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AFV Club M113 ACAV

Thanks, Guys.

Since the last posting I have completed the radio.

One of the things I had to do was make the cord to the handset which I made from some thin black wire wrapped around some larger copper wire to create the coil of the cord.

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I painted the radio set. I added some chipping of the paint with a pencil. The cable connectors are painted grey and then highlighted with a pencil.

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And then I glued it onto the shelf...

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I added the handset from Bravo 6 to the cable...

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And now the handset is attached to the radio and the handset itself is resting on the shelf...

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Now on to the stowage...

Cheers,
James
 
Thanks, Guys. I appreciate you watching the progress on this.

Piet, I won't be adding sandbags to the floor because the particular platoon I am representing did not use that practice at the time being depicted.

Here are some reference photos that others may find useful. These tracks are from C Company, 2d Battalion, 47th Infantry (Mechanized), 9th Infantry Division during 1967 and early 1968.

This first picture is of my friend Bill Rambow pulling maintenance on his .50 during one of their few stand downs. There is a good view of the wooden box seats and some of the contents of the load plan. Most of their personal gear has been emptied out of the track in order to clean their uniforms, etc. His track was C-14 which mounted a 106mm Recoilless Rifle on it's right side.

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Next are three photos from David Zabecki who was part of the crew of C-007 which was the company's commo track. David Zabecki retired from the US Army as a Major General and is a well known military historian. Since this was the commo track, they were configured a bit differently than the line platoons. Even their box seat is constructed a bit differently than those on Bill Rambow's track. Probably more due to different carpentry skills of the various crews rather than what was carried in the box seat. These three photos were taken in February/March 1968. One gives a pretty decent view of the engine access panel being open.

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Here are a couple of photos of the box seats being constructed and other stand down motor pool activities.

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And here are some other pictures taken during stand downs showing some of the interior stowage.

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Cheers,
James
 
And speaking of interior stowage...

I painted and added some laundry/WP bags that the crew used to carry spare uniforms. Here they are painted and in place in the sponson rack.

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And this is what one will be able to see through the hatches...

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Now to gather more stowage to load this thing up..

Cheers,
James
 
Black Label beer...wow.

Excellent shots James, thanks for sharing these! :salute

Yup, Black Label was the brand of beer that they got the most of. My friend who was a member of this unit said they very rarely received any other brand. I guess units closer to the supply chain got first pick and these guys who only spent 20 to 30 days in basecamp during their year-long tour got whatever was left.

Hopefully the pictures of the real tracks will helps someone with their models. I have a bunch of these.

Cheers,
James
 
Nice work James! I'm going to have to use this thread as a road map when I finally get around to building mine Tamiya kit!

Thanks for sharing
Mike
 
Thanks, Guys.

Since I am trying to get that final figure completed for the Charlie Don't Surf 3 Campaign, I only did a little bit of work on this project. My friend Bill Rambow had told me a few times that their cooler was one they had bought from a Vietnamese vendor and that it was made of metal and was only so big. This is a pretty good representation of what those locally made coolers looked like.

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And here it is where his crew used to place the cooler to keep it out of the sun...

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I will be placing this project on hold until I get that figure completed which should be within the next couple of days.

Cheers,
James
 
Thanks, Guys.

Now comes some of the tedious but necessary tasks of gathering, cutting out and assembling, and sculpting more stowage for this track.

Right now I am in the process of making the various soda, beer, and c-ration cases. They are paper products from MecModels.

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I hope to be done with these boxes by tonight so I can move on to ammo boxes, more WP bags, rucksacks, other web gear, and other items.

Cheers,
James
 
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