¹⁄35

Recycling Your Old Kits

This is the most obscure conversion and not suitable for nitpickers and modelers who are dedicated and devoted to scale accuracy. As we all know the Panthers of Panzerbrigade 150 were early G-versions. For decades there was only the late G version from Nichimo available, but also an early G from CROWN ( who else is aware of this company and has a kit from them. Like me, who has their Panther G ). But lets put CROWN aside, as it was not a common kit. But Tamiya’s Panther was. Nevertheless it is version A, and Hobbymodellbau Schmidt based the conversion on it. They supplied 2 hatches for the driving compartment but did not care about the different angles of the side armor.

I built the Panther from the box, even kept the awful tracks. A lot of cutting, adjusting, filling and sanding has to be performed to make the parts fit. I added a scratched turret interior. The armor for the turret sides was scratch built as the VACU parts were too thick.

I built this kit about 10 years ago and reworked it last year.

I tried out to darken all the recessed areas with black pastels after airbrushing but the effect was similar than to washing them with black oils; except that I ruined 2 brushes and it took longer to achieve the effect.

As this Panther is more 1/32 than 1/35 I took the opportunity to add Monogram figures to a little diorama.

I think that in the end the Ersatz M10 does not look that bad, even if it is based on the wrong "Ausführung".