T-62 – Photo gallery
I built my 17th model, a Soviet T-62 main battle tank, in three months, from February to April 2016. This time, instead of the Red Army vehicle shown in the cover art, I represented it in service in an army of a Middle Eastern nation.
The kit is the magnificent Trumpeter no. 00376, easy to assemble and rich in details: even the bottom of the hull is fully reproduced! Its details are crisp, including the cast steel texture of the turret. The rubber of the wheels is a separate piece of black styrene, whereas the glass of periscopes and projectors are in clear plastic. The gun barrel is in turned aluminium, engine grills and other details are photo etched, and there is also a towing cable in twisted copper wire.
Assembling
The assembling has been easy and quite straightforward, apart for the single link tracks. I had to fill only a few seams, like the junction between upper and lower hull and the one between fenders and hull.
I wanted to further improve the detail level. First of all I added weld seams with bi-component putty and I made handles and electric cables with copper and brass wire. For the log I used a wooden rod instead of the plastic one included with the kit, and I made the fixing bands in aluminium sheet
Plumbing
The most interesting part of the detailing phase was the making of the plumbings between fuel tanks, with copper wire and plastic sheats.
Figures
The miniatures are in metal, built by J. Peddinghaus Zinnfiguren. They depict Soviet tank crew members in 1960s.
Flag
For the Iraqi flag on the back of the hull I took inspiration from this photo, showing a knocked-out Iraqi T-62 in Iran near the Shalamche border post, in the Khuzestan region, not far from the city of Khorramshahr, where bitter fightings took place:
Photo gallery
I wanted to represent this model of T-62 as a tank used by the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), that fought mainly in arid environments. Thus, I chose a yellow sand camo.
The number on the turret sides is ١٢٤, that is 124:
After the base coat and the scratches (with Valleyo acrylics, respectively with airbrush and paintbrush/sponge), I used Raw Umber filters, washes of the same color and a white oil dry brush. I completed the weathering phase with a slight dusting of the running gear and of the lower hull, plus some rust stains made with oil colors.
I painted the miniatures with acrylics too, using a paintbrush. The colour of the jacket reproduces the olive green that, according to some photos on the Web, Iraqi tank crews used at the time.
