RGronovius

Yes, the MBT70 program was cancelled by the US and Germany, but the Americans continued with a paired down version called the XM803 before it too was cancelled. Dragon has issued a 1/35 scale version of the German version of the MBT70, but they used photos of the two different surviving German museum tanks to make a kit that isn't a truly accurate version of either. I got one and it is a cool kit. Here is a photo of the XM803 that used to be at Fort Knox along with my nephew who is now a former Marine and Iraqi war vet and currently a firefighter in Virginia Beach.

Nicely done Duke

It's part of the Gundam UC Hard Graph line of 1/35 scale military model kits by Bandai. Very high quality models with a futuristic modern look to them. Several of them look like things in use today. APC, Hummer looking Jeep, motorcycle with command figures, hoverbike, etc.

To me, model building is model building. I started with unpainted Lindberg, Monogram, Revell and Aurora kits. Might have started painting black tires and silver machine guns, or white teeth on my saber toothed tiger. In the 1990s, I rebuilt my oldest surviving armor kit, an Aurora MBT70 that I built in the 70s using a builder's kit I bought on eBay in its early days of existence. I paid $5 for the glue bomb kit and $3 for shipping. That kit was unpainted OD green plastic with some gloss black machine gun parts. Decals had mostly flaked off the bare plastic. It had been a source of pride for many years and had lost many pieces parts due to my mother dusting and vacuuming it over the years. It would certainly have been laughed at as a serious model kit. I have built several Gundam kits. Many of them are very high quality models molded in different color plastic on the same sprue. Almost no painting necessary for some of them. There is also a line of Gundam kits with futuristic looking armor vehicles in 1/35 scale. I built a couple and have the M61A5 Semovente left to build. It is an awesome looking tank and if you do a Google search, you'll see it in various real world paint schemes and markings.

In Dragon USA online's "Gone in a flash sale" (50% off all in stock items) last Wednesday, I got the 1/35 scale Dragon IDF M60 w/ERA kit for $24, $31 delivered. It is normally a $70 kit but was on special for $48 so I got it for half that. I believe it includes everything to build a regular Slick 60 as used by the US Army.

Yes, I am fairly knowledgeable on modern US armor, having spent nearly thirty years of my life on various military vehicles. I often get bogged down trying to replicate details or idiosyncrasies of the actual vehicle I crewed. Building something not my lane helps me get through ruts. I don't care much about accuracy when I am building an X-wing or an F-15 for that matter. I don't care if someone builds an M1A2 in USMC markings, or if they paint it pink. I don't think someone needs to know the history of the craft they are building. If it interests them enough to build it, they might just become interested enough in learning about it. Or maybe not.

I started with the exact same line of kits as you did before I gravitated towards 1/35 scale armor. I still enjoy building the occasional off genre kit.

Video games like World of Tanks, Fighter Ace and other such games have actually gotten gamers to try model building. They want to build a kit of their online tank or plane. Italeri even included codes for exclusive (I think) tanks for World of Tanks. Academy once released Starcraft models and Revell has released Halo kits. I used to build versions of aircraft kits that I flew when I played Microsoft's Fighter Ace.

My time in the Guard was just a stepping stone, a way to get more military training than ROTC offered. I spent the next 25 years on active duty after I was discharged from the Guard.

No information to share with you, but I am also from Vermont (Springfield) and will be following it with interest. I have virtually no idea about VTANG stuff, but I did serve in the VTARNG 104th Engineers while in college.

This is awesome, a real prototype or a paper project?

Wow, I like the way all of your projects have tied together in the end.

I wish we had the ability to cut and paste articles into a digital volume. Maybe some day in the future. So You could put German armor articles into one, car articles into another, sci-fi, etc.

There are a few old ones by Aurora, Fujimi and an Academy one that was a copy of the Fujimi one I think. Very old and needs to be updated to a modern tooled kit.

Very nice job.

Picked up this old reissue kit at Michael's using a 50% off coupon. Ran me $14.83 with tax. Not sure why I've been building cars lately, but I'm having fun.

I can only imagine the nightmare this paint scheme would have been. When we repainted our tanks using MERDC, it was an assembly line process with one detail of men who spray painted every tank in the company solid green. The platoon sergeants and motor sergeants worked off of old, poor photocopied camouflage scheme sheets and chalked off areas of the tank. The crews would either spray (until it gunked up or broke) or hand paint the black and brown using brushes that were like the ones you'd use to paint your porch. We never even bothered with the sand squiggles. Cutting stencils were a pain as was masking off the headlights and other items you didn't want painted.

Revell Monogram did a snap tite kit of the Nautilus, but it was from a kids TV show sponsored by Crayola Crayons.

The system remembered my name and password, but when I tried to log in, it told me it didn't recognize the username or password. I opened up my history tab, and then clicked on an forum post I visited on Saturday. Once I clicked it, the system showed me as logged in.

This is a GAZ 67 field car, a Soviet copy of the US Army Jeep from WW2. It is made by AER, a company from Moldova. The kit is from the late 1990s and is fairly poor, about on par with an ancient 1960s Lindberg car kit. This kit has been reboxed by quite a few Eastern European companies like Eastern Express and Maquette. The nicest thing about the AER kit is the decals. They are well done and there are quite a few options. Unfortunately, there are no marking placement guides beyond the box art. Decent amount of parts, and it was quite tricky to align the body panels. There was a huge AER logo molded in the bed of the truck that I had to shave away. It doesn't look too bad when the body is built. There is plenty of detail on the underside, but what is there is very simple and looks like it was made with just styrene rod and blocks. Not very refined at all. There are supposed to be three clear parts, but my kit must have been missing them. One is the windshield and the other two are the headlights. I cut a replacement winshield out of a thin piece of clear plastic. I will have to resource replacement headlights from the spare parts box. The instructions are extremely simple, but were very helpful in cobbling together this little kit. Just a half page with the diagrams shown, no marking or painting guides. I want to do that shiny green paint job that looks like they bought the paint from Rustoleum. I just need to determine which decals go with that paint scheme. With some paint

Fine Molds makes a very nice 1/20th scale Jeep patterned after the company owner's actual Jeep. Here is a Jeep model reference site that has some links to various online reviews and walk arounds. https://www.cybermodeler.com/armor/jeep/jeep_all.shtml

Nice job, great to see the culmination of all the hard work.

I'm from that area, Springfield, Vermont. I know there are some modelers more northward and many around the Nashua area. When I was stationed at Devens, I used to host modelers at my maintenance school where I had many modern armor and trucks.

I just copy/pasted you topic title into Google and there are similar kits by Revell still available. Might even be the exact same model. https://www.google.com/search?q=Revell+1%3A100+F-14+TOMCAT&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS691US691&oq=Revell+1%3A100+F-14+TOMCAT&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Great movie, one of the reasons why I became a tanker. Nice job.