Here’s a pic showing the state of things after a day’s ‘work’:
It’s a typical short-run injection model kit from Ace, of Ukraine. With a bit of work, I think it can be turned into an excellent replica of this quite awesome vehicle…
The hull is in two main parts, top and bottom, and the joints on the sides of the hull are not too neat. I’m in the process of re-building those, courtesy of Magi-Sculp. The kit comes with all access doors closed, but the top halves of the doors should overhang a little, so I have lengthened those a little. While I was opening up the radiator louvres, which are normally open on the real thing, but unfortunately closed on the model, I opened up a door as well, to give me a slightly more dynamic look at the end. The radiator openings were subsequently ‘closed off’ from the inside and a little bit of fine PE mesh will provide some ‘detail’ inside.
The turret consists of 5 parts whose fit is quite attrocious. I cut open the roof to allow for the main hatch being open.
A lot of the detail is ‘soft’ and needs being scrapped away and re-modelled altogether.
But, given its shortcomings, I must say ACE seem to have got their dimensions right and the distinctive shape spot on. In particular, the shape of the access doors looks right: I have two scale drawings of the beast, including one published not that long ago, showing them wrong…
The plan is to build the kit as an Austrian machine, as their only other users were the SS, which I just don’t do… That is unless I can find any info on the ones captured by the Soviets, or, reportedly, the Bulgarians… If anyone has any info, I’m game!
The little one is a 1/144 scratch of the same vehicle, which I’m building at the same time.
