Hello

this is the ACE 1/72 BA-20ZhD Armored Car.

So far I've assembled the body and turret, and the axle assemblies, but haven't fixed these yet. This is a Work In Progress so will be updated regularly, till its completed.

The body - all pieces were a fairly good fit, but required a tiny but of sanding on some inside surfaces to get a flush fit on the outside. A few tiny hairline cracks needed a little filler.

The chassis - comes in one piece. The bottom of the engine and an exhaust system fit without problems. The axle and spring assemblies are also straightforward assemblies.

The body fits to the chassis very well, with just a tiny amount of sanding on the rear wheel wells to get a seamless join. I haven't fitted the axle assemblies yet as these are fairly fragile, I want to finish the body and turret detail before affixing these

The turret - is a fairly good fit, again a little sanding on inside surfaces assures a good join. The bottom of the turret has a sleeve to slide into the hole of the chassis but its way too large in diameter - I tried sanding it, but have cut it off, its not needed.

I also need to make a wire frame antenna. The instructions suggest using 1mm wire but I may use a finer gauge. I'll experiment & see what looks best.

This kit comes with a set of road wheels and a set of railway wheels. Both are very nicely cast. The rail wheels are very realistic, as they dont have a overscale flanges. The real thing could carry both types of wheels so that they could do a wheel change for rail or road as required. The kit comes with a track base also, I'm thinking of making this a rail version and adding the track base to a small wooden mount, with a scene with some partisans in it..

I need to get most or all the rest of the small detail affixed, tidy up some joins a bit more, then get an undercoat on this one. More later

cheers
Neil

It's all in-box? I thought about buying this model, now is not the what.

Good luck buddy.
Unusual theme I'll be watching this one.

Hi Adam

not sure what you mean. If you want to see all the sprues and inside box contents you can see these on ACE's website.

Hi Alexander, thanks for the comment !

a little more progress, I have made the frame aerial. The instructions suggest using 1mm wire. I used 0.7mm wire as I thought it looked a bit better. If use any finer gauge wire becomes hard to have straight edges. I guess the 0.7mm wire x 72 = 50.4mm, which is a bit under 2 inches diameter. I'm not sure how close that is to scale, but it will have to do. Still needs a little tweaking. I used a fine piece of copper wire to connect the frame aerial to the body.

I also added the front and rear brass etch towhooks

more soon

For the thick wire, use 0.7 mm, max. 0.8 mm. Here you have sample pictures of the antenna, do not worry, it's the FAI. All were the same.

Edit -->: How can I advise, I would used to implement this part of the antenna wire, plus a needle. I'll do in your free time pictures as I would have done.









FAI armored car body with a turret - Army Museum in Białystok, Poland.

Hello

Adam thanks for your advice, & the pictures of the FAI armoured car , I am going to get one of those soon, this is very useful information

I found a picture of one of these BA 20 ZhD cars on beute.narod.ru

I wish I had seen this picture before I was so advanced with this one, as I'd have made mine look like this, with missing back mudguard, no gun, etc


anyhow I have thinned down the supports for the aerial so that they are not as thick, and assembled some of the other small details

I gave the whole thing a very thin coat of black enamel for undercoat. This also revealed where some very light sanding needed, which I did as you can see in the pictures below, and still have some sanding to do.

I have to decide whether to go with railway wheels or with rubber wheels. Both are fixed temporarily with some Blu-tack to see how they look, and both options look good to me (maybe I need to buy another one of these to make the other version) . If I use the railway base I will use metal rails instead of the plastic ones that come with the kit.

Next week I will do the paint job, in german grey (as this is a beute vehicle)

cheers
Neil

A little disappointed. I thought that will improve the antenna.

Hi Adam

sorry you were a little disappointed

I knew it wasn't a great looking antenna, but with the naked eyeball it looks OK, magnified in the photos I pasted, maybe not so good

but I agree the antenna should look better, but was struggling for a way to do it.

After much thinking I took the old antenna off and threw it away, it was not very square.

The supports for the antenna are in the right place (as per the photo I pasted) but were too thick. Very hard to sand these to make these neat and thin and strong, so I threw them away too.

