Initial Production, early 1943 North African Front/Tunisia
Kit # 5001
This is the first production kit by this company, so I thought that it was worth a close look.
It also happened to be a tiger I, so I didn't need much more reason than that.
I've made two videos on the kit, an in-box review and not a build review.
[youtube]0K4FNyzdKgo[/youtube] [youtube]P8N48Bfk9yQ[/youtube]
But I thought that I'd share some of the photos of the build as well.
The build itself was a very easy build when compared to other tigers that I've built. Maybe not as easy as a Tamiya, because there were a few fit issues. But at lest all the parts were there. Screens and a nice PE sheet.
The kits definitely would be more exciting with an interior set, as it's perfectly laid out for one.
The first issue that I encountered was with the suspension.
The torsion bars are installed much like a dragon/cyberhobby tiger, with single piece bars that slide into the hull and attach by their tips to a mount to allow the motion of the bar. They're also keyed so that you can model them in a fixed position or, with the key removed, workable.
The problem was with how the tip of the torsion bar attached to the opposite side of the hull. It was a delicate and fiddly mounting that required almost three hands to hold the hull, keep the bars in position and keep the tips resting on the mounts.
This was because I chose to make my suspension workable.
If you leave them fixed they are much easier to assemble, but you lose the option for poseabilty on a diorama or vignette.
The idler wheel is poseable as well and they are independently swung, they also fall out unless glued into final position.
So I would advise that the entire suspension and tracks should be built and fitted before any other work is done to the hull. Then you can glue the idler into it's final position and forget about it until you reattach the tracks and wheels later.
I wanted the idlers to move together so I used a piece of styrene tube to act as an axle of sorts to hold them but allow movement.
When assembled all of the wheels and torsion bars are workable and move very easily.
There is some very interesting interior detail for the sprocket hub as well. Unfortunatly, there are a few ejector pin marks in some inconvenient places. That's a bit of a theme with this kit. There are more EPMs that I would normally like for this kind of kit. As you'll see in many of the pictures.
I left many of them so they could be easily seen.
The kit comes with a set of Modelkastenish tracks that look to be very well detailed. But I chose to use a set of DS styrene to check the setting of the wheels and suspension. I tried to build the kit tracks, but I most likely won't use them. They are 5 parts per link to build and they're extremely delicate once assembled. It's the one big failing in my mind for this kit.
I encountered several fit issues that were a little tricky to fix, but nothing crazy or deal breaking.
The first was a gap that appeared between the glacis plate and the upper hull deck.
At first I thought that I'd bent something, but after inspecting the parts I realised that the side armour plates that you add to the hull are about 1/2 a millimetre too long and pushed the glacis out of position.
I sanded the ends down a little, then added a thin sheet of styrene into the gap. I then softened it with Tamiya extra thin and blended the styrene into the weld detail with a cocktail stick.
Another issue that I ran into was with the upper bow plate. It had an unusual weld detail that I've never seen on a Tiger before. I'm no expert on the DAK tigers, but none of the photos of the DAK tigers that I have show this weld. So I removed it.
Unfortunately, the weld was hiding a large gap in the join between the glacis and the bow.
I wasn't happy about how it looked when I tried to fix it so I replaced it with a cyber hobby bow plate that I had.
The only gaps after that I could fix with a clamp or two and some putty.
The rest of the deck and hull fit perfectly.
Then there was the turret roof.
On the leading edge of the roof plate there is a rain guard to stop water from flowing into the mantlet assembly, the Rye Tiger version of the guard is enormously overscale.
I had to sand it down quite a bit to make it appear close to the correct height.
There was one small gap in the hull, but other than that the turret went together without too much trouble.
Here are the turret smoke launchers. The kit versions and my replacements. The kit parts for the launch cylinders and for the mounting plate were far too thick, so I replaced them with some PE and cyberhobby/dragon parts.
The exhaust shrouds at first looked a bit odd to me, but after looking at some of the reference shots I decided to use the kit parts as I liked the look of the vents better. The shroud on the right is a Tamiya kit part and the left is the Rye Fields part.
The hull plates had no steel texture at all so I added it using Mr.Surfacer 1000.
The manifold for the fiefel system that came with the kit has no weld details, I have yet to add any as I haven't decided what pattern that I want to use. The brackets that hold the tubes in place had to be fixed as well. They had two blocks on the upper strut instead of one. The smaller of the two were removed.
The fiefel system itself is well represented, it doesn't have very good detail for the nozzle clamps for the manifold, and there's a bad seam for the hose itself that is near impossible to remove.
There is also no bolt detail for the hose flanges.
The exhaust stacks can only be modelled in the off position as well. Which means you can only build your tiger with the engine shut down.
There's not option to build it as a running tiger.
The jack is fairly well detailed for what it is, but the brackets for it are really bad. Thick and chunky with a weird shape. They really could use a PE replacement. The track changing cable is well detailed, but the hull brackets for it are very bad. They really need some help. No detail at all really.
The tools, clamps and tow cables are all good for styrene offerings, but the PE in the kit that's given to replace the tool clamps is much better.
The copper wire for the tow cable is brilliant and all kit makers should be using that as a default in my opinion.
The PE in general that comes with the kit is good, but it's a bit soft. Some of the brackets were almost too delicate to handle once built because of the softness of the PE. However, it was very easy to build the shapes and took very little time to do it, when compared to dragon.
All in all, for the money that you pay for this kit (about $45 US at the time of the review) it's well worth the money. A cheap $15-25 PE set from voyager would really dress this kit up nice.
The potential of a full interior set for this kit makes it very interesting to me for the future.
I'll be buying another one of these kits and dressing her up in some proper brass I think.
And here she is all built and ready for paint.
