At the back, I added the typical antenna tuning box used by Dutch Army vehicle radios from the 1970s on:
It still needs the antenna added on top, but I’ll only add that after painting. The dimensions come from the parts in the AFV Club YPR kit, and I had actually made two, but one came out crooked so I decided to only put an antenna on this side instead of on both.
At the front, I completed the hull hatches:
The commander’s hatch is really just a copy of the Grizzly’s hatch based on Trumpeter’s instructions
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@Darktrooper, the beast is coming alive!
Looking good @Jakko!
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I really like to see scratch-building!
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I’ve been using my new tool:
6 mm discs of 0.25 mm plate for the covers over the firing ports, with a much smaller disc on it (made with my RP Tools set) for the hinge — on both sides and the rear. On the sides, their tops are about level with the bottoms of the vision blocks, and all are about 2 mm to the left of the blocks (when viewed). At the back, they are about 6 mm below the tops of the doors and 3 mm from its left edge. On real Piranhas, the hinges can be either at the bottom or at the right, and as you can see, I chose to put them at the bottom because that seems to be the older style.
The ventilator on the roof, between the hatches, was also made with my new tool: first a 4 mm disc of 0.75 mm card as a spacer, with a 6 mm disc of 1.5 mm card on top of that, of which I filed the edges at an angle to make a truncated cone. That I had to do that anyway was a stroke of luck, because I found that the 1.5 mm plate is too thick to punch well with this set — it’s fine if you want a hole in a plate, but not if you want the disc, because its edges will be ragged. That is to say: the two sides were nicely 6 mm and round, but the thickness of the plate between them was ragged and smaller in diameter than the rest of the disc. Anyway, after filing and glueing it in place, I added four bits of 0.88 mm rod around it, because something like that is visible in Trumpeter’s instructions, too.
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I have belatedly realised that my crew are wearing the wrong uniforms for the time period (mid 70s), which is hugely annoying - and I used to think I was a Ninja on all this stuff.
Anyway, time for some heavy-duty sanding then an application of Milliput to replicate the earlier uniform - my model will be set c.1975. Aaaargh!
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However, better progress on the base, which is drying as I speak - or rather, type:
With the model tested in position:
And with the crew - as yet still unmodified:
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The Piranha’s smoke grenade launchers ended up with a mainly horizontal brushguard with a smaller vertical part
The mirrors are from the Mowag Piranha 4×4 by Verlinden (that includes four, I think, because I had two of them left) on supports from brass wire and plastic — the trickiest job in all of this model, and now my biggest hope is that they’ll stay on
After also building a rack on the side for two jerrycans from AFV Club’s YPR kit, I’m done building this thing:
A few things I didn’t mention yet are the tubes for convoy flags on the front corners of the hull (brass tube glued into holes I drilled) and the tail lights (leftover parts from an Airfix 1:76 Churchill and thin plastic rod). I could add a great deal of detail that Italeri left out, but I would need better references than the Tankograd book about the Piranha (tip: leave that in the shop, it’s basically a glorified Mowag advertisement) and, more importantly, much more motivation to actually add all of them
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Nice work Jakko - very impressive.
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Beautiful work Jakko!
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I’m calling this one done.
Pictures of the original test vehicle show no markings on it at all.
I would have added the tow cables but the pictures of the prototype don’t have them.
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That looks good - only a little Bovington chalk on the hull.
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