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Building the Italeri 232 6-Rad

Stages 10 & 11

The final two stages are assembly of the turret and frame aerial. The same problem as earlier had to be dealt with, that is, poorly fitting hatches. Once I had these fitted to my satisfaction, the rest of the turret was fairly quickly assembled. I drilled the MG out. The 20cm Kwk cannon had a small hollowed out extension for the end, it actually looked quite good, but would benefit from one of the many metal replacement barrels on the market.

The inside of the hatches, should you wish to leave them open, do include handles, but overall they are very simplified. Since no interior is included I decided to built mine all closed up. The MG does include the rest of the gun inside the turret though, as does the 20cm Kwk, but if you’re closing yours up you can leave these off.

All that was left was the frame aerial. It gets a little weird here. The frame aerial shown on the box top art is the same as the one supplied in the kit. The one on the photographs of the actual completed kit that adorn the sides of the box, is different. The back supports are entirely different, being angled in. The ones on the Italeri web site are the same wrong ones. I can only suppose that Italeri realised they had the supports wrong and re-tooled, but kept the same artwork. Strange! If you cement the back supports to the frame aerial, and do not cement the aerial to the bracket on the turret, then it’s possible to allow the turret to rotate, which helps later when painting the model. In fact, I didn’t even cement the back supports until most of the weathering and painting were finished.