First day of good sun.

Today was the first day I had some spare time AND the sun to take pictures in with my dodgy camera. It didn't last long before deciding the battery was dying but I managed to get through a bit of backlog before it died.

Anyway, here's my latest build: A Revell Panzer III Ausf L for the Fallschirmjäger Ersatz und Ausbildungs Regiment 'Hermann Göring' which was operating in the region of Son on September 17th and pressed into combat. The equipment was mostly old Panzer III and IVs with some eStuG D and Es and I plan to include one of each in the unit. Anyway, on to the pictures. Click for larger as usual:






As you can see, the tracks are multipart plastic rather than a stretched vinyl like on Airfix or other Revell kits. It was a headache to do and took the build time from an hour or so to two full evenings of work. They didn't line up particularly well either, although looking at other people's efforts I suspect that's my fault rather than a flaw in the kit.



The last image shows the internal view of the modified turret. I'm rather proud of this little mod really. I've got a thing for being able to elevate and depress the gun barrels on tanks, so I spent a few minutes working out how to modify this tank. Unlike the Cromwells and Achilles SPG kits from HäT this was not a quick mod, and required quite a bit of brace and counter-weight building. The end result is a gun which can move up and down, wiggle from side to side (unintentional...) and, best of all, bounces realistically when pushed across a rough table surface.

I really didn't enjoy building this one. 100+ parts for a 1:72 kit is excessive. Now that it's finished I like the end result, but I'm glad I don't need to build another one (or four....).