Dragon 1/35 Panzer. IV Ausf. E WIP

Modeling Subjects Armor
1

Building this Dragon kit for the African Operations of World War II GB and thought I’d share my progress here as well.

The Dragon the mid 2000’s arguably at Dragon’s height. The kit comes with a lot of photoetch, turned aluminum barrel and metal towing cables. At the time I believe Dragon kits like this one retailed for less than $40USD. They were a great value considering Tamiya kits were the same cost if not more.

I recently picked up some old issues of Military Miniatures in Review that date from the time this kit came out and there are a few letters to the editor talking about how Dragon has pretty much killed Tamiya in the armor market. Of course now Dragon seems to be pretty much done apart from reissuing older kits at in inflated cost.

In typical Dragon fashion the instructions are very “busy” and you really have to pay attention to everything in each step.

The kit seems somewhat over engineered with each suspension piece being made up of eighteen pieces counting the road wheels. It took me almost four hours to build the suspension; road wheels, sprocket and idler mainly because of the many sprue attachment points on require a lot of cleanup.

That’s all I’ve gotten done so far.

2

Wow, that suspension is the model unto itself.

3

Yeah, ya gotta love the insane complexity of some of the Dragon kits! But they were a great deal until the rise in prices.

Fantastic job you’re doing so far! [Y]

4

Worked on the kit for three hours yesterday and here is the result.

The gap where the rear panel joins with the hull needs some filling.


Doesn’t look like a lot however because of the number of tiny parts and cleanup involved its very time consuming. Some of the locations were the parts fit don’t fit very well and I’m pretty sure a few parts on the rear hull aren’t set correctly.

The suspension is also workable which unless you are putting this in a diorama is pointless as the tracks aren’t workable.

Speaking of tracks thankfully there is not cleanup involved they just need glued together which will save a lot of time.

I’ll be putting a tank commander in the turret and here’s the figure I’ll be using.

The figure comes with the choice of three heads and I’ll be using the one with a scarf covering the face and goggles.

My next step is going to be putting the tracks together before progressing any further.