I have been trying to find some good information on the Academy Flakpanzer Gepard and M163 Vulcan kits, but have come up pretty empty handed.

I am thinking that the Academy Flakpanzer Gepard is a rebox of an older Heller or Tamiya kit. Would this be correct?

As for the Academy M163 Vulcan, how does it fair regarding accuracy?

Thanks in advance for the help

The Academy Flakpanzer Gepard is a copy of the older Tamiya kit. It is not as detailed or good as the Tamiya original. I would get a Tamiya one.

The Academy M163 Vulcan is quite nice. It is built on Academy's excellent M113 kit.

The later Academy kits are their own tooling and are much better than the old Tamiya rip-off copies they originally made.

One problem for the Gepard kit is that its lower hull is the same as for the Leopard 1A4 kit (Tamiya and Academy Gepards being basically the same they share this problem, I suspect the Heller kit, although a different kit, also uses a Leopard hull). The real Gepard has a longer hull so some surgery is needed.

There's a construction article on Panzer-Modell.de that shows a way of correcting the hull (and therefore the wheel spacing). Here's an image from this article :



Cheers,

Christophe

A diagonal slice, that's a good way to do it! Wonder how and where he will extend the upper hull? -is there a link to that build?

Jim

The hull hasn't been extended. The builder only cut out parts of the side walls and placed the right part 3 millimeters forward and the left part the same distance backward in direction of the rear to get the distance between the third and fourth road weels.

Hi!
Actually, the hull IS extended by 80mm/2,28mm scale 1:35. This is a feature only Gepard shows, and no other Leopard based vehicle. So, each track is one link longer than usual Leopard tracks. In the model picture, in my opinion and compared with pictures of the real thing, the gap is too wide now between 3rd and 4th road wheel. The modeller which did the conversion writes about a 3mm spacer that he added. 3mm = 105mm in scale 1:1. So, here is the reason why it looks too wide. Also, it looks as if the spacer is a 3mm profile, so, as built in diagonally, it makes the space even wider, 4,5mm. Unfortunately, the modeller does not write what he did to the upper hull. No idea, in which way he put thinks together without a spacer within the upper hull.

Keep in mind that this is not the only problem of the model kit. There are quite some more kit details which are different from the production vehicle. And also keep in mind that the German Gepard never had side skirts fitted, even if the front and rear fenders are the ones that are used with side skirts. I served 2 years in a Gepard regiment, and, no, we did not even have these skirts in stock.

Andreas

Gino: I figured as much regarding the Gepard. It sounds like the Tamiya kit is the best base for this vehicle. I've heard good things about the Academy 1/35 M113, and if the Vulcan the same kit with some unique parts then I am encouraged and will definitely be adding that one to my stash.

Christophe: I was hoping there would be some info on such alterations. I don't remember much in the way of German, would you be so kind as to post a direct link to the article for Jim and I to look at?

Bernd: Interesting... One would hope that it is an ongoing project?

Andreas: Thank you, that helps a lot. I do have the Tamiya kit and am aware that there are inaccuracies, but I'm not aware of specifics. I am very interested in the Leopard based Gepard and would greatly appreciate any additional information and insight you have relating to the real vehicle and the Tamiya kit.

Hallo,

here is the link to the above mentioned article.

I read the article and nothing is said about lengethening the upper hull.
I am sorry I did not deal with the Gepard so intensively as I am still looking for the Eduard etched set.

Harald

p.s.
Would anyone sell the Eduard set?

Harald: Thank you for the direct link. I am looking for the Eduard PE set as well, it looks like Eduard discontinued it some time ago.

Does the Academy M163 have an exterior? I built the Italeri M163 back in the 90s and it didn't. For that matter, how about the M981 Fist? If not any recommendations on AM interiors for both?

No, neither the M163 nor the M981 has an interior.

There is an interior set for the M163 available from Hobby Fan. It is really nice, but pretty expensive. Someone was doing one here a while ago. It looked really good..


There is no interior set for a FIST-V. I scratched one a long time ago (about 15 years ago). Its not too hard. I think it came out pretty well. (Sorry for the crrappy pics, I had a really cheap digicam back then.)

I have been following that build, and it looks awesome

Thanks Gino. Your FIST looks great. I may try to tackle the FIST-V at some point. I'd picked up both kits a few times but put them back because of the interior. The guy at the LHS was pretty sure that neither had one. We even priced the Hobby Fan m163 interior but the price was too high. I had already built the Italeri version ages ago so I figured the money could be better spent on other kits.

I Built the Academy M163 about 2 Years ago. I thought it was an awesome kit as it has all the extra parts for the M113 as well as the M163, .50Cal and belts etc although lacking in detail can be used if you scratch build on another model or just need more bits and pieces although the academy model does not come with a interior for the rear fighting compartment sometimes the scratchbuild is more satisfying though.

I believe some one was talking about my build when they were talking about the Hobby Fan interior kit. It was a great kit to build. It was definitely one of my favorite builds. I am interested in doing another one as the first one suffered a terrible fate at the hands of a shipping service.

Here is a link showing the build of my m163.
http://s575.photobucket.com/albums/ss193/corsutton/M163%20Machbet/

I have been building Hobby Fan M163 conversion and it is amazing. Some things in the interior need improving, but it is still one of the best resin conversions I did. Here's the progress on my model so far: link

Keith Forsyth also did an IDF M163 which was featured in a modeling journal. His finished piece can be seen here: link

Hobby Fan conversion is not cheap, but well worth the money in my opinion.

Mario

I've been lurking here for some time and this will be my first post-
I built this Academy M-163 six or seven years ago and added the Eduard interior- it was my fist attemp at compound bends in photoetch.
It won't win any prizes but I liked it:







The Eduard number is 35-104. It's actually made for the Italeri kit but it'll work on any M-163....I just found an extra.

I am very surprised that after all these years a company other than RN-Modellbau never came up with an update or correction set for the Tamiya Gepard....or better yet why Tamiya didn't simply update their Gepard kit. It's a shame since the Gepard is such a unique Leopard variant.

I hope that since MR-Modellbau bought all of RN-Modellbau's products and molds in 2010 that they will eventually update and re-release the 1/35 Gepard 1A2 conversion.

It appears to be still available.
http://www.eduard.com/store/Eduard/Photo-etched-parts/Photo-etched-set/AFV/1-35/Flakpanzer-Gepard-1-35.html

I believe the discontinued set is an earlier version.