Bob, the tracks look great, as does the whole model to this point. Very neat assembly!

I got the upper hull sides on, and the seats fastenend to the interior wall


...and the tools and other rear deck assemblies in place. The large sponsons go on tomorrow.


Until tomorrow!

Michael

Michael,

Thanks for the compliment.... but it has a rough bit here and there. Have been watching your build with interest, I like open topped vehicles, just can't seem to pull them off as nicely as you are yours. Take the stripes on the shell tubes... mine would look like a bar graph of stock prices.

Lots of nice models being built... although I think that Don has the right idea. After all, building a ship you don't have to do individual link track!!!

Bob

Greetings and salutations fellow campaigners! My build for this one will be at least in part a "spoiler" in that I am currently working on a build review of the kit. I wont go into all the details of the build as I might normally do, so as to build anticipation for when the review comes out.

My choice is the following:







As you can see, this is the "Early Production" Type 97 Chi Ha. I have built and reviewed their offering of the late production version and this one shares 90+% of the same parts. There is a new upper hull, rear hull, revised stowage and a number of other parts on a new smaller sprue.

Cheers,
Jan

Okay, so getting down to work!

As with the previous kit, there were a few things that I wanted to correct. The most glaring is that the lightening holes on the rear idler only appear on the front-most wheel.



With trusty pin-vice in hand I drilled the holes through the back disk of the idlers.



I had some problems with the front hull drivers plate on the last build so I attempted that next. The fit was MUCH better on the new hull.



Last for this instalment is a muffler and its guard piece being attached. The pegs and locating holes were much better than the last version.



Comments or questions, cheerfully accepted.

Cheers,
Jan

some brilliant builds.
Benjamin amazing interior I have learnt just from looking at the images.

Sal you have certainly put together a great model and the paintwork is fine but i must agree that you need ambush spots on the dark yellow.

Having got over the bout of shingles progress on the firefly has restarted. Its now primed and I have started on the figures.

my wife has just brought me a compressor for the airbrush as a birthday present so painting will commence with a vengeance.

A little more progress on my StuG III ausf. G. The main subassemblies are now ready for a base coat. Very cool with the thin metal plates for the schutzen.

More to follow

Work on the Type 97 continues. The mufflers and their associated PE guards are in place. I had tried to use one muffler as a template for bending the PE but it just wasn't working (so small it was hard to hold down). Best option was to make a crude square template out of Evergreen sheet stock to form the guards into their rough shape. Here's the mufflers with their guards in place.



Progressing I decided to attach the covers over the side engine compartment louvers. Each cover requires two supports that are barely 2 mm long. To add to this, the front ones are infinitesimally longer than the rear most. This is due to the engine deck having a slight slant to it.There are various items to attach to the rear plate. Fit was good but the parts are positively tiny.

Here you can see the tiny supports and parts added to the rear.



With the louvre cover attached. The jack had to be put on before the cover was glued or it wouldn't have fit.



More to follow.

Cheers,
Jan

Hey guys everyone is making some great progress, keep up the good work
Ok Anthony and Martin said I needed some more ambush spots so we have more ambush spots


Now I need to add another wash to it, any other suggestions

SAL,nice work
steph

While waiting for certain parts to dry I tackled the turret of the Early Chi Ha. Nothing really overly new here other than what I noted in the previous build. The main gun is still rather nicely detailed even though you can't see much of it. After a bit of research I learned that these Chi Ha turrets had no turret basket or even floor. The floor was just the hull floor plate. From one source it was stated that there weren't even any crew seats. When traversing the turret the crew had to step over the drive shaft and any other obstacles on the floor.

One thing that I did do is open up the small vision holes on the turret sides. THe moulded on ones were too shallow to make a difference. Just for interest, these "holes" had a swivel armour plate to cover them up.







The main cupola was next but before I glued it on I had to attach the PE vision slit pieces. There are only four but really tiny. I marked where they were to go with a fine point marker.





So far it's coming along faster than the first one.

Cheers,
Jan

Hi all....

Some very nice builds...

@Jan.... I would never have imagined that a 1/76th kit would have that level of detail. Not that I could see it on the kit mind you...

@Martin.... The Firefly looks good, but I would watch out for Jesper's Stug...

