Well, new projects continue to beckon. I'm now setting out on a USMC brigade group for a cold war turned hot in 1985 - thinking the unthinkable. This would have been my peak time for call up had things gone a different route, although I might have been tempted to preempt call up at the time by volunteering for the RAF - it's the path my dad followed at 18 in WW2!
Anyway, having developed an interest in more modern equipment, I thought I'd share some photos that I took when I was working on a project in Siberia back in 2010. We were visiting Nyagan and stumbled across these vehicles forming a war memorial - we thought to Soviet casualties of the Afghan conflict of the 80's, but my Russian is scant to say the least.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with the vehicle ID.
I think this is a BMP-1
BTR-60
BMP-1 again
BTR-60
And again
ZSU23/4 Shilka
and again
All 3 in the memorial
The image quality isn't the best but we were visiting in late September and only had a brief chance to look around the town so the sun was very low in the sky. The week after we left temperatures were -10C and falling!
The cammo pattern on the Shilka is a base of bright green with olive green sploges outlined in black or very dark green. The BTR-60 is similar although the edges of the spots are less well defined and the BMP seems to be just in bright green with olive green splodges.
Thanks to Richard (cardophillips) for correcting my ID on the BTR-60.