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Befehls Panther Ausf.G Späte (IR)

Construction

I began the construction with the assembly of the turret and all of it's additional equipment. From the box I chose the late "chin" mantlet option which gradually started to appear on Panthers since September '44. A nice feature of this kit are metal hooks for the spare tracks on the turret. They were glued with the CA glue and were rather fragile when manipulating the model. Finally, camouflage loops were added to the turret sides. The kit's plastic barrel was replaced with a RB Model turned aluminum one with a brass muzzle brake.

Once the basic turret was done I started adding accessories. First, to the right side of the mantlet were attached photo etched parts from the Voyager Infra Red set. These were supposed to enable mounting an additional IR searchlight. At least, that is what I was able to find over internet discussion forums. From the mantlet I moved to the turret's roof. Assembly of the Voyager turret's spaced armour is fairly easy. One thing that is worth noting (as it is omitted in the manual). Placing few bits of plastic or photo etched sprue rests is necessary to create some free space between the two plates (as seen on wartime pictures). The only adjustment I had to make was drilling a hole for the additional antenna present on the roof of the befehls panzer. Fitting the additional armor plates was an easy task as it matched the turret perfectly.

The last stage was the assembly and putting in place the Infra Red equipment. The Voyager resin FG 1250 Infra Red searchlight and scope are very well caste and assembling all parts together (with CA glue) is a question of minutes. Wiring was done with a 0.5mm copper wire as the one provided in the set was too hard to be easily formed to the needed shape.