Halftrackingly ahead

Fooled you! Not all my time has gone to portalification. Not all of it at least. Every once in a while I've tinkered a bit with the Hanomag and of course I realized yesterday that I had been a bit overexcited with spraying Dunkelgelb on the outside of the bottom hull part.. I mean, priming wouldn't hurt of what do you think?

Firstly I attacked the interior as the instructions suggest. In the first photo I've already attached the benches and the driver's station to the baseplate. I had painted the driver's foot area because at this point it would've been a bit too difficult. Not to mention how difficult it'd been after attaching the seats.

The net wasn't too useful while searching for authentic interior, I found a bunch of other scale models, though. So I decided that brown things are just fine for my crew's plastic buttocks. Tamiya's flat brown was applied first and when that had dried I used a sponge to add some slight highlights here and there but because those two colours have such a low difference in contrast, it doesn't show that clearly even in the pictures.

After the paintjob had dried enough I decided to have a go with the man-makeup also known as Tamiya weathering pigments that I bought recently.

It looks like a small box of makeup with the applier and all that.

The end result is a bit messy, doesn't look as libyandesert-y as I had imagined. But this was my first attempt. I can always clean up the worst mess(es) a bit but maybe the next time I remember this always useful motto: "less is more".
Oh well, this just looks like a bunch of screaming preschoolers had jumped on the benches after being soaked in the rain - not like it was used a group of elite desert warriors as a transport to battle. Blah.

In addition to making a huge mess I cut off and cleaned the front wheels, drive sprockets and the road wheels. For some reason this thing doesn't have idler wheels after the road wheels. Maybe I'll get the rest of them cleaned in a couple of afternoons - this vehicle looks like it has a Tiger-like setup with the wheels: in the middle of you have the double roadwheels and between them an inside and an outside wheel.

I have a good idea (in my opinion at least) how to get them painted nicely this time. Let's just see if I manage to implement my idea in the real world. Usually I don't.
Today I continued my build by assembling that thingy in the front with the suspension and whatnot. The normal wheels shall be boringly pointing straight ahead, I don't think that these pieces are loose enough to allow changing the angle to anything else but 0º. Not that it matters, I hadn't intended to build a diorama with this thing.

To the bottom rear side of the vehicle I added a couple of these weird things, the hook-connector and a couple of whatevertheyare. Guess there's an explanation for them :P

Next in my agenda: cutting, cleaning and painting the rest of the wheels and also priming the outside of the bottom hull, then painting all that Dunkelgelb. While I'm doing that I guess I should build the rear doors and the MG-stands too. After that there's not much left in the instructions, I guess.
Despite that this'll take a bunch of weeks, even if it looks almost done already.

I've learned.


A bit.





Maybe.