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The Raccoon is the recon version of the Super Armored Fighting Suit from the SF3D series. It is unarmed, but mounts a powerful sensor pod just above the right shoulder. Like all of the Nitto SF3D kits, this one was simple and easy to build. The most time consuming part was painting. The kit included several detail pieces, including wires, a thin metal antenna, and a pair of springs to use as power cables on the legs. A fully detailed "cockpit" is included, but since I chose to build the kit with the armored hatch closed, I did not install the 3 pieces that make up that cockpit. I picked up this kit after the original production run was long over, but before Nitto began the re-release of Machinen Krieger. I managed to snag this Raccoon for about $10 at a local hobby store.
I painted the kit in a grey/brown camo pattern, with heavy dust weathering. The lower segments of the legs and feet are heavily covered in "mud" in order to blend into the diorama I chose to build. Due to my difficulty with lighting the subject, the pictures here are not that great. The diorama is a wooden base that I built up with several foam-core layers coated with spackle. While the spackle was drying, I liberally sprinkeld a layer of tiny gravel bits from Mountain Sceenics. When completely dry, I painted the ground a muddy brown color. Though not visible in these pictures, there is a small pool of water at the base of the hill that was created with clear casting acrylic and krystal kleer. The barbed wire is scratch-built, and looks bloody awful. The fallen armored fighting suit was cobbled together from a variety of kit parts I had lying around, including a Zentraedi Regult Pod, Valkyrie Battloid, and the unused cockpit detail from the Raccoon.
