Hi First I want to say that it is a fantastic diorma and what patience with all the boxes. Is the base place new or the later one / Micke
One small (but very important) thing I saw in the photo of the actual gun was the lack of lights on the aiming stakes. You can’t see them in the dark, and you tend to shoot more in the dark than daylight. Most units the standard GI flashlight (the one with the 90 degree head) taped to the stake. One would have a red lense, and the other would be green. This kinda tells me they just got setup, and maybe waiting to register the gun.
gary
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Hi Engin,
The sandbags look good to me, and I really like the paint job on the supporting ammo boxes, excellent work. 
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Cheers, 
,
G
I think the sandbags look great and the ammo boxes look perfect / Micke
These look really nice. I especially like the ammo crates.
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Nothing wrong with your style of bags 
Ammo boxes ,TOP!!
your bags look just fine. No certain shape is it’s just how they conform to what’s around them. If they are ammo and powder bunkers, be sure to close up the back side. Nobody in the neighborhood wants to be around with a charge tossed in from the backside, Keep them seperated as the powder is the dangerous item. I learned the hard way
gary
Thanks a lot for the nice comments and useful suggestions.
What kind of a comm. device would be better in this scene? VRC-12 or PRC-25?
I like the bags. Most folks display bags that look un naturally stiff. The real ones do not look stiff at all.
Well done on th ammo crates as well!
J
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Jerry;
will filled ours with earth, and whom ever was on Top’s list filled them with sand down at the river. Bags filled with soil do get a little stiff after awhile. I stacked a five ton load of them every night, and prefered the one’s filled with soil. Bad thing about sand in the bags is that when they get cut open (often) the sand runs out of the bag. Then you get to rebuild that part of the wall. Like to have a dollar every bag I’ve stacked, yet never filled a single bag
gary
Oh I know they get stiff after in place a while. I am thinking about the ones at all the training stations at Ft Benning for instance. Long term Tradoc facilities had a lot of them and they were just like concrete.
I was thinking more about how when they are first placed,they conform to each other very well,specially how the preferred method was plopping them in place from waist high and letting gravity do the trick.
J
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Funny; I never saw a sandbag in the states, except during a flood condition. Being Top’s unconditional slave to the art of stacking sandbags (black art). I learned the hard way. I found that having a 2x10 plank about four foot long made things go better. You kinda beat the bags flat. Walls stay in place better, and if somebody teases you; you got something to get even with them. Somebody told me in the very early months of 68 tht a three foot thick was would stop a 122 rocket. Boy was he nuts! Five feet maybe, but think seven feet. You would have a rough time building a five foot thick wall. So it was three feet at the bottom; ending at about a foot and a half ontop. What we did learn was that runway plate really worked well with a 120mm mortar round if you layered it in the bags. Still not all that important as the typical NVA heavy weapons crew couldn’t hit the Empire State Building at 500 yards, but they often lucked out with a stray round aimed at something else. That’s what happened to us. Right thru the roof of the powder bunker blowing the wall out between the projo bunker and the powder side (it was already there; otherwise we’d have built two bunkers). Had exploding 155mm rounds going off for a two hundred fifty yard radius. Let alone the burning powder powder canisters. I never got a scratch, but the rest of the kids were a mess except for Randy whom I drug over the wall into a mud hole. Whole place was outta business for four long days while EOD blew round scattered everywhere. Always told the kids to never run for the bunkers during a mortar hit, as that’s the prime target for a satchel charge. They didn’t believe me. A 120mm round will penetrate three layers of bags, so you have to make the round go off early. Thus the use of runway plate and skids. A 122 rocket will penetrate about anything less than five feet thick! Just the nature of the beast, and you learn to deal with it. I was the old man in the group with ten months in country at 23 years young. The rest were 19 and 20 years old. Too young!
They did finally get that hit on the bunker they were after, and broke the horizontal timbers (8" x 8"). We rebuilt that roof in one night with a stolen telephone pole. When day light came it was completely done and nobody knew we did it. Of course somebody was missing a brand new telephone pole the next day. Once more you use what you got, and hope it holds up.
gary
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Bags look fine Engin, & pls post a link to (or more photos of) that basecamp - it looks awesome! 
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Thanks. Basecamp dio is an old one and published on Armorama before. 
Here is the link to old forum ; Basecamp Ben Luc
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Sandbags look fine man !!
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the PRC-25 would be appropriate
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arty units used a basic field telephone at the guns from the Chief Of Smoke out. Reason why is fairly simple; the telephone is virtually jam proof. The NVA got pretty adept at jamming radios unless they something exotic. What was funny was that the NVA used jam the radios with Vietnamese music!
gary
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