¹⁄35

Leopard 1 AEV

Conclusion

There are plenty of nice details with the kit and yet there is plenty of room to add more but I think this may be half the fun in modelling. Some of the casting with this particular kit I received did have its share of air bubbles; however this was limited to several small parts that were easily corrected through the use of some filler and/or replacement with a scratch built part.

Overall the individual parts were cast decently and laid out on blocks for easy access and the kit supplied photo etch was nicely done with plenty of goodies to make the detail pop on this kit.

As for the instructions....well this would not be the first set any of us have come across that were less than desirable. They are a jumbled mess and hard to follow at time. The out of focus and lack of exact part placement markings makes for a tedious run of things. There is a legend that shows the parts included and numbered both on the parts and throughout the instruction to aid in placement but there was one or two parts numbered incorrectly and personally I feel they should have numbered the parts after they did the photo layout of the parts legend making the parts sequentially on each block, left to right, top to bottom. These instructions give the parts somewhat numbered randomly throughout the cast blocks which becomes a frustrating effort to find the correct cast block with the correct part(s).

In the end I am happy with the kit, frustrated with the instructions and very pleased with the subject matter. While I will recommend the kit if you are a wanting fan of the Leopard family AEV's, I will caution most of the added effort needed to finish the model in a somewhat true to form fashion. This kit is not for the faint of heart nor if you are inexperienced in building full multimedia kits. As for the price, I do feel it is a bit high for what I needed to do to change and/or add things but it is a "demand" item as well as a full resin and photo etch kit with interior, which does tend to bring the price up and with some time and patience this will build up into a fine static display.

I would like to give special thanks to

Perfect Scale Modellbau for supplying Armorama with this review sample.

Mike Shackleton and the Leopard Club for personal and technical support and for providing me with the aftermarket Road Wheel and Idler Set.