SK362 Panzer Spahwagen Oskar (25mm Linear Gun Type)

The wonderful Wave Oskar kit was my first time building a Ma.K hover vehicle! After admiring the various builds online of people who had built the ModelKasten one, I knew I wanted to build this kit as soon as the Wave injection was released. This was built fairly early into my foray into Ma.K and I think it was actually the first ever Ma.K I preordered and awaited eagerly. In fact, the one and only unboxing video I have ever been a part of was for this kit - gawk at my awkwardness on camera.

The color scheme came about as a local shop was having a competition and the theme was the kit had to be majority yellow or blue in color. Little did I know that handpainting a ton of yellow was going to be an exercise in both patience and madness. The colors are actually a variety of Mr. Color aircraft colors, the yellow is Zinc Chromate Primer which covered much better than just the primary yellow I started out with, and the green and brown is from a set of WW2 US aircraft camouflage colors.

The very large body that is relatively uninterrupted was a joy to hand paint as it let me actually plan out the entire camouflage pattern and try to complement the shapes and bulges. The weathering was accomplished with a mix of pin washes and oil paint effects - the vehicle is powered by large lift fans rather than antigravity pods like many Ma.K hover vehicles so I imagined a great deal of dirt would be kicked up as it traveled so the finish is quite grimy.

This was my first time employing the classic nonplussed frog marking that is so prevalent on Strahl vehicles in Ma.K. I also used the decals as a guide and hand painted on the "8" unit number - the look of field applied markings is a very cool aspect of the Ma.K aesthetic and it was important to try that. The kit actually has a basic color change LED in the "eye" courtesy of some help from my friend Tom - however it didn't photograph very well due to its constant blinking so it was left off for the photos. I can assure you it looks quite cool in person :p

What can I say - another classic Ma.K design from the mind of Mr. Kow Yokoyama! Highly recommended and there are several other cool variants that involve additional rocket tubes mounted to the humps, additional armor skirts, and a weapon variation... maybe I need to try another go at this design!