Tmiya has one that’s really good but sorta pricey
I just built Tamiya’s M1A2 OIF, it went together very well.
I’m getting towards the end of building the Italeri M1A2. It’s been an involved build, but nothing an experinced modeller oughtn’t to be able to cope with. It’s arguably better than the Tamiya M1A2 OIF, having link&length tracks and non-slip textured surfaces where appropriate. It’s also, in the UK, £20 cheaper.
I’ve updated it to OIF standard with accessories from the Tamiya Modern US Army Equipment set (and yes, I know that many of the parts in this set aren’t quite right for OIF, but they’re good enough for me) and quite a lot of scratch-building, particularly around the stowage racks, replaced the .50 calibre with one from the wonderful Academy US machine gun set, added assorted crates, jerry cans, mineral water bottles and MRE packs. I’ve also replaced the kit decals with ones from Echelon fine Details.
The net result, of course, is that I’ve spent far more on ‘extras’ than I’ve saved by not buying the Tamiya kit (except that when I bought the Italeri kit, the Tamiya one hadn’t been released), but I’ve had getting on for three months’ modelling fun out of it, have tried out a few new (to me) techniques, and am really pleased with the result so far.
Chris
Is that the Italeri #6390 Abrams? I have been looking to buy that kit for some time now. It appears to be a better kit than some of the others I have found reviewed.
As for your comments on the aftermarket stuff, I find myself always buying the detail stuff to ‘finish’ the kit. Some of the PE kits cost more than the kit themselves! But you can never go wrong with a good fit & finish kit with a strong level of detail that costs a few dollars more than a kit that is bad from the get go.
Yes, that is the Italeri M1A2 Abrams. It is about on par with all the others, none are really any worse than the others, they all have good and bad points. Here is a great build article by Gunnie, Jim Lewis from Armorama, that will shed some light on it.
Yup, that’s it. Fit isn’t Tamiya, but neither is price, and I’m sure you can address the fit and ejector pin marks issues. You don’t need to blank off the sponsons, because you can’t see the lack of blanking even if you turn the finished model upside down. True, you can if you take the turret off, but even an IPMS judge isn’t going to do that, is he?
BTW, can someone tell me, how does the US Army and USMC tie down crates, jerry cans, amo boxes and so on, onto vehicles so they don’t fall off. In the British Army, we mostly use bungee cords and camo netting.
Chris
Thanks Arty…I have that link in my favorites already. I read all I can on M1 builds.