Well, I've been lurking around here for almost 18 months now so I think it is about time that I blog something. I've recently got hold of Dragon's M1 Panther II Mine Detection and Clearing Vehicle (DML3534) and associated Eduard PE set (ED35835), so I've decided the blog this kit.

The M1 Panther II is an M1 Abrams tank specially modified for mine detection and clearing. Modifications to the base M1IP hulls include the removal of the turret and installation of a mine clearing roller. Due to the nature of its work, the M1 Panther II is also fitted with Omnitech's Standardized Teleoperation System which allows the vehicle to be remotely operated from up to 1km away. M1 Panther IIs have seen action in both Bosnia and Iraq.

For further info and photo references, have a look over the following links:

Prime Portal #1
Prime Portal #2
Google Image Search
Wikipedia

This kit itself looks to be very comprehensive with many parts in the box. The reviews of this kit have all been very positive with few inaccuracies noted. The pick of the reviews are as follows:

Vodni's Review
Armorama Review
Missing Lynx Review
PMMS Review

There are 16 steps in the build, starting with the lower hull and road wheels, then working through the commander's cupola, upper hull details and the mine rollers. The model can be built with the rear doors open or closed, though there is no internal details to speak of suggesting a closed position will be most likely. Four painting and marking options are provided:

* 54th Engineer Battalion, Bamberg, Germany
* 54th Engineer Battalion, OIF 2003
* 9th Engineer Battalion, OIF 2004
* KFOR, Kosovo

I expect to be finishing this in one of the OIF schemes.

As mentioned above I'll be using the Eduard PE set for this build. The kit looks to contain a few good details for the main tank, though there is nothing for detailing the mine roller. As well as the Eduard set, there will be a fair few extras that I'll be introducing into the build, such as details for the .50" cal, resin stowage, etc., but I'll introduce them when we get there.

The reviews linked above all contain sprue shots, though I'll throw in my own for good measure:





















OK, so enough preamble! On with the build!

The first steps of the build, as in most Dragon kits, is the construction of the lower hull. Step 1 in this kit is the attachment of the suspension arms. While researching this vehicle I noticed that the weight of the mine roller attached to the front of the tank causes a slight tilt, as you can see in this picture. This tilt is around 0.75 to 1.00 degrees centred around the third or fourth road wheel. Not much, but it can be noticeable from certain angles. Unfortunately, after looking over the kit and seeing how the wheel suspension arms attach, I'm not confident in my novice modelling experience to get this right on the kit.

The attachment part of each of the suspension arm is a hexagonal shape with a matching hole in the tub. This makes alignment easy and accurate but also allows for easy variations in the suspension arm placement. However, as I'm looking for fractional degree variance on a per arm basis, each arm joint would need to be smoothed off and a new attachment mechanism would be required in the tub... All a little too much for me... maybe next time!

What would make this easier is a slight change in the design of the suspension arm attachment. Rather than have a hexagonal hole, a round hole with, say, 6 small notches in the circumference would be easier. The arms themselves would have a small notch that would allow them to sit on one of the 6 pre-determined locations. If you wanted more control over the placement you would just need to remove the notch from the suspension arm and position them as you require.

Anyway, I digress! The individual suspension arms required very little cleanup with only a few minor seem lines requiring attention, though these will be mostly hidden by the road wheels and side skirts. Once the seams were removed the arms were attached to the lower tub and allowed to set:




Step 2 is the addition of road wheels, sprockets and return rollers, as well as a couple of other items such as mud scrapers and skirt brackets. I noticed from Vodnik's review there are some issues with the sprockets:

"The outer sprocket rings [...] has some incorrect details on it. In older version of the ring [...] there is a raised rim added around the middle of the ring - there should be no such thing there, the ring should be flat. The other problem is that bolt heads on both types of rings protrude of out the surface of the ring. In reality they are flush with the surface, or even slightly below surface, so small shallow holes would actually better represent these bolts than tiny bumps."

This can clearly be seem by comparing Vodnik's kit sprocket part with the real thing over at Prime Portal. Luckily this looks like it is addressed by the Eduard kit.

Well, that's about it for the time being!

Thanks for reading,
Ian

Ian I have edited the picture placement of your post in order that it fits on the screen, picture order is as you placed them.

Hi Darren,

Many thanks for that, though I have to admit I didn't see a problem when checking the post with Firefox, otherwise I would have changed it. Maybe an IE thing?

Cheers,
Ian

I cannot answer that Ian, but no harm no fail I just wanted to make you aware I had altered it slightly.

Ian,
Last week I added about a dozen photos of the mine plow to my Photobucket account. I did not add any mine roller pics because I didn't think anyone needed them. PM your email address and I'll send you my pics of the mine roller. I think they'll help out.

18Bravo have you considered sending the pictures to staff here for the Reference photo gallery.

