Hi All,
I recently completed this diorama for a friend and former comrade. It depicts his MLRS vehicle from OIF I.
The vehicle is Dragon’s 1/35 MLRS, which was quite difficult to build due to ill-fitting pieces and an excess of flash and ejector pin marks. The kit took a lot of clean up and repair at every turn. The destroyed tank and figures are from Verlinden. One of the heads is from Legend. The base was scratchbuilt.
I hope you enjoy.
Looks pretty good. That was my Bn in OIF 1. I was the Commander of A Battery, 1-39 FA (MLRS), 3ID at the time. D Battery was a round-out unit that came from Ft Sill, OK to complete us as we only had 2 active MLRS batteries assigned at the time. A couple pointers. We all had Woodland camo IBA vests, not 3-tone DCU camo. Also, it looks like you used the NATO MLRS kit from Dragon. It does not have the complete M26 rocket pods, so inside your LLM is empty. This area should be filled with rocket tubes, as seen below.
Overall, it looks pretty good. Nice job on it.
Hi Gino,
Small world! I delivered this model to my friend over the winter break, so any changes to it are impossible (by me at least) at this point. I used photos he provided me from his deployment to make color/uniform choices and paint vehicle markings. All the photos I looked at showed DCU colored body armor. It appears however that there was a DCU covering over the IBAs, concealing the woodland camo. I didn’t see any photos of my friend or his unit wearing bare woodland IBAs, so I painted the bare IBAs in the model in a DCU pattern. It may not be 100% accurate, but it was a necessary compromise on my part, given the time constraints.
Another compromise came with the exclusion of the rocket pods from the vehicle. This was the model with rocket pods rather than the NATO kit, but the rocket pods were so frustrating to fit and assemble, and time so short, that I decided to leave them out.
Thanks for your comments.
Unlike Gino I don’t know much about the real thing but I really like how the model turned out. Sharp work on the MLRS, I really like the soot around the ends of the tubes, don’t know if it would be there like that on the real thing but it looks really cool to me. The wreckage from the Iraqi tank is a nice touch and I don’t know if the uniforms are correct or not but really nice job on painting the figures I wish I could do eyes half as well!
You may have been looking at pics from our C BTRY. They were already in Kuwait when we deployed in Jan '03. They had deployed in Oct '02 before we were issues IBA vests. They had the older Woodland PASGT flak vest with a DCU cover.
This is what it looked like over the Woodland PAGST. You can see the pocket flap that came through the front to help hold it on.
And by itself.
I think it looks really sweet, the only thing that irks me a little is the model hanging off the base like that–but as a scene, the whole thing is really well done and nicely composed!
i am working on a BM-21 MRL using a couple of pics from Libyan rebel pics of captured ones. the entire front end is black with soot. am thinking of using kerosene lamp black, that’s how dirty it is.
nice dio Yari; if I may ask, how did you do the sand? what reference did you use? I have an M1A1 OIF with 4 modern army figures I painted in marine colors, that I’d ilke to attempt my first dio; thanks for any info
Hi Vlad,
For the plaster I used a mixture of Woodland Scenic’s Lightweight Hydrocal (basically lightweight plaster). To achieve the texture of the small rocks, I mixed in crushed up dried plaster into the wet plaster mix, and applied some more crushed dried plaster on top of the wet plaster.
Whenever I mix plaster, I’m inevitably left with some extra. Instead of washing it out and throwing it away, I always let it dry, then I crack it up into little pieces and keep it in a separate container. It’s come in handy many times for building rubble, rocks, boulders, and other effects.
Once the plaster was dry, I sprayed the whole base black, then started building up lighter layers of paint in varying patterns. Once the color looked acceptable to me, I started applying some dust and dirt pigments to select areas. I hope this helps!
what color did you use for the sand - "Iraqi Sand’ from Vallejo? and is it the same as what you used on the vehicle, just lighter? thank you for your time;
I used a variety of shades for the sand. I started dark, and worked it up lighter. Vallejo’s Iraqi Sand was one of the shades I used, and it was indeed the color I used on the vehicle. I couldn’t say exactly which colors I used, but I recall adding lighter shades to my paint mix as I progressed, so that each subsequent shade was a lighter version of what was laid down before it.
What I am beginning to appreciate more, after viewing this excellent piece and reading the comments, is the approach and background of all the different modelers. There are the artists, the historians, and seen here, those that bring real-life, eye-witness accounts to the work table. And as a further significance, a modeler may have none of these backgrounds, but by sheer determination through patience and studying, bring exemplary work to the table. Encouraging!