I love being the first kid on my block to have the newest toys. and when I saw this was in stock at Hobbyeasy for about half the price of the CH kit I knew I had to have it.

assembly is pretty straightforward, the biggest issues by far were associated with the suspension. If you follow the instructions the only thing holding each bogey together is a couple of tiny drops of CA on the P.E piece and friction.

and speaking of the kit P.E, most of it is compleletly unnecessary. the engine grill is nice but the rest could have easily been made out of plastic, especially the suspension bits. they did not work for me at all.

having said all that, everything goes together nicely, and there are no major gaps or fit problems to speak of . the upper and lower hull pieces leave a major seam but most of it is covered by the sponsons.
what i had figured would be a major PITA was the antenna on the turret, but it was not too bad to get lined up at all. the turned aluminum barrels are a nice touch as well.

hopefully i can get some paint on it in the next few days (the fun part) I still havent decided if I am going to do it in some WHIFF markings or just the straight grey of the real thing

Thanks for the quick write up, looking good so far, keep us posted as you continue allong on this project.

(I'm going to mark this as a blog for you)

Looks great so far and thanks for sharing, and the info too!

I hope I can find one if they are cheaper than the DML version.


- Jeff

As this is No.1 it should have the so-called Buntarbenanstrich or grey/ brown camouflage.

Thomas

Great work, it's starting to look good. I do love the subject although I tend to steer clear of axis stuff. I have always loved this machine since I first saw a picture of one a couple of years ago. Does anybody know if one still exists?

Paul

Well according to Wikipedia, all 5 were scrapped in 1941. Not sure how reliable Wikipedia is but I would imagine that the germans were recycling metal as much as possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neubaufahrzeug

According to the site Achtung Panzer, One maybe Two were lost in Norway. There are also stories tha some were captured by allies and scrapped or Germany scrapped them.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/leichte-traktor-grosstraktor-i-ii-iii-neubaufahrzeug-pzkpfw-v-vi.htm

It sounds like one way or another, they were scrapped or blown up.

do you know of any online references for that scheme?
I have the trump. paint guide but i dont exactly trust it, it says to use Metal black for the green
I am leaning towards straight panzer grey, as it might have been finished out of the factory.

Dylan;

By all means, try the Buntfarbenanstrich scheme on this baby - it will look just spectacular! IF and WHEN I ever get this kit (or maybe the new Dragon release), that's what I plan on.

I would suggest Google the scheme, or early German vehicle camouflage, or some similar - you will find various articles with pics and there will be several images to look thru (albeit there may be no color image of this particular machine... there are a couple of B&W images of one wearing the bunt...). I would also commend to you the Concord Armor in Action series books - I'm not at home so cannot look up any issue numbers, but there are a few different books in the series dealing with the early panzers, and these have some nice color plates showing the bunt... scheme on different things.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Cheers!

Bob

The way these tanks are being released you will be able to build all five of the tanks that were produced!

thanks for the encouragement guys
I spent my lunch tonite looking on google for any and all pictures of the Rheinmetall version, and came up with exactly three.

all of the following photos are for discussion purposes only
the first two are shots from the factory showing the tank being built





the third is a scan of a poorly reproduced photo taken from a book.


trumpeters box art shows a three colour pattern


the only picture i could find that shows any discernable camouflage scheme is of a Krupp version. all other photos that i have found, don't seem to show anything other than dark grey tanks. all of them are Krupp versions




So where does that leave me? well I think this one will be straight Grey, and the next one will be a "production" Krupp version complete with Buntfarbenanstrich camouflage.

and speaking of grey

I decided to get the colour on. starting with some subtle preshading







and finally an overspray of Tamiya German grey








comments and critiques are always welcome

Wow. Nice job so far Dylan. I like the step by step painting pics.

Keep posting the pics.

Now you only need to spray brown on top of that. There was no standardized pattern. The only rule was 1/3 brown, 2/3 grey.
When it came out of the factory it had Buntfarbenanstrich in in sand, brown and green.
It was probably repainted later with grey and brown.

The painting instructions of the Trumpeter kit are completely wrong.

Thomas

Nice to see a build-log of this thing.
Seems to be a good kit - good build! - ... and inexpensive too.

Later it would be interesting to see a difference to the higher-priced Dragon kit.

greetings...
Soeren

Thomas:
if you have any photos of the real thing with the brown painted on it I would love to see them. otherwise it's going to be boring old grey.
unfortunately there does not seem to be ANY evidence that there was anything but grey on the Rheinmetall vehicles.

I learned a long time ago to never trust trumpeter painting guides

Dylan

Nice work with this "Monster". I hope to see more pics soon.

Regards,
Rodolfo

Stories seem to be that one got stuck in marshland in Norway and was destroyed by the Germans, to be replaced in Norway by one of the mild steel prototypes. No tank fighting, so didn't matter. German records seem to indicate that all were scrapped in 1941. There are pictures around of the 3 of them on a quayside in Norway, but so dark that any cam scheme cannot be discerned.

In the factory shot, can anyone hazard a guess at the 2 objects in the left front corner? They look like tank superstructures, but I can't place them. Is that another one in the front right corner too?

Nice build, BTW. Another one for my list of German oddities to build.

well I sprayed a coat of future on tonite. and i am not too sure I like how it is looking. the preshading now looks really heavy handed and splotchy. hopefully it will get toned down by further weathering.

since there is no accurate source of markings for this version, I have decided to add some what if markings. I need something to break the monotony of the overall grey, and i might as well have some fun with it.

I used some decals from the tamiya Panzer IV.D kit. I think its better than plain grey. the fenders are just stuck in place, thats why the right one is not straight.

I put a wash/filter on then Valejo matt varnish

for the wash I mixed Phthalo blue, payne"s grey and Mig brown wash



It might have turned out a little more blue than i planned for but it toned down the preshading.


then with the matt coat







the grime on the engine deck turned out fairly well


Dylan

I am less than impressed with the kit tracks

it looks like Trumpeter got ahold of some modelkasten tracks from 1992 and copied them.......poorly

there are 280 links in total with the kit, which leaves you 2 extra incase you mess something up.

each link has FIVE!!! attach pionts to clean up, that was a couple of hours just cutting them off. then the links are placed on the handy little board provided that has teeth to aign 10 at a time. then tiny little pins are inserted into the tiny little holes in each link. with an even smaller drop of glue to hold the pin in place, in theory making them workable.
I was not sucessfull in making this work








when I removed the assembled links from the assembly board most of them fell apart. the little pins are just too short to hold the links together. one solution i came up with is to drill the pin hole completely through like a fruil track link and then insert a metal pin into the centre.
that would leave the plastic pins to just be the bolt ends on the link.

I dont have that much patience


what I decided to do is take some DS track from a few DML panzer IV kits and splice them together to add the length needed. the Panzer IV tracks aren't 100% accurate but its a lot easier than getting the kit tracks to work.

hopefully that will work

Great work so far, I really like this tank and will be picking up one soon myself.

The weathering does look very good

S

They are dummy superstructures, wooden with concrete turrets. They are used to simulate the weight of a real superstructure when testing a chassis.

David

Some VP:
I managed to get some drybrushing on. It looks much heavier in the photos than in person for some reason. I still have a dot filter and a few layers of dust and mud to add.

I am contemplating scratchbuilding one or two of these but in 1/32 as wargaming models. The challenge is which wheels and tracks to use. They don't have to be perfect, just roughly right in size.

From looking at plans online and counting the pixels, I am estimating the wheels should be 10mm wide in 1/35 and 11mm in 1/32 - how big are they on your kit?