I’ve always wanted an SA-9 Gaskin for some reason. Probably because it was pretty common but I’ve always liked the vehicle. When I was a kid (and had no $$) I somehow was able to get a couple of bits of micro armour – no idea where from – and I chose a Gaskin and a Scorpion. So I guess I’ve liked it for a long time!
Anyway… I wanted to get an ACE Models SA-9, but they are literally as rare as hen’s teeth and the 1 I found on Ebay (in years of looking) went for a lot more than I was willing to pay. So the dream died a little bit.
This has meant that whenever I put together a Soviet force and want to add a mobile SAM I go for a SA-13 Gopher – as I have the model. In my lists this is a bit more expensive than a SA-9 – as it’s a better missile.
One day I was thinking about it, and I realised the SAM hammerhead on the SA-13 is almost identical as on a SA-9. Hang on a moment… I stopped whatever it was I was doing and went over to my cabinet and grabbed a completed Britannia BRDM-2 and the launcher hammerhead from the SA-13 and put them together. Not an exact fit – but good enough to game with. In fact, you may not have noticed but I included this very slap-dash conversion in my last two games:
Its the one with the red square around it!
So then I decided to do a new Britannia BRDM-2 – slightly modified to better accept the ACE Models SA-13 launcher. Essentially all I did was add some plastic card and filler to make the SA-13 launcher head fit slightly better:
You can see it needed a bit of green stuff work as well.
So here is how it might look with the launcher added:
So now it just needs to be painted and I have a dedicated BRDM-2 body if I want to use a SA-9 Gaskin. Of course this does not solve the problem if I want to run a force with both a SA-9 and a SA-13, but I think the chances of wanting to do that are pretty slim.
So I’m putting this down as a win – just a worry that it took me something like 4 or 5 years to work it out! D’oh!!!!
Have fun
Richard
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