M981

Dan M
Thank you James! It's an old kit and therefore not a very difficult one. The tracks are awful though.
Now I just need to find the time to paint it and since I wanna do a MERDC camo scheme ... well, I'm a little hesitant with such a complicated scheme as I don't have much experience with camo 🙂

Markus Antonius
Yes, Dan, MERDC can be tricky to get it look right. i do have some notes written down somewhere on how i did it, if you wish i can look it up for you. take a look at my albums, you will see some MERDC there.

Dan M
Thank you Marcus, any tips would be welcomed. The scheme I want to do is winter verdant as the vehicle will be part of the Reforger exercise

Markus Antonius
Here is my suggestion Dan:
MERDC Winter: Overall Base i used Gunze H72
for green i used either Tamiya XF11, oversprayed with XF 67, or Gunze H73 (sprayed with gun)
the crow feet i used to paint by brush with thinned Nato Black from vallejo and heavilly thinned Buff and white from Tamiya (using flow enhancer, but any other buff or light sand would do).
looks a bit bright in the end, but seeing reforger is seeing mud, dirt and sand... so weathering, filtering etc, is the key i guess.
here i can advice you to use the weathering set for nato vehicles from AK interactive and Flory models washes.
But as i remember, FISTV's were mostly using the Nato 3-Color Camouflage!
Check out the Reforger Series from Tankograd, they are excellent reference.
Verlindens Books on the M113 is also very nice, but hard to find.

Markus Kutsch The Plastic Bench
Very clean build 👍.Keep up the good work.

Dan M
Thank you Markus and Markus 🙂

I don't have the Tankograd book but I have the Reforger one from Concord. There are no picture of FISTV in it, only base M-113's and also one M-577 and all of them are in MERDC winter verdant, which is why I thought the scheme would work for an M981 as well. Plus I wanted an excuse to do a MERDC vehicle and most of my other stuff in the stash is more appropriate for the NATO 3-color scheme 🙂
The Verlinden's book on M113 (volume two) has some pictures of the M901 (the TOW version) which is similar to the FISTV, during Reforger also with MERDC.

As far as the order for the colors I was thinking of going from light to dark, so doing the base coat in the sand color, then mask the small patches that would remain visible in the end, go with green and field drab over the rest, then add the black by paintbrush. I'm just concerned with how well I can cover darker colors with sand at a later time especially going by hand. But of course it's my first time attempting this so I will take any advice 🙂

Markus Antonius
ok Dan, no problem with the sandcolor i guess.. but it depends on the brand of course. humbrol enamels would go best over dark colors i think.
the "crowfeet" black and sand had all types of edges: from feathered to sharp, so in reality they were painted with airgun or handbrushed as well.
and for the camouflage scheme... take the advice of Al Superczynski (RIP): "Build what YOU want, the way YOU want to, and above all, have fun." 🙂