Wow that looks great ..I tried to build the old Allen kit many years ago ...This is a whole new ball game ..I want it!! Rick

Suddenly the panzer-modeling world is rapidly filling with modern Pz. 1 ausf F kits! Bronco's is #3, following the two rather recent Hobby Boss kits. So folks wishing to skip over their dusty Alan kit are now in perfect position to do so (other than you'll of course have to put up some more money for this subject!). This last 1-F is of course a Bronco, and by being so, may offer slightly more complexity than do those new HB efforts. And Bronco is including some driver's / combat compartment interior - that will be the big difference and jump between this kit and the HB items. I have not seen or handled any of the 3 new 1-F kits - I am sure that all will be rather easier to build well or at least better in many details than the old Alan thing, and getting a crack at some interior rings loud. I would note that, with care and some AM, the Alan 1-F does come out rather nicely (IMHO), so these new kits will not be quite as "quantum jump" from Alan's item as were, say, those Dragon SmartKit re-dos of the old Alan 38(t)-based Bison and "Gepard flakpanzer 38(t)" kits. THOSE were simply night and day re-dos! I would expect that Bronco and likely HB offer much better-looking MG-34, although both might benefit from metal barrels, or at least some careful tweaking of the provided styrene bits, and the tools look much much better. That all said, I am eager to get one of these Bronco things and get it together on my shelf! (Of course, we'll have to see what it goes for on the market... these things are getting too costly for us old folks with limited means! ). Bob

So, is the interior layout of the Pz.1 F known? Can anyone judge this kit for accuracy? Where's the turret bearing ring? David

That's some impressive level of detail...I'm not sure about David's accuracy question, but the fact that an interior is provided is a nice bonus given that you can pose both the top and side escape hatches open to have a good look around the inside. This one's on my to-get wish list...maybe if I'm good, Santa will provide one for Christmas.

As to the interior accuracy... That's a question that I actually raised over on Track-Link... specifically regarding that pair of radio sets apparently "stuck" on top of the tranny. Given what I've seen in many other vehicles / original pics of and modern kits depicting, I would have expected to see some version of those frame-mounts the Germans often used in tanks, StuGs, haltracks, and armored cars. This Bronco kit does not appear to involve or provide that feature; something I am curious about. Notably, the radio-faces do look pretty good, and there is a clear representation of the power-bus interconnect between the sets. From what I read on T-L, Panzertracts has some good interior pics of this beast and those radios may be a pretty fair representation. So... live and learn! And yes, there does not look to be any turret-race nor a toothed ring for the hand-crank in this kit. I think this would have had a hand-cranked turret... so maybe there will be a hand-crank and gearbox on the turret ring... I may be off, here, but my impression has been that bronco has been doing some good home-work on its recent kits, so I might expect that what you get may be basically pretty accurate, far as it goes. It is most definitely on my wish-list! But I might just have to get both an HB AND a Bronco kit and see which looks better (outside, of course)! Bob

I have been following the recent flow of I F's that are currently coming on the market and I have to say that being a real Panzer I fan this seems to be the most promising of them all. I really like that interior. And it seems Bronco followed the pictures from Panzer tracts to the letter. Everything seems to be copied and into the right place. Even the radio on top of the transmission right to the drivers position as mentioned by PT. Mind you that the interior pics come from a 0-version or trial vehicle but I believe that is all that is available currently. Looking at that tiny interior there really is no logical place elsewhere in the vehicle. Still there is enough room for additional details but from what I see in those pictures Bronco already added most of it. Another kit on my to buy list. For those curious. The interior pictures of both the full scale wooden Mockup and the 0 Version I F are in Panzer Tracts 1-2 Panzerkampfwagen I "Kl.Pz.Bef.WG to VK 18.01 on pages 161 to 163

Robert F.; Hi! The PanzerTracts info is as I have read elsewhere - found that I DON'T have it on my shelf, despite some dim "memory" of having had! I fully accept that the radio was placed on top of the tranny as what was captured in the TP pic and was what happened at least in that prototype, but this still does not make much sense - certainly not any ergonomic and efficiency sense! Who does the radio fiddle-faddle? The commander / turret guy cannot get down there to readily see what he might do, and if he does get down there, he is definitely NOT up in the turret looking at the scene outside and doing his guns thing, given as the radio faces the driver's side and is not visible from the commander's position. At the same time, the driver would end up trying to see the radio and tweak stuff when he needs to have his hands on the grips and be looking out his already constraining vision port! Neither seems like it would be very effective for supporting both vehicle operation / fighting AND radio communication at the same time! But that may just be what happened - maybe the driver mostly came to a stop and became the radio-op, or the commander had him stop while Cdr did his get down and fiddle thing, whenever fiddle was needed. And we think driver's talking on cell-phones and texting while driving are "distracted and dangerous to others"! Given the German focus on radio-comms between tanks and units and tanks and infantry nearby - specially for an "infantry support tank", this seems mighty clumsy and likely not most effective! But balance that against the room available, so... It does raise at least one other tech question to me... IF those radios were indeed up on the tranny (and we'll go with that at present), WHERE was the gear shift lever positioned? On other smaller tanks, that gear-shift was on top and somewhat rear on that tranny body - a logical place for a shortest-possible / simplest mechanical linkage arrangement. I don't know what specific tranny unit was used in the 1-F, nor what other extant tank it was seconded from (I don't think the Germans engineered a whole new tranny for this one?), and it's certainly possible that there was some new tranny shift-linkage installed, but I cannot see what is being placed where for this in this kit... I WILL assume that Bronco does somehow address and provide for this - just don't yet know what B has done, so cannot simply guess! These are NOT carps - I am not saying that B has anything wrong (I certainly don't know what was "right"!) - just exploring what we can see! Makes me ever more interested in getting my hands on this one! Bob