The Carrier has now acquired more stowage and a coat of dust...
The latter is a variety of pigments, including some authentic Tuscan earth which I brought home from our holiday a couple of year back and grounded down in a coffee blender.
As for the stowage, what you see includes what came with the
Riich kit (although weapons have straps added from lead foil or masking tape), additional ammo boxes and petrol cans from the
Bronco British Field Accessories Set, more items from
Resicast (e.g. crates filled with packs and helmets, etc, dented ammo crates) and, perhaps best of all, Bren ammo boxes and magazines from
Ultracast. There are also spent rounds from brass wire snipped to shape.
The no.19 wireless set is fine as it comes, but it needs wiring - so I added mine. I am certainly no expert! The thicker cable, I believe, is the power supply which plugs into the front of the set. The cylindrical object which sits on top comes with the kit - but the instructions don't tell you what it is or where to put it. In fact, it's a 'variometer' and, as you can see in the image below, it usually sits on top of the main set.'
There is also a control unit, which is missing from the kit completely. Here's a close-up.
As you can see from the above diagram, the headphones and microphone actually plug into this unit and not directly into the wireless set. I basically copped out by making a carpet (using
Tamiya quick dry putty) to cover the rear of the set and the area where the control box would be located - and all my wires conveniently disappear behind it. I used the excuse that the troops would be likely to have some sort of improvised cover to protect the set from the sun and rain...
The headphones and microphone also come with the kit. For the wiring I used EZ Line, which is fine, stretchable plastic thread mainly used for
rigging ships and aeroplanes.
The aerials / antennae were added from guitar strings. After a little research and help from another site it seems that, among those commonly used on the Carrier, were the thinner variety which came in 4ft lengths (which equates to roughly 3.5 cms in 1/35 scale) and could be screwed into each other. So I went for one 4ft in length and another 8ft. These generally appear to have been straight, not curved, although in videos of carriers on the move they can be seen swinging about considerably!
Finally, everything was painted using either Vallejo or MIG acrylics...
