Ketten' Crazy in Here

I finished my Kettenkrad.It's a 1/72 Academy kit, out of a box of theirs that contains two other vehicles: a kubelwagen, and a Jeep. They are larger, but not by much.

The basic paint was German Panzer Grey, which I lightened to highlight the wheels.

Some silver highlights for the metal tracks, and a spritz of Tamiya mud finished things off.

Using a little mud, I tried to give it a varied texture, like a ATV today.

This is probably the smallest model I've ever made.

Tiny even by tiny tank standards.

The Kettenkrad, the littlest half-track, started life as a air-transportable artillery tug. "Air transportable" for the Germans meant the Junkers 52, a squared-off transport plane about the size of a DC-3 - which is to say, small. The Kettenkrad was a ingenious solution to this requirement: the tracks made it an excellent all-terrain vehicle, and the motorcycle wheel at the front kept steering intuitive to anybody using the 'krad. Like most tracked vehicles, the Kettenkrad could steer itself by changing the speed of one track relative to the other. The motorcycle front controlled this, though at small steering inputs, the wheel could steer without the track's assistance. It used a 30 hp Opal motor, which could motivate the Kettenkrad up to 70 km/h - which lots of squeaking and track noise. It was also all season - track extensions allowed the Kettenkrad to roll over snow. The Germans had unwittingly invented the all terrain vehicle. Given that it could be used year round, I can imagine the Kettenkrad being a hit in rural Canada today.

While it started life as a fairly specialized tractor, the Kettenkrad was used by German forces throughout world war 2 for transporting, cable-laying, and towing. The 'krad was extremely popular with enemy armies as well, who loved the sheer insanity of a half-track motorcycle. It remained in production in post war Germany for a few years for use as a small tractor - German farmers needed a low cost vehicle, and the Kettenkrad fit the bill. 

I've also been working on my Ju 290 model, finally.

The cockpit is mostly stock - I added seat belts (Tamiya tape) and some photoetch seat-belts.

The cockpit has two stations behind the pilot and co-pilot: navigator and a position with many boxes - I'm guessing this is the flight engineer. Behind that bulkhead are the hatches for the gun gondola and the tunnel that runs to the nose, where the Ju 290 A-7 had a position for the radio man launching HS 293s.

Tried adding brake lines with some copper wire that I have. The result looks good but (don't tell anyone) is a bit too big for scale.

So, that's going well. I think I've figured out a way the rear ramp can be stowed or deployed, so I'm excited about that. One slightly vexing problem is what the exterior is going to be. I wanted to make it look somewhat like this A-3, which was captured by the Allies in Saltzburg, Austria, in 1945.

I have the Revell 1/72 Ju 290, which I'm building as the A-7 version. The airplane above has the FAGr 5 paint job, with a distemper of black green over its hellblau sides. (For my friends who read this blog: scale modeling does a lot of German World War 2 subjects; so much so that paint and instructions just use the German names like hellblau [light blue] or olivegrun [olive green.] The Germans also naturally had 'standard' colors that are identified as RLM colors; for example hellblau is RLM 65 hellblau.) Anyway, the FAGr 5 paint job is somewhat unusual, as its base was standard seaplane colors. These are an underside of light blue, with the standard German splinter on top. The colors on the splinter job vary widely depending on who's doing the coloring. The instructions call out RLM 74 and 75 for the splinter, which the color key at the front say is "olive grey" and "mouse grey" respectively. This doesn't help too much, as these colors are sold by Revell in Europe, but not here.

Because I'm far away from physical hobby shops, I often have to hunt down analogous colors from what brands are available. I've used this nifty bit of software to help me out many times, but even this is giving me conflicting information. RLM 75 by this site is a 'grey-violet' sorta shade. RLM 74 just baffles it. And then other bits of the internet start having their say, and staunchly maintain that German seaplane splinter camo was done with RLM 72 (green) and 73 (another, different green, probably black green.). Via IPMS Stockholm, here is there swatch of the three colors in question.

I've already made slightly-too-big brake lines. I may just look at many different shades for what they want, and see what pops for me.