To link and length plastic tracks fans

Maciek,

I just did the 1/72 NASHORN produced by DRAGON and I must say that their DS tracks are simply great to paint and cement. It holds well Vallejo acrylics and is glued together using regular modelling glue (in this case, Revell fluid). The details are very crisp, better than some vinyl tracks and certainly better than most older link & length stuff (i.e. MATCHBOX StuG IV or ESCI). Moreover, it can be glued easily on return rollers to show the "sagging". I think it's definitely not marketing, but another step in DRAGON's run for excellence.

Speaking of experience with link & length, I noticed that PST tracks are rather difficult to put correctly on sprocket, especially on KV & JS series. You can cheat a little bit by cutting about 60 % of the teeth, glue the links and then insert tiny strips of plastic to figure out the teeth in or between the links. Same procedure is valid for the Pz 38(T) series from ATTACK.

Regards

J-P

Well that is good news then. Will order one kit with DS tracks to see for myselfs. Thanks!

Very valuable advice to me! How did you know that I am in the middle of ISU-152 from PST? (JS based assault gun)

Maciek

Maciek, I did not know about your ISU 152, the fact is that I just finished one of these monsters last week (winter camo)! I'll try to take a picture and post it one of these days. Regards J-P

Please do post! Maciek

This is freaky. I'm in the home stretch of building my PST ISU-122S (long barrel with muzzle brake). In progress photos are posted here:

Nice photos, thanks! Suprisingly popular - those russian models. I guess it would be nice if Revell/Dragon made SU / IS / KV series. Including IS-3, KV-2 :) Maybe even T-35? Until then we'll keep sending money to belarussian PST :)

Maciek

According to the Henk of Holland web site, Italeri is to release kits of the ISU-152 and IS-2 in 1/72 scale. Apparently, there will be two versions. One will be a conventional kit and the other will be a simplified version with two kits to a box on the same lines as the Armorfast range. I don't know when they are due for release or what the origin of the moulds might be.

Gordon McLaughlin

Thanks for the info! That would be nice of Italieri. PST is not the best quality company. Actally itis funny because there are 3-4 different colours of syrene in the box and each is in different quality. Some of them is quite good. But some of them really nasty. For a moment I felt like I was carving a piece myself from the syrene :)

Maciek

The black and gray marbled plastic was hard to work with. The swirls made it hard to focus on the actual kit parts and see where gaps and imperfections in the plastic was.

The kit I'm building came to me for free because I ordered some stuff from

and he tossed it in for free. Not a bad kit overall. Better than the KV-1E I got at the same time.

Good afternoon, not sure they will put two kits in the same box; they only did it once with the K=FCbelwagen (not the best one I've seen, the ACADEMY is a superior model, by far) ITALERI might rather include a simplified trackwork, like they did for the running gear of the M8 & DUKW, for the wargamers and the complete set of bits and pieces for the modellers. (No offense to the wargamers in this sentence, I only know that they generally prefer painting "simplified" models, less subject to damage in subsequent manipulations while playing).=20 Regards J-P

Hello again, a simple method to aleviate the problem with the different shades of plastic is to spray or paint a VERY light coat of a matt neutral colour (i.e. light gray or green, white?) on the sprues before starting the construction. This could also act as primer (for those using it) Cheers J-P

See for yourself. This link will take you to the relevant page of the Italeri catalogue.

Gordon McLaughlin

Hi Gordon,

thanks for this, so it will definitely be an "armourfast-like" kit. Happy Easter to all

J-P

You can also send me directly the photo if you have trouble publishing it somewhere on the net. Winter painting is important to me - it's the only way to avoid painting 'camouflage pattern' on King Tiger / Nashorn. I don't think I can paint the pattern so I will try white-rusty winter painting on them.

Maciek

Hi Maciek,

I will do that next week-end (out of town for a few days) I posted some pictures at the following address (inclunding winter camo)

Regards J-P

How can I become a member of TKR172?

Maciek, you just need to register on yahoo and apply for membership Regards J-P