Leopard 2A6 WIP

Murad ÖZER
who sent me here? 😄

Jos Jansen
As an ex Dutch tanker, I am not a fan of this version of the Leopard 2A6 NL ... I know the history how this decision came about. Aside from who made this misguided decision to paint a battle tank in orange, it will be a challenge for a model to copy this ... 👍

Patrick Hagelstein
Well Jos, I'm with you on some aspects. Back then I used to work not far away from our Leopard engineering office and they had this huge poster hanging in their office and it intrigued me to some extend. When I saw this vehicle (weren't there actually two vehicles? I see different license plates and different text fonts...) parked in The Hague for Veterans Day, I took pictures from a modeler's perspective for future reference. (No Leopard 2A6 project I was working on back then, only a 2A4 was in the works) Recently I was given a Tamiya 2A6 by a modelclub member and I wanted to do something 'extra' to it. At first I wanted to do a Hohenfels 2A5, all muddied up but when I saw this picture in my references, it reminded me of that orange tank. Being the only Dutch guy in my group and doing something 'extra', it sparked my interest. I agree with you that this isn't a prime example of how well our other tanks were kept back in those days but this is more of a 'shock and awe' experiment in my club. Back then in The Hague it was a rainy day and the water-soluble paint started to wear off already. In my pictures (which I will upload quite soon) you can see the paint running off already and it gave the vehicle a shabby look already. Especially because the front side skirts were folded down and stowed it gave the vehicle a haphazard look. Either way, looking into the references, it needed some more work than the Tamiya kit could offer and having the Border Models BT-002 coming in this weekend, I decided to go all out and portray it as it was that Saturday morning in June 2008. The Border Models kit is unbelievable when it comes to details but I still have to use parts of the Revell kit for the Dutch radio setup and the Dutch smoke dischargers. Other than that, I agree with you that this will be a challenge! The devil is in the details and the more I look, the more differences I see compared to the German kit versions....