This is the RFM M1A2 SEP V2 Abrams
I built this Abrams over the latter half of the summer of 2022, finishing in mid August. As always, I had a blast airbrushing the NATO camo, and I decided to go with a lighter weathering, just a pin wash and some mud on the side skirts, nothing too dusty or muddy. I've realised I don't really like doing heavy weathering on 1/35 armor, and prefer to do it on 1/72 armor instead.
I think this NATO camo is particularly well done. Cutting my paint with a healthy amount (maybe 20-30%?) of gloss varnish really helps keep the saturation of the camo colors there and not too dark after the varnishes, and compared to my previous freehanding work the overspray is minimal and the lines are crisper. I think the gloss varnish also helped the paint flow better.
Weathering was really just a pin wash and some streaks. I initially tried to go with this really dirty look starting with the sideskirts, but I wasn't liking how it was ending up so I mostly cleaned it up and left some on the sideskirts. I left the wheels pretty dirty (or at least just dark), not really sure why but I just like the look of it and the contrast with the rest of the model. I feel it has this really nice clean but grimy feel that I feel the pictures don't really capture well, but in person I really like it.
I really like the effect of the AFV anti reflective coating I used, which again I feel the pictures don't really capture. My only gripe is that it mostly is in the red to gold range, whereas in reference pictures there is a lot of blue and purple as well, which you don't get much when the stickers are on the model.
The build itself was mostly good. The fit was very good except with anything that had to do with pegs and holes; either the peg is too long or the hole too narrow, I always had to do something to make any part that fit with a peg to fit. I did like how the tracks fit together though; it took a little bit to figure out exactly how it worked, but afterwards, they were easy to assemble and are quite sturdy.
The instructions were a bit confusing (and they didn't label a part at the very end (it's F12 I'm pretty sure), but nothing too confusing.
I was a bit disappointed with the molding, there were a lot of very prominent deep pin ejection marks (especially on the tracks) which was very annoying, but all the actual detail is very good.