This had been long-assembled and partly painted, waiting on the paint-me pile. It's one of those spiffy amine vehicles from a series I never saw much of. But the mecha look cool. This kit from Takara included both 1/48 and 1/72 models of the Groundsearch. This is the 1/48.

2/28/2010 - It started innocently enough - just a bout of painting stuff this morning and at one point (after painting the Nova class starship and touching up the T-9 shuttlecraft) I still had a small amount of MM light gray paint left in the airbrush's paint cup. So I looked over the paint pile to see if anything there needed some light gray paint. Well, instead I and spotted this old gem from Takara. It was all assembled and had the hoverskirt painted. So, I masked it off and added some green to the paint cup to make a green-gray mix for the Groundsearch deck. Well, one thing led to another and by the end of the day it was all but finished.

Colors are: base skirt - gunship gray; deck - ~ 1:4 mix MM light gray + Dunkelgrün; nacelles - MM medium gray; exhaust - medium gray + NS sea blue; launchers - insignia red; seat - burnt sienna.

The kit had two gun options; I glued the big gun to the mount and put the smaller one on the deck - never hurts to have a spare!

The painting madness didn't end with this, by the way. At one point after I'd painted a base color on the big gun of light ghost gray, I again had paint left in the cup. That led to the base coat on the Norway class starship.

3/1/2010 - Got some more dirt work done on this.

But... those engines... intakes and exhausts look mighty plain. To the parts box!

Some leftover aircraft wheels, trimmed to reduce the diameter, and... amazing! I found some old-style ?car bumper? chrome domes. That assembly makes a perfect intake spike. For exhausts, I found some random clear parts - a little trimming & drilling and those are adequate exhaust detail. A little gunmetal over both and those engines look a whole lot better than they did before.

3/3/2010 - Painted the two figures' base colors yesterday & finished up with details and shading today. Ended up doing a little surgery on the driver and control yoke. I adjusted the driver's arm positions so the hands would be in a "grip the yoke" position. I cut the yoke apart to remove the bit the driver's are gripping, then superglued the tiny end pieces to the tops of the fists.

The base is a block of wood topped with a layer of water putty sifted onto white glue and sponge-painted with red oxide acrylic tube paint. Edges of the block are spray painted black. A few nails driven into the base give the Groundsearch a hovery look.

Finito!