@Jesper.... I love almost everything that ever came out on a Panzer III chassis, and that goes double for Stug's. Yours looks really nice with that interior detail... be a great start to a full build.

@Sal..... I see you are intent on getting the first ribbon. Nice looking heavy armor. I think the Firefly better watch the tree line for you too...

As for my build.....



I was very happy to see that they included track pins on the sprues, even if they didn't call them out in the instructions. So I added them to the rear spare road wheel.

The model is final base painted... has had a couple coats of Future with decal application between them. Now it will sit overnight to let the Future set hard before weathering commences.

Later,
Bob

@bwiber - Bob, it's not 1/76 but 1/72 so that's a whole lot bigger! Seriously, these Dragon tykes are pretty close to being as detailed as their larger cousins. This is even to the point of cast texture and weld seams where applicable.

Your Pz. III is looking good! I have the new Dragon Ausf. N version waiting in the wings to be done once I finish the current kit. Seeing your Panzer is tempting me to start it now.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Got more free time and worked some more on the Type 97. Got the modified idlers on, the return rollers and sprayed the beast with a base coat.





Here's a shot with a better view of the back of the idlers.



In the next pictures the MG pintle is on and so is the frame antenna. This kit's antenna was a little warped out of the box so it took a bit of fiddling (judicious bending) to get it on. The upper and lower hulls are just "dry fit."





Next up is to start on the camouflage and then I can finish the suspension.

Cheers,
Jan

Jan,

Sorry about shrinking your kit...

The thing is that I have the old Tamiya version of that one in 1/35th and I don't think that the detail is a whole lot greater. Which means that I am really going to be watching when you get around to painting it.

Bob

Nice progress on your build, Bob. Looking forward to see more with the weathering on.

I have made a little progress on my StuG III and finished the interior. It is very basic, but very little will be seen anyway through the hatches.

More to follow.

@jesper, great work on the weathering! Sometimes the work you guys post here makes me want to focus on woodworking! Anyway, I have soliered on with my M7 Priest.

Here are all of the parts for the bogies and the finished product




A view of the pulpit. I think I am going to have to do some work on the welds...

And the front and rear. The exhaust isn't nearly as shiny as it looks, but it still needs some rust and soot.


Looking at these and all my other pictures, I now understand the practice of priming with a much darker color first. Paint does not want to get in the junction between parts creating a light "shadow" which is the opposite of what is desired!! Yet another reason to take and post pictures!

Michael

Well the rain has stopped for a while so I managed to find the time tnight to get the pre-shading done. I used Tamiya Nato Black thinned with tap water. Hopefully we have a good weekend to allow the rest of the camo coats vto go on.

@Michael;

Ref your Priest - and no sort of criticism of any sort intended - But am I missing something, or did the Dragon miss something...?

I was looking at your close-ups of the suspension units. I see no casting numbers on any of the bits! I just built the rather older Dragon M4A2 "Tarawa" Shermie kit - onliest Shermie-type I've ever done to-date - and that older D kit has lots of nice little casting numbers on the suspension bits. So, I figured those were a feature of both those types of US-made suspensions and of Dragon kits thereof. Does this Priest "SmartKit" not come with such markings? Just F-my-I!

Thanks!

Bob

PS: I am one of those prime-all-in-black guys for the reasons you have indicated!

Some great looking builds in this campaign. Keep up the good work guys!!

Sal: would Fruil tracks be too far away from Out of the Box? Just curious as my "load" for the Railroad Campaign will be a Dragon Pz IV ausf D2(F), but I need the Fruils for the effect of the dio. No worries either way. Thanks.

Happy Modelling, -zon

Hi all,
Thought I'd better upload some progress on my build, still lots to do but getting there. Nice kit this, I've enjoyed building it so far.







All comments a suggestions welcome, can't say I'll follow them this time but I'll take them on board for my next build.

Cheers.

I will have to agree with Zon there is some great work showing up here

But I am afraid that I will have to rule out the Fruils on as the tracks on the Panzer IV as being to far out of the box Did the kit not come with Magic Tracks
I am however looking forward to seeing both of your builds

Max;

COOL stuff! I'm a wurf fan - built a couple wurf vehicles and have ambitions for a couple more... This is going to be GREAT! A wurf track!

IF you may be interested in "developing" your boxes and rockets some...