Actually no, I had not. I stay on the home page about as long as it takes to click the "forums" button, so until now was only vaguely aware such a feature existed. I may have known at some point in the past, but with the onset of senility and all...
Now that I know, tell me where to send them and I'd be happy to. Can you access the mine plow photos on Photobucket or should I send those as well?

Hi Ian !

Nice project, reminds me to finish the one I started.
FYI when the kit came out I made a phone call to the 54 Eng.Battalion in Germany (I live in Germany most of the time).
I had a talk with the First Sgt. of the company operating two of the tanks at the time, he confirmed that none off the vehicles had recieved any Anti-Slip-Coating as on the model. They used the exsisting hulls without further add-ons for the conversion to Panther, also no intend to adapt the 3-tone-cammo in the future, that was end of 2006 so far I remember when I made the call.
So I startet to sand down my model, should have used the old tamiya M1 hull instead!

Good look with your project!

cheers
Christopher

:) thanks very much! PM sent...

Cheers,
Ian

Hi Christopher, thanks for the info! Very interesting indeed... I'll have a look over the reference pics and see what they look like. I'm a little way off starting on the hull proper so I have time to investigate further.




Thanks... I may need it!

Cheers,
Ian

Before you try to remove the anti-slip, better take a look at this:
http://www.primeportal.net/ce/jeff_derosa/panther_ii/index.php?Page=2
Probably depends on what time frame/location you want to depict.

Jim

Pics sent. Now I'm kicking myself becasue I didn't photograph the entire vehicle when I had the chance.

Hi Jim, indeed. I'm going to have to do a little more research before I start sanding away



Many thanks 18Bravo, there are some great pics in there that really show the detail! I owe you a beer for that!

Cheers,
Ian

Sorry for high jacking your thread Ian. 18Bravo send them to my staff E-mail address please.

Concur with Jim. I have pictures from Aug 2005 of B68 & B69 in Tikrit (COB Speicher) and they have a mix of anti-slip and non anti-slip surfaces. The antislip is on the hull fron the nose of the vehicle back to the sponson boxes. The engine deck was not coated in anti-slip. Neither were the "turret" surfaces. So, I guess that you can use half of the kit hull and half of a Tamiya hull

John

Hi Darren, no problem!

John, I'm a little way off starting on the top part of the hull, so I still have time to ponder this! However, I can *quite* see myself getting the Tamiya kit

Back to the build... I spent quite a bit of time tonight on the road wheels and drive sprockets. There are a total of 16 road wheels, each constructed from a front and back part for a total of 32 pieces. I started by removing the front half of each road wheel from the sprue, then cleaned it up with a new blade to remove the minor seam lines. Once the pieces were smooth, I brushed a very light coat of liquid poly over the scraped surfaces to settle them down then put them to one side:




The back halves of the wheels took a little more time to prepare as there were 4 ejector pin marks in the back of each piece, either sunken or protruding. These surfaces face into the back of the front half of the road wheels so are not very noticeable, but I decided to try and clean them up anyway. Squadron Green putty, a new blade and some wet and dry managed to do enough to smooth them off, especially as they can hardly be seen once the wheels are completed. Again, scraped surfaces were touched with a minimal amount of liquid poly.




Once all the road wheel parts were done, it was time to fix them together. This was done in batches of 4, with each piece held in a clamp while setting.



... and all 16 road wheels are done:



Next up was the drive sprocket. You get two options for the face plate of the sprocket, however as I'd pointed out above neither of the kit parts match the actual sprocket wheel design.



I had initially thought that the Eduard sprocket cover would address this, but when I got them off the fret and lined them up, neither was appropriate.



So, time for some work. I took the closest kit part (the cover with the raised rim) and removed the rivet details and the ring with a sharp blade and some wet and dry. Once these surface details had been removed, I used the point of my modelling knife to make a small hole / depression where each of the rivet details had previously been. Once this was done the surface was again treated to a light cover of liquid poly then attached to the rest of the sprocket assembly



And that is all for tonight! Finally a couple of shots with the sprocket and road wheels dry fitted, just to see how it is coming along:




Next up are the final details on the lower hull, then on to the turret plug... but that will probably be Friday night!

Thanks for reading,
Ian

This is coming along really well Ian, and you have some good clear pictures. I have to wait for good weather and take pictures outside, and even then the picture quality is questionable.

Hi Darren,

Thanks!

I'm still working on trying to get the photography stuff right -- it is a tricky business. At the moment I'm taking my shots in the kitchen which has some halogen spot lights and gives for a generally bright room. The only problem with this is the shadow underneath the model.

For quick shots I will use a single lamp, then set the digital camera to macro mode, zoom in and snap away, hoping to get one or two usable shots. For the better shots I tend to take some time and set up a couple of lamps with home-made light diffusers (coat hangers and tissue paper!) and use a tripod for the camera. I set the aperture as low as possible, turn off the flash and take several shots to again hopefully get a couple of usable pictures -- after all digital film is cheap!

