Somtecs builds

[somtec]

Ok iam not that interestwed in ww2 but a lot of surplus stuff such as halftracks and shermans found their way to Israel where they soldiered on in upgraded forms until the being finally withdrawn from service in the 90s.
My particular interest is around the early 70s the time of the Yom Kippur war in 73 where several thousand of halftracks formed the bulk of the IDF apc fleet alongside the then new M113 (hint hint rubicon if you ever go modern m113 nice place to start).
Anyway enough waffle here are a couple pics of my first ever 1/56 rubicon halftrack under going IDF mods, still a few more bits to add and a bit of a cleanup.
Struggling a bit with the glue, been using plastic magic with varing degrees of success.
Any comments good or bad appreciated. Hope you like something a bit different, iam having fun anyway.

[ripley]

Wow , that looks great . Are you going to add crew ?

[ultravanillasmurf]

Very good. Love the stowage.

I look forward to seeing it painted.

So what are you doing for crew?

[somtec]

thanks gents,
yes iam hoping to do some crew figures but they are going to have to be conversions or scratch built, not sure yet which way to go , would prefer a more normal proportioned figure but most seem to be the heroic style but we shall see as i only have what came with the m3 and those from the willys jeep.

[ripley]

You might try the Tamiya 1/48 British Infantry set # 32526 or maybe the US set ( # ? ) , probably a mix of both kits  would work best for early 70s IDF  . If you cut a little out of their legs you get them more 1/56 in height . And being scale they don't have that muscle bound  ' roid using look some " heroic " 28mm figures have . Just make sure all your crew gear ( packs , canteens , etc ) and personal weapons are all the same scale .

[Pinky]

That is some very fine conversion work.  I always liked IDF half-tracks - especially the .30 cal in the windscreen. I see UVS has some competition now when it comes to sculpting soft stowage!

I agree with Ripley's suggestion regarding Tamiya 1/48 scale figures, although they will make the vehicle look quite small.  Putting figures in open-topped vehicles really emphasises any scale issues.

[somtec]

how do perry miniaure figures work out scale wise , been looking on net and some reports are they are kind of halfway between the 2 styles.

[Pinky]

The Perry WW2 figures are very good.  However, they only do 8th Army and Afrika Korps, so I don't know how easy it will be to convert them into Israelis.  They may be okay for 1948-era IDF troops, who wore a lot of cast-offs, but by the time of the later wars the uniform was more distinctive.

[somtec]

May see what they look like or wait for Rubicons truck passengers to appear

[ultravanillasmurf]

I have a comparison of Perry's and a Warlord BEF metal here:
http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/perry-miniatures-eighth-
There are some  more on this search.
http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Perry%20Miniatures

They are nice subtle figures.

[somtec]

thanks for the link, very nice blog you got going there.
Just found westwing productions who do some jeep and halftrack crews, not sure i like some of the poses but read they could be on the small size, the separate head sets could be useful though, any experience of these figures.
As ive said before completely new to this scale and dont do gaming so everything i look at is new.
cheers Peter

[ultravanillasmurf]

Have you seen:
http://forum.rubiconmodels.com/index.php?topic=366.0

I have some Westwind SOTR figures and the US heads.
http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/five-rounds-rapid-chap-with-wings.html

http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/allies.html
The latter is a Westwind US head on a crooked dice minion with SMG.

[somtec]

many thanks, food for thought