Kit Review: AFV Club 1/35 Scale Kit No. AF35133; BIG FOOT Track for M2A2, M3A3, AAV7A1, MLRS Late, CV90 (Workable); 360 parts (180 in black styrene, 180 in brown styrene); price about $15-18
Advantages: nice set permits fixing errors in kits or upgrading other kits with very well done set of single link tracks; "snap-together" feature a good idea
Disadvantages: assembly and clean-up of track pads will be tedious
Rating: Highly Recommended
Recommendation: for all modern US fans building late-production US armored vehicles or upgrades from current combat
Everybody looks for a "niche" that they can claim as their own, and AFV Club has tried harder than most to provide very well engineered working single link track sets to compliment their very well engineered kits. This set is no different, and permits the modeler to either upgrade kits like the Tamiya OIF M2A2 or AAV7A1 UGS kits, DML's MLRS, or to fix errors in kits like Academy's OIF M2A2 which came with the older model tracks.
The tracks are simple - they consist of a black styrene track pad and a brown plastic track link; while there are no marks on the black parts, the injection pin marks on the latter are wisely limited to the place where the pad attaches to the link, so cleanup is an absolute minimum. The brown links are made from a slightly flexible plastic, and can be assembled by simply flexing the track link and engaging its pins on either side of a second link. The directions have you assemble the pads to the links first, but actually I think snapping the track links together first and then adding the pads will work better (the pads are not part of the attachment means for this type of track.) This will permit the modeler to assemble (and even paint) the links first, and paint the pads separately as well, and then assemble them later.
Overall this is another nice set from AFV Club, and while they require some forethought and patience the results are usually superior to most other options.
Cookie Sewell