¹⁄35

LAV-AT: Lesson in Frustration?

The Wheels

As I was under pressure in finishing this project I could not take care on correcting the roof and lower body. I only repositioned the rear wheels.

Apart from the fact that they are 1mm too small in perimeter the profile does not correspond to reality. Although there are no supports for positioning the 2 wheel-halves and thus one can create “his own profile” by turning the halves the profile will never look right. I cannot understand why it is so difficult to produce a realistic scale replica of injection molded wheels. Even for the wrong wheels a master and a mould is required, why not make it right from the beginning? It should cost the same.

I resigned an ordered LAV wheels from Accurate Armour. (www.accurate-armour.com) and they are perfect except for a few bubbles on three wheels. I will continue my arguing on wheels and ask why it is not possible to make the wheels flat and a bit bumpy to represent the ground pressure? It is a common practice in aircraft modeling, in much smaller scales, so why not for 1/35 AFV?

To make the vehicle look even more cool I decided to built the front wheels turned in. First of all I sanded off the spring from the shock absorbers and replaced it by wire. Then I cut off The relevant parts to set the axles free and turn it in the desired direction. Italeri has reproduced this area in a way, that the shock absorbers would turn together with the wheel. On the real stuff the shock absorbers are static, so far I have no documentation how the suspension definitely looks like.
 

The Interior

What looks very promising on the sprue does not keep up when it comes to closer examination. Italeri provided only 1/3 of the floor plate, a rack, the rockets and a chair.

I scratched a bit by adding a complete floor, engine compartment walls and some interior parts.

After upper and lower hull had been married I discovered that the vision aims and fire controls under the gunners turret are suspended in the kit, but should be scratched as well as they are visible when the rear doors are open.

Copyright ©2002 - Text by Werner Kampfhofer. Photos by Wolfram Bradac. All Rights Reserved.