2K11A/9M8M Krug-A Ganef

My good friend Vladimir Bocanin is a prolific builder. On a good year, he finishes more kits in a month than I build in a year. Lately, he’s been running a massive backlog of unpainted kits. Something like fifty-two. FIFTY-TWO. Let that sink in. He builds mostly weird middle-eastern field-modded armor and technicals as well as Eastern bloc armor and the occasional modern NATO subject.

I’ve been bugging him for years now to let me paint at least one of his numerous unpainted-yet builds. In January he finally agreed to let me paint this humongous SAM launcher.

I’ve opted for a museum vehicle, inspired partly by a picture taken by Massimo Foti, though I made it slightly less distressed and weathered than I would have liked and kept it a bit cleaner. I also somewhat limited the weathering passes to get it done asap.

An interesting project on many counts, my thanks to Vlad for letting me have a go at one of his kits!

Project Specs

Trumpeter Soviet 2K11A TEL with 9M8M Missile Krug-A (SA-4 Ganef) (Ref #09523) built by Vladimir Bocanin.

Modeling project

Ukrainian BMP-1

This project started when I subscribed to the Facebook Military Equipment Of Conflict In Ukraine group. I spotted a picture of a BMP with one of those weird hand painted, bright, hastily applied scheme, and I decided I would go ahead and try to recreate it. Unfortunately I haven’t saved the picture and can’t seem to locate it. I did spot an Echelon decal sheet with that exact vehicle depicted (D356195) so I immediately acquired it.

The project is based on Trumpeter’s BMP-1 kit #05556 with Friuls tracks (ATL-133 IIRC) and possibly some metal barrel, although I forget about that part. The figures are from Evolution and Ant Miniature and Masterclub.

The funny thing is that I noticed that some people looking at this model, not seeing the original vehicle it is based on, sometimes think this is my attempt to create a hard edge legit scheme. They remain polite but you see they think I suck big time at painting camo, hehe.