Right out of the left-field this one with a really surprising announcement from Dragon at this year's Shizuoka Show in Japan: 6640 - 7.5cm Pak 40/4 Auf RSO. What we have (and it ain''t much!) of this Future release, can be seen:

Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

thanks for the heads up Jim!
think I might grab this one when it comes out. should be easy to build this kind of open SPG (and please please please DML put magic tracks in or both magic and DS)

Hey Jim!
Here´s a link for other future DML releases announced at Shizuoka Show:
2010Shizuoka

Sorry, if you already knew it..

Hi

Great news, and hopefully with the chassis already done they'll follow it up at some point with the two cabbed versions of the little tractor unit. One of my all time favourite vehicles despite its lousy statistics in real life.

Alan

Hallelujah for this news. I've built the RSO and those vinyl tracks are terrible and need to lay down on top of the road wheels. Hopefully it'll come out before I start on the next one in the stash.

And YES to the Tractor cabbed version (the Steyr) which I have never had.


- Jeff

Boy or boy! More great news!! Let's hope we get all the variants.
Darryl

Very cool SPG. I don't recall seeing this one before. Where was it in service?......Vince

Great! I've been wanting to get one of these for a while. I'll definitely get my hands on one of them!

Rob

Nice kit ... also the others possibly will be good sellers.
But I still wait for the "schwere 10cm Kanone 18", which was announced as kit no. 6411 two years ago.
Perhaps Dragon has forgotten me. (and others)

Soeren

I have in my stach the italeri kit.

I recently brought a Dragon's Pak 40 to improve it.

I'm looking for the three ABER photoetched kits and the Fruil track

AND DRAGON COMES WITH THIS BEAUTY!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the eternal curse of the modeller.

"Scrach it (or spend a lot on money improving an old kit) and when you're in the middle or a couple of time after you finished someone will release a new kit if that model"

But you can assure something...

I'LL BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Best regards.

A small test batch was produced and issued to an antitank battalion in the east in 1944. The weight of the gun and the stress from firing soon distorted and cracked the frame members (this vehicle had a ladder-style truck frame, not a rigid belly plate). No further production was undertaken.

To me this photograph of one always makes me think of those "what happened next" competitions.



Alan

Im stoked to see that PzIII with winterketten tracks. wonder what other kits theyll release with those in them. about 10-12 other cyber hobby variants?

Nice deal.

So a new one or copied Italeri one?

Which on the cab version was a pretty decent kit.

In my Opinion.

I would have said a completely new kit, after all they have the Pak already as a kit, so its just the chassis to sort. I can't see why they would "Do a Tamiya" and re-box the Italeri kit when there are plenty of these around to measure and research. I wonder though if they'll do the tracks as magic tracks or DS. Anything's got to be better than the old ones in the Italeri kit.

The figures I'm guessing will be the ones from their last Pak release going by the standing figure with binoculars



Alan

Not very erudite, mind... I personally am just all rev'd up and ready to go buy it!

WOW! A NEW RSO! How cool is that? WAY COOL, by me. Proof positive that dreams can come true!

Folks likely recall that recent poll (FineScale? I think) where you could cast votes for the kit and scale you want to see come out.

My vote was for "New RSO - any variant, in 1/35th, pref by Dragon or..." And lookie what we see!

I think these things are going to fly off of the shelves. (about the only time an RSO ever moved quickly)

UhOh. Eru creeps in (out): I noted in a post above a comment as to the apparent poor performance of the RSO - I'll presume meaning only this w/ PaK 40 variant. And a really nice pic of one parked up on blocks to tilt the vehicle during a firing test. Please note that this pic actually shows the marked stability of this little "truck" - this test documented that one could indeed lay that big gun off to the side and fire it safely without tipping over- certes reliably enough that they went into limited production. I'd not come across (but then and again I was not looking, so...) any mention of the previously noted frame-fragility issue. I could easily believe it, given a small ladder-frame tracked-truck drafted to mount a big ATG. Apparently it DID work, up to a point. The RSO did suffer another significant problem that might have affected its suitability as an SPG... it had "2 forward speeds" - really slow and fully stopped.

The base vehicle was very successful- 28,000 or so being produced.

As an aside, I own one of its fabled successors - also a Steyr product and also enormously stable and strong and rather slow, just like the RSO - a Steyr Pinzgauer.

The RSO has been a fav of mine for only about as many years as that old kit (Peerless/Italeri/Revell) has been around! Great to see someone tackling it again (and just in time as I almost bought that Italeri thing last show I was at for to build this -2 w/ PaK 40 version). Whew. Saved by the bell! Way to go, Dragon! Get it out the door Soon. Please!

Now this is a release that I've been waiting for from Dragon.

The new Pnzr IV with DS tracks is a bummer. I'll pass. Read signature. The Pnzr III with Winterketten will be snatched up. I want individual tracks, not rubberbands.

