Hi everybody. After modelling Tamiya armour for the past few years, I thought it was perhaps time for a change. After seeing a few adverts for Academy kits with interiors I decided to buy one. I ended up finding a Tiger I set with interior and photo etched parts for AUS$62, what I thought was a great price compared to the Taymia kits.
So, this being my first Tiger kit, Academy kit and interior build, is there anything that i should look out for/be aware of? Ive really no experience with other brands apart from Dragon figures and a horrid Academy Tank Acessories kit.
I also have an Academy Tiger with interior, but haven’t started. Apparently it is a great kit with several small fixable inaccuracies, but I was actually thinking of just building mine out of the box. I think that it is a pretty good kit though; it is certainly highly regarded. So many bits!
Welcome to the forums! I’ve only built Academy’s tiger 1 without interior, but the kit was pretty good. As phroosh mentioned, there are inaccuracies, like the number of shells in the ammo storage area. They put 3, but there should be 4 shells side by side. But hope it helps!
I am in the process of assembling one now (save for the couple of days spent on a quick SdKfz 222[:D).
No problems yet. i just wish I could find some photoetch for this sucker.
Ryan
I hav completed 1 of those kits and it is a good 1. Just look out for the tracks. Very hard to position. Otherwise the whole kit is good. I enjoyed building it.
Thanks for the replies, im certainly looking forward to it. The individual link tracks should be an interesting venture. Sounds like any inaccuracies can be fixed up rather easily [:)]
As for photo etch, both Aber and Eduard make an interior and exterior set for the Academy kits. I have an old Eduard exterior set that is no longer available. I’ve looked at the instruction sheets for the new one and it looks pretty nice. The Aber set is, of course, typical Aber.
btw, I have the early kit myself, but it’s so far down on my to build list, it will be a long time before it sees the glue brush!
I believe Eduard 35498 is the exterior set for this kit and Eduard 35500 is the interior set. At least I hope so because I have both waiting to go on the model when I build it.
I recently ordered the Academy Tiger I without interior and am awaiting it’s arrival. I have, however, build Academy kits and the past and was particularly disappointed with the decals. They did not stick at all and peeled off in less than a week. I wound up hand painting the numbers on my Panzer IV and buying separate decals for my Kiowa OH-58. Another problem I had was with the armor panelling on the sides and the turret but you should not have this problem with the Tiger. Good luck with all that[8D]
I have almost completed this kit and it went together very well. I had a problem with the turret gearbox / seat assembly (steps 16 & 17). The diagram is not correct and I would recommend leaving thie assembly until you fit the turret floor so you can line the parts up correctly.
Hope this helps