Greetings Fellow Modellers,

Since I am interested in Soviet Armor and slowly building a collection of them (T-72, T-80, BTR-70, BRDM-2 so far), I started looking around what kits there are and which ones I could acquire, when I stumbled upon the BTR-152 from Skif. Now, I don't have any opinion on Skif as it is not available in Turkey and I haven't seen any of their kits in my life. Since I will have to buy the kit online and go through some hassling at the Customs, I was wondering if the kit is any good. Any opinions? Is it an OK kit? A kit poor on detail but can be built easily? A kit with no detail and no fit that I should stay away? Will it be worth the hassle?

Thanks in advance for any opinions on this matter.

Good modelling days to all,

Hi,

I have built this kit a few years ago. The detailing is a bit basic, but there is nothing that cannot be resolved with a little bit of scratching. The interior is the biggest problem because it looks toy-like. The biggest problem with the outside is that he plastic is rather thick and out of scale. This is only visible if you make your model with opened doors or hood. You will have to add some weld lines too. On the other side, I comes with nice PE headlight guards and even though the wheels are made of rubber they look pretty nice. The eninge also adds a nice bit of detail. I replaced the one-piece moulded louvres the protect the grille with a few plastic strips.


So my conclusion: pretty basic kit but a little scratching can give a great result.

As stated, the Kits are a bit basic and toy-like, but they are also basically sound, so you can build a very nice kit from them. It will just take some work. I would recomend the Dreamcatcher wheels and the Eduard PE set for whichever of these kits you might get.

Thanks for the replies guys!

I want to go for a BTR-152K with a closed top, so toylike interior should not be a problem. If the kits have decent fit, then I can work on the rest, no problem.

Now then, I should include it in my "investment plan" and get a kit in a month or two.

As mentioned, they can be built up into a nice kit with a little work, as is true for most of the Skif kits (except the T55 ) The Eduard sets help too if you can still find them. Here's a BTR-152 that was entered in our local Alberta AFV Modelers contest a couple of weeks ago:

Model by Mike Tanguay (sp?) I believe.

Jim

Hi,
I built the BTR-152 a couple years ago. It was no Tamiya shake-and-bake, to say the least, and I knew this before I bought the kit, but it was the only game in town, so I went ahead and picked one up anyway. I suppose it went together all right, except for a couple of things. First, I never could get the engine to fit inside the model. Maybe a more skilled modeler would have more success than I did. Second (and this may be considered trivial), there are no illustrations showing where the decals are supposed to go. There are, however, decals for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, in addition to the Soviet Union, a big plus in my book. I'd send you a picture of my completed model if I had a camera, but alas, I don't. I searched on the Internet until I found a photo of a BTR-152 in NVA service, otherwise, I'd have had no idea about the markings. If modern Soviet armor is your thing, go ahead and get one. The Skif kit is better than no BTR-152 at all.