This article is a documentation of the fun part of model building: Spraying camouflage on a tank. The project actually spanned the course of one year as I worked on it between other projects but the process overall was not too time consuming. I had originally planned to depict this tank as abandoned, without tracks, in front of a battle damaged building facade. With this in mind, I used the kit supplied vinyl tracks on a kit of a Panzer II because they had a pretty detailed look to them and it really helped the older kit look a lot better. I really wanted to just build the Wespe and get right into the fun painting but I thought that I could handle a few modifications and the construction went fairly quickly. When I realized that I wasn't going to get around to constructing the building facade in the near future, I decided to finish the kit and have some fun with painting. The problem with that plan was that the tank would look unfinished sitting on a base without tracks and I had to break down and get some replacements. This wasn't an easy decision because I was resisting the extra cost and the time involved with adding some new tracks. I finally made up my mind and Jon at Mission Models recommended tracks by Modelkasten. He was right about the incredible level of detail and they are an amazing example of engineering. These construction photos show the detailing I decided to add to the kit. The main change was replacing the side walls of the fighting compartment with pieces of thin styrene. I used the kit parts as templates and added wire hooks along the top edges. I also replaced a few fittings on the interior of the walls and made a cradle for a spare roadwheel on the hull. You can also see that the drive sprockets are a slightly different color plastic. These parts belong to the old PzII kit and that's because the teeth didn't line up with the tracks from the Wespe kit when I made the switch. When I built the PzII kit, this wasn't a problem for me because I wasn't going to use tracks with the Wespe. The track problem didn't resolve itself when I tried to fit the Modelkasten tracks as the teeth still didn't line up. I was determined to make good on the investment and time spent on assembly (two evenings) and I finally had to file the teeth thinner and actually remove some teeth at the top of the sprocket, under the fender. This was a lucky solution as you can't see under the fender and the tracks finally fit pretty nicely on the tank. You might also notice that I kept the interior pretty bare because I was depicting an abandoned tank. I left out the radio, submachine guns and any ammo because it made sense that the vehicle would be somewhat stripped and it certainly sped up the construction. Go to page 2

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