I have been busy in the past days, mostly trying to get some weathering done on few pieces – primarily Ferdinand and CV9040, but decided to take a quick break.
I was browsing through the model kits in the hobby store, looking at all those Mengs and Takoms. All great kits, but can be lengthy, so at the end I picked up small Leopard VK 1602 kit from Hobby boss. I haven’t really done any paper panzer before, but I really like this one. It is still in the realm of design that we see on actual WWII vehicles, but is in much more compact format. Essentially it is small version of Panther tank.
I brought it home and got it built in about a week of what was enjoyable build.
The quality is very good, though in some spots I felt they let the ball drop a bit – the turret hatches feel rather simple, without any detail. It may be due to lack of actual documentation, but i felt it was below the level of the rest of the kit.
The kit is quite well provided with photoetch parts, so all the grill mesh parts on the rear hull are well represented.
Barrel is OK, but I decided to get metal replacement (though this was mostly due to the fact that I was placing an order for other stuff and just added this to the basket since I was already paying shipping anyhow).
I have only replaced wiring on the front headlights, which was quite oversized and it was just a simple step.
Tracks provided with the kit are quite laborious to put together with all the horns molded separately and the tracks all molded in sprues. I was looking for cost effective replacement option online and at the end decided that I will use tracks from one of the Dragon smart kits (Jagpanther) knowing that for the Jagdpanther I would anyhow get replacement tracks. They are slightly different pattern, which should not be much of an issue given that this is paper panzer.
I have also used spare metal replacement for smoke grenade dischargers, which were molded in plastic and rather thick, though the mounting plate was provided in photoetch.
So short project, with few replacements to give it it more of a kick. Now off to painting!
