I was given one by a friend, now I want to make a dio for him. Is it a bad kit building wise? Its the north africa/sicily versioned kit.

Thanks!

~Chip

It's my understanding that this kit, like most Tiger kits, does not get the assymetrical shape of the turret right. The Tiger's turret was not a bi-laterally symetrical horseshoe shape, equally divisible down line from the front to rear; one side of the turret is straighter, less curved. It's a somewhat subtle difference, although once you've been told about it, kits that don't get it right may start to bug you. The worst thing is that it would be a major rebuilding project to fix it. You'd basically have to build you own turret, a daunting task to say the least.

Check out http://tiger1.info for an insame amount of info on the Tiger in general, and http://tiger1.info/overall/tamiya.html for a specific discussion of the problem I described above.

I'm by no means a rivet-counter, to but really annoys me when a manufacturer can't even be bothered to get the darn silhoutte right. (Of course, it's possible I'm misinformed, and Italeri does have it right.)

I've got mine partially built. I've got an old Military Modeler Preview that does a build review of the late one with zimmerit. No real build problems except those caused by the zimmerit so you shouldn't have any problems.

I'm definitely not a rivet counter when it comes to WW2 German armor and only bought this kit to do an Afrika Korps variant. I'm one of the ones who wouldn't have noticed the turret symmetry and one of the ones who wouldn't care. I never finished this one since I just got caught up in other projects.

Looks like a good kit to me, but I also got the Tamiya Afrika Korps one, and it is much nicer.

99 times out of 100, I'm with you, Sabot. I just made the mistake of learning about the assymetry thing, and it started to bug me. You got the hatch hinges wrong? So what. Wrong number of rivets? Who gives a fig. You got the SHAPE wrong? Somehow, that bugs me. Probably no rational basis, just does. Never finished the Italeri Tiger I had going after the realization. Canabalized it for other things.

I'm sure I overlook/am oblivious to FAR more egregious mistakes in other kits. That one just got to me. #:-)

I built one...it is a typical Italeri model...more fiddaly, harder to build than a tamiya offering, but still worthwhile.

Here is a link to picks of mine...

http://members.tripod.com/saammodels/Pictures/otherbuild/Tiger_1E/index.htm

So other than the stupid turret, its a pretty good kit? Glad to hear it.

Thanks!

~Chip

I would not knock the Italeri kit unless you are planning on becoming a Tiger-ophile, in which case you would not have even looked at the Italeri kit...best comment is to just take the kit in stride and have fun with it...maybe 100 people will ever know that it is not perfectly rendered in 1/35 scale...

PS...post 300, yeah baby! #:-)