This is Revell’s 1/72 Leopard 1A5. I spent a few hours re-doing tools, hooks, cables and a few extra bits. The kit itself is very nice, maybe not as nice as their latest kits such as the Pz IV and the King Tiger, but all the same well detailed, well enginered and easy to build.
The tracks are hard plastic, in longer sections and individual tracks which kicks it out of the week-end build type of projects for absolute beginers. But with a bit of patience, it builds up as a very gorgeous model.
The added armour around the turret gives it a very menacing look, something that was, to my eyes anyway, lacking to the earlier variants, with a small and rounded turret atop of a huge hull… My reference (pics of Dutch Leopard 1A5) shows that there are some welded bits (I called ‘teats’ for a better name!) on the turret, under that armour but I was not sure of how many nor of their locations, so I did without… They are not available in the kit…
Looks good. They have come a long way with the Braile scale kits in the last year. I can’t beleive how much they have improved. the detail is getting better and better. But my hat goes off to anybody who builds in this scale. with my fingers and old eyes I would make a total mess if one. Too small a scale for me.
That is an excellent job dj! I also built one of those about 8 months ago. I built OOB because I didn’t have the cash to get the extras. I’ll have to get a picture sometime soon so everyone can see how great your work is next to an OOB build.
Duke, there’s no other extras than fine metal wire (recuperated from old electric cables), fine copper mesh (don;t know where it cam from, but fine mesh can be found in any fabric shop), plastic card (I have tons because of all the scratchbuilding I do), plastic rods (stretched sprue would equally do, just more time-consuming) and the lead from a good bottle of wine. Total cost is negligible and the wine was great!
Peter, I could not let myself be accused of buying good wines just for the lead foil, so in answer to your question, I did open up the bottle before I started… Hips!
