O.K. here is tyhe deal, I build mainly AC, and dont do this tread stuff, but my father in law asked for an M1A1HA kit for his birthday next month. I was looking at getting an Italeri kit( the one with all the resin stuff), and the Dragon HA kit and combining them to build a bitchen M1A1HA Abrams. Is this possible to do? Does the Dragon kit have individual tracks? What are the diffrences between an M1A1 and an M1A1HA?
Any help will be apriciated.
jim
Somewhere in the armor forum, Heavyarty and others have answered similar question to yours not too long ago. They have basically listed pros and cons of each kit from different manufacturer. I will try to find that forum and post it here again, but at the same time, you can also use search tool to find it yourself as well. Good luck with the build.
Following is quoted from Heavyarty. This may help you to decide which kit you want to use for what you want to do.
"Tamiya’s new M1A1/A2 OIF kit is the easiest to build and the newest tooled. Not necessarily the best. They all have their goods and bads.
Tamiya’s lacks the prominant anti-slip coating. It does come with a nice USMC MCD, APU, and some modern stowage and two descent figures.
Dragon’s is a close second to Tamiya. It is a little harder to build, but does have the anti-slip coating. All of Dragon’s M1A1/A2s also come with a partial interior. The newest Dragon USMC M1A1HC Baghdad kit also comes with a nice selection of gear, MRE boxes, and PE for the Bustle Rack Extension (BRE), however, the BRE is a US Army 3ID type, not USMC type. Dragon has also announced an all new tooled M1A1AIM to be out this fall. The M1A1 AIM will share most of its componenets with their recently released M1 Panther II mine clearing vehicle. Many improvements have been indicated over the Panther II as well. http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/dragon/dr3534.htm
Trumpeter is about on par with Dragon. It has the mud relief holes in the rear sprockets, one of only two kits to have these. It also comes with some extra ammo boxes and gear.
Academy’s is horrible. It has a sprue with some updated parts that are great for OIF, such as USMC Bustle Rack Extension, new style sprockets with mud relief holes, smoke grenades for launchers, USMC MCD, nice APU, etc. Other than the new items, it is the same old bad Academy kit with short M1 turret and old style T-156 tracks that haven’t been used since the early 1990s.
Italeris is an improved copy of the Trumpeter M1A1HC.
Here is a side-by-side review of most M1 Abrams kits out there.
http://vodnik2.republika.pl/pages/m1-comparison/m1comp1.htm
Review of new Tamiya M1A1/A2 OIF kit:
http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/tamiya/tam35269.htm
Review of new Academy M1A1 Iraq, 2003 kit:
http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/academy/acd13202.htm
Review of Dragon M1A1 USMC Bahgdad 2003 kit:
http://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/dragon/dr3533.htm
MERDC cammo was used on M1IPs and early M1A1s in the early 1980’s as well.
I also wrote an article on the M1 series of tanks. You can read it here to read up more on the different types: http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=613 "
There are others who are experts in M1 series. Rob G is an armor officer in the U.S. Army and he also have ton of information on it as well. Good luck with your search.
Thanks for the quote. The newest news is the forthcoming (hopefully soon) M1A1AIM from Dragon. It looks to be great. Latest release date is AUG/SEP, it has been coming since last fall though, so don’t hold your breath.