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"FNGs" Camp Bearcat, Vietnam 1967 (Completed)

J

JamesOLeary

Master at Arms
It has been a few months since I have posted anything. Medical issues and hospital visits concerning my wife and my mom have been on the forefront and modeling had taken a back seat. Things are settling down, so I am trying to get some modeling done. Since the MEDCAP diorama that I had been converting a bunch of figures for is going to be a long term project and I would like to get something completed in the near term, I decided to change focus and create a diorama that anyone who has been in the military can relate to - at one time or another being a new guy at a unit.

The storyline of this diorama is basically that of two new guys/replacements/FNGs being passed off to their new Squad Leader and Platoon Sergeant by an Admin Clerk. In order to make this a relatively quick project, I decided to use some of my recent conversions altering the one depicting the clerk by changing out the left hand that I originally placed a slingshot into and replacing it with one holding a clipboard. The Platoon Sergeant and Squad Leader figures were originally going to be pulling security for the MEDCAP, so they have weapons slung over their shoulders. I kind of wish I hadn't added the weapons yet as they would have rarely been carried around Camp Bearcat, but it is plausible that they had returned to basecamp for some other reason and were summoned over to S1 to pick up the new guys before they headed back out to the field.

Since I like having some sort of background to my dioramas now, I decided to make a facade of one of the several versions of HQ/Admin buildings that had been built at Camp Bearcat.

So here is the basic layout of where the figures will be located and here are photos of this from several angles.

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Yesterday I primed the building for painting, so hopefully I can start on that within the next day or two.

Thanks for looking.
Cheers,
James
 
I started painting the structure this evening. Since the wood of the buildings was left unpainted I will be attempting to make thos untextured styrene look like new lumber. This photo is a good example of the process I am using - black primer, a coat of brown paint across the wood sections, and subsequent coats of lighter shades. I still have a way to go, but at least painting has begun. I just hope that the final look of the wood will look convincing.

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Tonight's progress was the completion of replicating the wood on the front of the building. Hopefully it looks like relatively new lumber. I tried to run a dark line in between boards to delineate the boards, but the higher I got on the building the harder it seemed for me to paint a straight line.

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Tomorrow I will try to paint the wooden supports for the roof, the corrugated tin, the doorknob, and sandbags.
 
centaur567 said:
Looks great!! The door header of our hooches were just under 6'. We were always banging our heads and don't forget the blast walls as well. Gary S.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Gary.
I noticed that the doorways to the first group of tent support construction was a bit on the short side, too.
Something else that I noticed about the structures at Bearcat was that other than around the living quarter tents, sandbag walls were not enplaced until late in 1967. Most of the photos that I have seen of 2d BN 47th INF (Mech) headquarters and other admin/supply buildings are without sandbags with the exception of one photo taken in 1968 that shows a sandbag wall around the front of the HQ building.
 
Today's progress consisted of fading out the tops of the sandbags, some touch up of the painting of the wood parts, and making the sign for above the door. The sign is a piece of sheet styrene that I applied several coats of blue to. The letters are dry transfers. I sealed the sign with AK Interactive's Ultra Matte varnish before gluing it to the building.

The Battalion Headquarters building was a H shaped structure with only one entrance in the front that was in the center cross piece of the building. At the rear of the two wings was a door. One wing housed the S2/S3 shops and the other housed the S1/S4 shops. Since personnel management and assignment is a S1 function, the handover of the new guys to representatives of their new platoon is taking place outside of S1.

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Sometimes the blast walls were made up of dirt filled wooden boxes that our rockets came from or 55 gal. drums filled with dirt. Looking good so far. Gary S.
 
Painting has begun on one of the FNGs for this diorama. He looks a bit rough right now as there is still a lot to do in terms of outlining, shading, and highlighting. Since the uniform is new and needs to be darker than those of the Platoon Sergeant and Squad Leader and even that of the Admin clerk, I will be approaching the highlights a bit differently than I normally do them. I thought I would give the OG 107 Dark Shade color from the Lifecolor Vietnam Uniform Paint set a try. The color is pretty darn close to that of some of my less worn sets of jungle fatigues, so I was pleased with that. However, I think I need to work on obtaining a better consistency of the paint by putting some on my wet pallet instead of using it from straight out of the bottle. I will probably also use some Reaper Anti Shine Additive as it was kind of on the shiny side. I used some AK Interactive Dark Green as a light wash to darken the color a bit and then used it for the first shadows in parts of the shirt. For the first highlights on the left front of the shirt I used Scale 75 Ardennes Green which I had been using for my base color for the past year or so. I applied AK Interactive's Ultra Matte varnish to eliminate the shine so I can see what I am doing better. So far, I think he is off to a good start.

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I will try to work on him some more tomorrow.
 
The results of today's painting session is the completion of this figure. I think the new-looking uniform and shined boots along with the apprehensive look on his face makes him look like a new guy fresh from the World. Tomorrow I will look at him under other light sources and make any necessary touch ups. I included two photos of him with the building facade in the background to show how he will look in the diorama.

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I did some painting today, but all I got done was the face of the other new guy. The intent is for him to look quite young, fresh from the States, and sporting a stateside white wall haircut. I hope I was able to pull that off convincingly enough. After I took these photos I noticed that I needed to touch up underneath his left eye which I just did a few minutes ago. Now that the face is done, I will start his uniform tomorrow.

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I added some crank insignia to the sleeves of the new guys. They started out as decals from Archer which adhered to the folds quite well. The problem with them was that after applying a few coats of AK Interactive's Ultra Matte varnish there were still shiny areas on the decals. To remedy this I just painted over them.

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