AEC Matador Early
68th Medium Regiment

The model should represent an early version of the AEC Matador, used as an artillery tractor, towing a 6-inch Howitzer. It's based on a reference photo taken in February 1941, near Giovanni Berta, Lybia. It probably belonged to the 234th Battery, 68th Medium Regiment, HQ Middle East Command. However, at the time the photo was taken, the battery was temporarily attached to the 64th or 7th Medium Regiment under the XIII Corps, while the rest of the 68th was deployed in Sudan. It was taken during the opening stages of Operation Sonnenblume in some godforsaken place in Libya. Having no experience with artillery units it took me quite some time to figure out the unit, marking, etc.

AEC Matador kit is AFV Club No. AF35236. I can say the same about all the AFV kits I built so far. They are all very quirky, but they can be built into nice-looking models, and there's always some amount of frustration involved. Instruction errors, and fit issues (which vary from perfect fit to no fit at all on the same model), are usually over-engineered... However, the details are generally fantastic. This kit had all of that and more. On top of everything, the plastic was a bit brittle, which combined with fiddly parts meant a lot of time spent on fixing broken parts. Despite all the issues, it is still a great kit, and I can recommend it.

The 6-inch howitzer is a resin kit from Resicast. Never built a resin kit before, so it was a challenge of its own. But the kit is relatively simple so I think it's a good choice for a first resin kit.

Only the wheels were replaced with the AM Panzer Art resin version. The wheels included in this kit are vinyl ones, which I hate. I was considering scratch-building all canvas sheets, but in the end, I only replaced rolled sheets and kept the plastic version for the rest. The reason for this is that I had to mask the Caunter camo, and I am quite sure that paper canvas sheets wouldn't survive this. The plastic sheets included in this kit are almost completely flat, which is a pity because everything else is super detailed. So it will be something left to be desired. The rolled canvas and canvas cover used on the howitzer are made of paper using a VMS paper shaper. The camouflage net was made from medical gauze, impregnated with paper shaper as well.

This was my first try to do a vegetation. The result could be better, but it is what it is. It's made from Green Stuff World Seafoam trees and leaf litter. Decals are coming from 3 different sets.

The model is painted mainly with MRP paints, although I used Real Colors for canvas (cause it's easier to do chipping), and Vallejo, Gunze, and Hataka for brush and detail painting. Masking it for Caunter camo was a project itself. Including an incident in the middle of painting when I dropped the model and spent a few days fixing it :facepalm:

I did just some basic weathering with washes and pigments.