Here are a couple of shots of my 'studio':





and some results:




Cheers,
Ian

Yes ! U should be kicking yourself for not taking more pics!
Well maybe next time!
But it seems the anti-slip-coat was applied in the field, usally no coating on the drivers hatch.
And if, as mentioned, they only applied it half way on the tank then this project might become really complicated!


Good luck!
Cheers
Christopher

Nice start to this one Ian. Haven't seen this version built up, looks to be a good one. Hope to see more of your progress. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers-

Tim

Hi Tim, thanks for looking in!

Christopher, after a little more investigation it looks like the Trumpeter kit may have the anti-slip coat raight in their version -- it is only on the front half of the tank and not present on the engine area. My research is on-going, so I'm not sure what I'll do for this yet!

So, a little more progress to report. First off I finished off step 2, the lower hull construction, with the addition of the mud scrapers, idlers and skirt support struts.



The kit instructions are no the clearest when it comes to indicating where some of these parts go, so there was a little dry fitting and thinking involved. Generally, as long as the end of the supports line up horizontally you should be OK.

With Step 2 complete, its on to Step 3. Step 3 starts on the turret plug with quite a few bits and pieces needed to be added. So far only a couple of bits are on, mainly due to the time taken for the careful cleanup of the storage rack bars!



The kit cameras (used for remote control on the real vehicle) are considered to be oversized, so these were replaced by the more in-scale Eduard PE ones.




That's it for now... There is a lot more detail to add to the turret plug, as well as some scratch building, such as cables for the cameras, weld beads, etc... Hard work for these old eyes!

Thanks for reading,
Ian

Hi ian
This is an excellent build log with excellant pictures well done so far.I am looking forward to more updates so can you explain/expand a little bit more when you start the weld bead's.
thanx.
neil...........

NIce work Ian, interesting variant of he Abrams.

Hi Neil, Martyn, thanks for looking in

Neil, when I get round to the weld seams I'll try and be as clear as I can -- I do have a little experimentation to do first to decide between one of two methods, but I'll add as much detail as I can when I give the update!

Back to the build... I'm completed a little more detailing on the cameras. Each camera now has a lead from the back into the support pole and fastening bolts. (For reference see this photo and this photo from the Vodnik review of this kit.)






The cable was shaped from a short piece of copper wire. One end was dipped in white PVA glue to create a bulge at the end to simulate the connection into the back of the camera. Once this had dried a sharpened cocktail stick was used to apply a small amount of CA glue to the back of the camera and top of the support pole, and then the wire held in place until set.

For the bolts I used LionRoar's 0.6mm PE Hexagonal bolt head set.




Again a sharpened cocktail stick was used to place a small amount of CA in place, then the bolt heads were placed on using the tip on a modelling knife. Once set they were covered in a light Johnson's Klear / Future coat to seal them in place.

Once final detail not clear on the above pictures was the addition of a 4 small 1mm cubed pieces of styrene. Due to the mould design used, the 4 towing cable holders on the turret plug have holes underneath. The styrene seals up that hole will be sanded flat when the PE tow cable clasps are added.

Maybe more night!

Thanks for reading,
Ian

Right... The turret plug is nearly complete! First, a 360 of the turret so far:






Most of the new stuff since the last update is a combination of the kit parts and the PE set, though there are a couple of extras I've added.

The main change from the kit centres around the RC command mast. The kit part is cast with both aerial parts above each other. This is different from the reference pictures at Prime Portal so a little surgery was required to cut the mast just under the top bracket and turn the top through 180 degrees. The top isn't quite straight and will require a little heat to help line it up, but overall this is a little closer to the references. Cabling for the RC mast was added with copper wire, as was a small additional antennae, again as can be seen in the reference pics.

The back of the smoke dispensers received a little attention with the addition of control cabling, but I think I may have got this wrong as I think I misinterpreted a photo I was using for reference (which I have since seem to have since misplaced). If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know and I'll have a think about changing them.

Finally, I opened up the cable holds with the tip of a modelling knife. I was going to use the PE ones, but as I managed to lose one of the PE clasps to the carpet monster and broke a second, I figured I'd cut my losses and see what I could do with the kit parts!

OK, a quick couple of details before describing what is left to do:





There are still a couple of things missing from the turret before it is complete. First off are the weld beads on the cupola struts. I was going to create these from Milliput, but I've decided to try some Archer Surface Decals (88005 - perfect weld beads) to see how these look.

The Browning M2 heavy machine gun needs building. The kit itself comes with a number of replacement PE parts, as does the Eduard set. I have also bought some JB Model M2 barrel sets and some Mission Models .50 cal rounds. Overall, this will take a little bit of construction! One it is built it will be left off the model for the initial painting process, but will be added for the weathering stage.

The tow cables also need to be added, but again these will be kept separate base painting and added for the weathering stage.

Finally, the pictures show up that there are at least two areas that need a little filling to cover join gaps (one of the cupola struts and one of the smoke dispensers). I'll use a little CA to close these off.

OK, it's late, so that is all for tonight!

Thanks for reading,
Ian