ok gents, i promised you some WIP’s on my last post. i haven’t touched the merkava yet, every time i look at those tiny little balls and chains, i just end up working on another kit. but i do have two other kits that i can share right now. the first is my academy M2A2 OIF version. i added the Eduard PE exterior set, and i have a ton of exterior gear i am working on little by little from verlinden: duffle bags, rucksacks, water jugs, sleeping mats, etc etc. i know there are some flaws in the kit, but most of them i caught once it was too late to fix. i am going to make it with the TOW being fired, so this shoud be an interesting little project. i scratchbuilt the TOW out of styrene rod and brass strips. i plan on hanging it out barley with fine wire covered by the smoke. i think i got it pretty accurate. 
i plan on making some smoke coming from the back of the TOW and launcher with some pillow stuffing and a little bit of airbrush love. let me know if there are any major flaws in the build. 
and a word of advice for fruil curious guys, make sure you do some research before you spend 30 bucks on fruil tracks. these were my first set as i wanted to try them so bad, i bought them for my bradley. turned out to be a complete waste of money, since the bradleys have no loose tracks, and i couldn’t sand them down to their bare metal since US tracks now have rubber pads. could have saved my money and spent it on the king tiger instead.
up next is the DML king tiger premium edition. this is my first time attempting the zimmerit, and i went head first into learning how to make it instead of buying AM parts. i used the tamiya tool and both apoxie sculpt and squadron green putty, to see if there is a difference. i found that apoxie sculpt looks better, and goes on better, but is really sticky, and if you cross directions, you’ll mess the whole thing up. as the green putty dries very fast. both have their advantages. it didn’t come out as planned as you really have to practice and take your time. there are a lot of mistakes in the zimmerit with my consisity (sp?), so i opted to make it a battle hardened tiger with damaged fenders and zimmerit. i’m trying to make the 503rd king tiger from normandy. since this was one of the few that survived, i’d assume it had seen alot of action. word of advice with applying your own zimmerit: make sure you study the instructions and not glue parts on that would impede the zimmerit application. i won’t even begin to show you the back of it, as most of the tools jack and such were already glued on, and i couldn’t take them off without damaging the kit. so the zimmerit looks horrible back there. i’m still in the process of applying the magic tracks to the tiger, as this is a very time consuming process. 
both of these kits are in the painting stage, so don’t freak on the painting details. the M2 has just finished the washing and dry brushing phase so its still glossy, and the tiger has just got its base coat with nothing else painted as of yet. learning from my mistakes on these two kits, i plan on building my most newest project, a DML elephant premium edition, with a little bit more caution with the zimmerit application and indy tracks.
i’m free for any comments, suggestions, and feedback. thanks for looking guys.
but thanks for the heads up. it will just barley be clearing the tube, not too far out so i can hide the wire holding it and using the smoke as a cover. i thought about going out farther and using the smoke in the stabilizers, but then the wire would be way too thick and out of scale to simulate the real wires.
