in short. i HATE this damn kit. oh, i’m still building it and i’m finishing it but i ain’t likin’ it! now’s the long part, oh the humanity.
accuracy: crap. they basically took their '35 model bt-7 kit, left the hull pretty much the same and included a new turret. in actuality the suspension should have been different, the grill on the back should be different, exhaust pipes don’t look the same, etc. the turret is generally the right shape but the gun mantlet is still off the '35 turret. i think the tracks are wrong too.
quality: ass. oh this needs more than one paragraph:
turret: butt. the gun came broken. suppose that’s not their fault but it probably would’ve survived if it was a better quality cast. cut, drilled out, replaced with rod. like i said before the turret is the right basic shape but instead of having something like two halves of the turret they half the upper portion, the middle layer and what looks like the turret ring but is actually the lower round portion. so what you end up with instead of a conical turret with a bustle is a stack of a bucket on a donut. the cast isn’t exactly smooth either, you can see the seem big time and the lower portion has a sink mark all the way around it. putty. lots of sanding. furthermore, the seem on the side of the turret is missing along with the view ports. added with PE scraps. scribed some missing panel lines too. the gun mantlet is not only the wrong type but the wrong SHAPE even for the year it DOES match AND it sits in the turret off-center. more putty, more sanding, lots of cursing.
hull: monkey nuts. all the UM kits i’ve seen so far seem to make any kind of box out of separate sides. maybe if i was better i wouldn’t have so much trouble. as it is they go together like a square peg in a round hole. the whole hull needed putty and sanding on pretty much every corner and edge. the front hatch piece on top was too big. once you glue it in place there’s a big gap left behind it. cut the hatch, glued it in place, filled the gap with styrene sheet bit. some of the suspension bits didn’t actually go together properly and had to be cut. i’m putting the fenders together now, more of the same.
detail: they include PE for grills, tow hooks and so on but the vents on the upper hull are molded as boxes and those are rounded off. all they had to do was make those lower and narrower and include extra pieces to glue on top of those flat-like. easy. nope, not happening.
going to take some pictures later and put them up so people know what i’m talking about. sorry for the rant but i’m very disappointed in this kit. the su-76m was pretty good if not a little tricky but this thing just blows my mind.