I decided to use sewing needles with the eye half cut off as the supports, as these are strong, about the right thickness and very neat.

I also decided the 0.70 mm wire was too thick and used 0.44 mm wire, as its much finer looking, and must be close to the real scale .



to get neat bends I cut a thick plastic template to bend the wire carefully around, and after a few attempts got a fairly neat job done.

result is in the pictures below.

this looks a lot neater than my last attempt, and the angles at the corners are better formed, I'm much happier that I threw the old antenna and supports away.

I coiled a very fine piece of copper wire for the joining wire at the front. Have done a bit more painting, more painting to be done on the weekend

cheers
Neil

That's definately an improvement, well executed.

much, much better, but not changed the cover of the antenna. it should be empty inside.



Parola Tank Museum

Hi Alexander

thanks for your comment, I'm glad it was worth the extra effort

Hi Adam

thanks for the comment and the new picture. I wish I had seen that new picture before. From your comment & the picture I take it that I built the new frame aerial too high (I based it on the FAI aerial height). The instructions in the kit are not much help at all for the exact height placement of the aerial.

I removed the aerial and trimmed all the supports by about 1 mm, or a bit less. This has lowered the height of the frame aerial, so that its at about the same height as your most recent museum picture. The machine gun could already clear the aerial, but with lower height it could fully depress if it had to and not shoot a hole in the aerial frame.

I have pasted some pictures showing the newly lowered aerial. I'm sticking with this, given the most recent picture you posted. The pictures are not very good but I have poor light today.

I still have a little sanding and tidying up to do on the body. With all the re work I lost a rear tow hook, which is a nuisance, I'll have to try to make another

It is very bad weather here for painting, paint wont dry, as we have had monsoonal rain for 2 weeks and 90 + % humidity, so I wont be painting anymore for another week when the weather should be better, and the humidity will have dropped. Maybe I'll start another kit, while I'm waiting


cheers
Neil

just an update on progress

its now about fully assembled.

I've put it on the railway wheels, and the below picture is sitting on the base that comes with the kit, still in the process of painting it, and substituting the plastic rails for metal ones. I tested the wheels on a piece of UM railway track, which is russian gauge, and it sat perfectly on the rails, no adjustment to the width of the wheels was needed.

I'm not fully happy with the paint job and weathering yet, still tweaking it

I'm also not fully happy with the rubber tyred wheels. The box art and all photos (see war time black and white photo further back in this thread) I can find have the rubber wheels attached face inwards to the body, as the back of the rims are concave, but the kit wheels are solid (which is fine if you are making the model on the road tyres as the backs are not seen)

The intructions say to mount with the face of the wheel outwards, but I think this is just because the wheels are not concave at the back.

I will try to drill out the back of the wheels so that they will match the pictures, and post the result later

cheers

I drilled out the back of the rubber tyred wheels and mounted them to the body, given this is how these wheels were mounted, in war time photos.

I decided to make this vehicle look a bit more weather worn and neglected looking, so a bit of rust has been added. I was going to put it on a small diorama base with some partisans, I still might, I'm thinking about that.

For now I've photographed it in a railyard, maybe its been stored there due to mechanical failure, hence the rusted and neglected look.

I guess this one is done, now have to get my other 1/72nd WIP, the Phanomen Granit Ambulance finished

here are some pictures of the BA 20 ZhD

cheers
Neil

Neil you've done a nice job with this little car.

Good luck at your next project!

Hey, the vehicle looks very interesting.

Hi Adam & Alexander

thanks for the comments

I'm going to put this car on a piece of track on a base, make it a bit dustier, possibly remove the gun, and put grass and weeds growing around it and in the rail track, as if its been abandoned. I'll use the partisan idea for another model.

I might buy another one of these cars and build it with the rubber wheels, in russian service.

cheers
Neil

Hi nyall
Think your railway armoured trains are great so much i have started building them to add to my static locomotive collection 00 gauge (have just sent for the german armoured train) need to learn all about washes etc.
Regards
Bazer