M7! Yeah baby. But the rubberbands suck.

You and me both. Ive been tempted to buy the Italeri metal-cab version for a long time, but feared all the AM that was needed. Now I can wait for a while and hopefully be able to buy when Dragon eventually release it. Most interesting Dragon release in a long time!!

let us hope the tracks will be sold seperatly,I still have 2 finnished Rso's without tracks waiting


great stuff, hope it isn't going to be mucho dinero's ,kits are getting more expensive with every new release !

YES! Me happy!

J

How about removing Pak and replacing it with 37 or 43 Flak??

Hey, with the RSO - 3 basic versions (steel-cab/cargo bed, wood-cab/cargo bed, and a small number of the special SPG version with PaK 40) and over 28000 made, I should think the sky is near the limit on what could be done!

There is some pictoral record of the Germans mounting Flak 38 and 3.7cm Flak 43 guns on the cargo version- and more than one kit out there done up to reflect this. (My personal RSO ambitions include maybe a Flak 38 or 43 mounted in a steel-cab version)...

Thus, I plan on getting one of these RSO-2 with the PaK 40, and I am doing the RSO dance hoping that Dragon will follow-up with one or more other RSO that will lend themselves to becoming a flak-track!

So far I've only found evidence of the 20mm being mounted on the steel cab RSO/1. This was also a "lightweight" version as I understand it, the Gebirgsflak 38, not the commonly available flak we see in kit form from many manufacturers. Be interested to see pictures of the 3.7 cm mounted on the RSO as I'm also a fan of this quirky little tractor, but not come across any so far.

Alan:

I see that you have un-earthed that great pic with the Gebrgs Flak 38 mount! There are a couple more pics "out there" of that particular vehicle - though I can only posit this with the sad caveat that, whilst I have seen them on the Web over the past couple of years, I neither saved them nor their location (site)!

It is certes one of the cooler tricks done to an RSO- and photo'd too.

Over the years, I have come across also pics of twin MG-34, a drilling mount (I believe a 1.5cm version as seen in the SdKfz 251-21) but without any shields, and maybe also a 2.0cm flak on what I thought was a naval pedestle mount. All of these are one-off field shop tricks.

There are also a few pics of RSO with various guns simply packed on - which of course are also all "one-offs".

I was probably overly-loose in my use of the term "mount" and "mounted"- as I had included these latter non-fixed applications in my statement, and did not mean to imply that there were either "production" or formal, refined mountings of most weapons. Sorry 'bout getting anyone's hopes up on that! My bad.

Couple things come to mind- one is that there were some 28,000 of these trucks to play with, 2) there is a pretty good record showing the Germans were nothing if not adaptive and opportunistic and were seen to put all sorts of guns on any type of transporter, 3) actually, we should be amazed that we have hardly ANY photos of any of these things, as the NAZIs were pretty un-forgiving of even their own fellows taking pics of stuff, that, and later-war there was less and less opportunity to have a camera or get film or get it developed. That said- pics of any of these bits are the "where there's smoke..." indicator of a wealth more of field innovation going on!

I don't actually expect Dragon or anyone else to produce kits of hardly any of these field-expediencies- though that Flak-Panther and Berge-Panther / Pz IV Turm do, to some extent, put the lie to me! Dang! wouldn't it be the bees's knees for some Big to make that rig you've posted the pic of!

My position on the RSO is that we modellers are probably quite free to freak with it! So, I am thinking of placing a Flak-43 in a bed... or maybe a 3cm Flak 103/38? Or something. How about a really "last-ditch" "Mad Max" thing with a brace or 3 Panzershreck on a mount- a sort of RSO Wanze, if you will? Maybe a "Pupchen"? A good base kit is out there for all sorts of plausible stick-on weapons... what we need is the RSO on the table.

Cheers!

So what you are saying is you have never actually seen pictures of a 3.7 cm gun mounted in any way on an RSO but feel that because the vehicle was produced in such numbers, the Germans so inventive, that it would not be beyond the bounds of reality to see a picture of one mounted on a RSO. although we don't actually to date have one.

That's fine, and as you say if you want to model one as this, its your model and you can do what you like. I've got no problem with the "what if's" that modellers like to create. It's when the distinction gets blurred or the implication that this is a model based on an actual known vehicle.

No offence, but to be honest I've seen you put forward in a post about Stug 's in Normandy that implies knowledge of the subject but when shown detail and fact by Bill Plunk you've reverted to the, well although we don't have evidence its not beyond the bounds of reality to have existed etc. answer the same as you are doing here.

As you say "we modellers are probably quite free to freak with it!" put a V2 rocket on the back if you want, it's your model. But most people coming to this site, I know I do, are after factual information, trying to model as accurate as possible scaled rendition of a known subject. There is nothing wrong with "what if's" unless the person putting it forward trys to credit it with something other than what it is.

Alan