BTR-80
"Jumper"

Started as a weekend group build... Six friends, who met first online, then rented an apartment for the weekend, and everyone built the same kit: Trumpeter's BTR-80 in 1:72 scale. I found a BTR jumping off of an obstacle at a training ground, so I decided to do something similar. Modifying the suspension took most of the time (only the rearmost pair of wheels are untouched, the first 2 pair are lowered, the 3rd pair is raised, where most of the weight rest), the painting and weathering went relatively fast. Apart from that, I added a pair of prisms to the rear, painted the rear lights, and used UV nail polish for the front lights. The base is from Buco Model Base (2cm thick xps foam included), hhe ground is made of Ammo Mig mud paste, the puddles are AK Still water (not recommended product, would've been better off with 2k transparent resin...). First, I made the wheel marks by cutting the xps. The obstacle is cut from another piece of xps, the sides are balsa wood, the striped poles are 1x1mm styrene strips. Then I made a watery mix of AK Dark earth pigment (which is by far my favourite line of pigments), to fit with the color of the mud on the vehicle, and painted the whole surface with it. After drying, AK pigment fixer was added with a dropper to hold them in place. Filling the tyre "trenches" came next, then adding a mix of static grass with my custom static applicator (made by yours truly), When I was satisfied with the density, another watery pigment mix was added surrounding the impact area, finally, several grass tufts were fixed with a pva glue. Gluing the vehicle was a bit problematic, but a small nail was attached to the bottom with superglue, made a hole into the ground with another, slightly bigger nail (having an xps base really helped), and she was ready 🙂. It was a fun build really, and got me a gold medal from the 5th PSMK event. Enjoy 🙂