Meng Gepard A1 SPAAG

Thank you buddy, appreciating your words!

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It’s the a really realistic build of the Gepard, great work :wave:

Tamás,
that’s become a fantastic model! I also like your weathering - wish I could bring myself to try something like that, but after lots of detailing, I’m always so fed up with my models that I just call them done as soon as they’re built up.
There’s one tiny bit of improvement you could still add: The eyes of the tow ropes on the engine deck are secured to their stowage points by a rotating oblong steel plate, as can be seen here:


This is a common feature on all members of the Leopard family and easily added.
Peter

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the point. The Meng manual was not 100% clear about the towing cable placement but due to lack of reference photos I simply tried to follow Meng’s drawing somehow.
I am afraid that the cable is already glued onto the engine deck, so it might be impossible but will try to correct it.

Weathering is not an easy thing to do but good fun at the end of the build. If I was you, I would give a try with dry pigments because if something goes wrong, tap water can withdraw / revert the effect with no harm to the model. Only keep in mind that modern AFVs are typically on the clean side, not like any from WWII vehicles (which are over-weathered to my taste nowadays, but that is personal preference).

Tamás

Hi Jan,

Thank you!

Tamás

You don’t have to move the ropes from their correct (!) positions - all you need do is cut pieces of plastic sheet in the shape of the stud that fills the towing eye (= round the ends of appropriate strip styrene) and cement them across what you have there. Here’s how I did it on my Italeri Leo1A4:


Peter

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the clarification, this is easy to fix as I see. Will deal with it.

Cheers,

Tamás

Great job Tamás. On the last picture with natural light your model could easily be taken for an actual Gepard.

Olivier

Thank you Olivier, it is really nice comment!

Actually all (except one old built Tiran-5) of my completed model photos are taken in my garden, under natural sunlight. The intention is to make normal photos and crop them so that the model looks like a real vehicle. It is all about proper height of the camera to the model, proper angle and avoid the perspective effect and finally selecting a good part of the photo (cropping).
The background is the the trees by the fence, “concrete” base is specially made for 1/24 - 1/48 scale models.

Tamás

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