You actually have lots of options with those wood wurfkasten... most were of course made of un-finished wood and thus probably lighter-colored - but some were painted - usually a darker green, IIRC from some museum specimens. Because they were banged around and stuff, they did get dirty and scraped-up. (But, unlike their steel cousins, these boxes were pretty much one-way trips and not recycled, I think)

IF you have any small black and white "label" decals - these boxes typically did appear to have small paper shipping tags or labels (on the front "closure board" when shipped, and also on a side / top and maybe on the rear end). I'd guess the kit might have those decals, or paint some on?

The rockets came in different colors - most appear to have been painted either a very dark green, or something very close to the darkest version of "dunkelgrau", or - more rarely, "dunkelgelb". I mostly use a "weathered black" color for mine... In most cases, the rocket had a white-letter stencil around its front end which identified what it was ("28cm Wfkp - Spg" or something like for the Hi-X type - the most typical rocket) (there were 28cm and 32cm rockets - used the same box but with some spacers for the smaller rocket - and some larger rockets came filled with a type of napalm... these had filler-ports on the sides. But I degress!). Some kits (my experience has been with the Mirage kits... come with (lousy to put on) decals for this label detail...

While being shipped, and right up to the minutes before they actually launched them, wurf rode in a closed box (with the center board across the nose-end) and without that nose fuse installed... that fuse was screwed into the rocket only after the box was opened and mounted in its launching frame (part of the arming dance - that and inserting the ignition squib and wire into the motor end holes). The fuse was apparently enameled black in color.

(FYI - some really nice pics of a relict wurf and box are to be seen on the DishModels.ru site!)

So... you can play around some with these on your build! Boxes mounted "closed" with no fuses yet, "open" with no fuses yet, open with fuses, empty (fired and all sooty) but still in the frame, etc.! (Note: rockets could be fired one at a time with all racks loaded, or fired as a group in a "ripple" order. So having an empty box among several full on the racks is perfectly good). And if you have any spares - closed and no fuses!

Just some suggestions! I look forward to seeing this completed with great anticipation! What will the paint-scheme be?

Cheers!

Bob

Sal: I figured it might be out of bounds, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Perhaps I'll do the Magic Tracks for this campaign then swap them for the fruils on the Railroad dio. I think I'll need the weight of the fruils to get the proper droop in the dio, which I think would be more difficult with the magics. Anyway, thanks for the consideration.

Happy Modelling, -zon

Hi Bob,
Thanks for the info.

I have two of these kits so that will come in handy for my next build, I will however paint the fuses black and may try to lighten the crates. There doesn’t seem to be any decals for the 32cm’s or cases, If anyone knows if there is I would appreciate knowing. The instructions don’t seem to indicate where the decals go, there are really small decals that say 251/1, 251/2 up to about 20, anyone know where they go?

I’m fairly new to modelling and have very little knowledge of German armour, I enjoy modelling and learning new ways in weathering etc. the accuracy part will develop with my painting skills, which brings me to my next point. I painted the interior with lifecolor Dunkelgelb RAL 7028 I planned on painting the exterior in the same colour and wanted to do a camouflage of some sort, I have a aztek airbrush and even following suggestions here on how to use lifecolor paints I still had troubles. So the camo may be out and just a RAL 7028 paint job. I like the lifecolor paints and want to learn how to use these but I don’t think I have the skills to do a good job with a camo scheme so I think it’s best if I stay with what’s safe and I may invest in a new airbrush later.

I have the dragon 6509 German Rocket Launcher w/crew set which I may use with this kit, but that may change and for this campaign I will just be building this kit.

Cheers.

Base coat went on tonight - a mix of Tamiya Dark Yellow and Wooden Deck Tan, in various proportions.

Greettings all! It's been a while but real life and preparations for an upcoming show kept me diverted from the Chi Ha. I sprayed some preliminary IJA Green on the base coat but ran out of the colour. As luck would have it, the LHS was out of several Tamiya colours also. Here's where I got with the green:





Yesterday I decided to do a bit of the brown and guess what! Yup, ran out of that. Decided to start on the suspension a bit and got the four single road wheels on. They're the ones without any inside detail but at least they fit perfectly.









That's it for now and I'll see about getting the rest of the suspension done over the weekend.

Cheers,
Jan