I was contacted just before Adepticon to complete a full platoon of Stuka Zu Fuss halftracks based on the conversion I did a few years back for my Gepanzerte Panzerpioneers (featured here). It having been awhile, I actually forgot just how much work scratchbuilding one vehicle's worth of rocket artillery racking was....let alone four!
My launchers are a little different from reality. The real-life rockets were housed in break-away wooden casings, so you could actually see the shell. Mine do away with this in favor of a plain box-style. At this scale, it looks a little cleaner and more combat-ready. At 28mm, it just wouldn't work.
Needless to say, this took me a good part of May to complete. I started by assembling four PSC Sdkfz 251 D halftracks and added the racking from plasticard. The client chose to use BF plastic Grenadier crewmen in place of the PSC version, so I cleaned and mounted those for painting separately. Base painting was done by airbrush, detail painting by hand.
This is actually a different mix for Dunkelgelb (50% Testors Acryl DG, 50% Vallejo Model Middlestone) then my normal straight from the bottle use and I actually like it a lot better. The problem with the Testors Acryl is that, at this small scale, it doesn't really "pop" until the final oil wash (and it's EASY to screw up that wash and make it too dark). This mix is nice because it's the "right" shade of yellow-brown without having to need an oil wash. I also used VMC German Camo Brown in place of my normal Testors Rotbraun. It was perfect for what the client wanted but not really red-brown enough for my taste.
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