Dear Friends,

I am writing a review on the terrible Zvezda/Dragon BTR-80 kit and while I was watching Hungarian vehicles I have just found out that there is a noteable difference between the kit and the reality.

All the photos I took have an extra, fourth periscope to the left of the driver, and because of that, there were some changes made to the this area. Please have a look at these two drawings:





So I searched the web for more photos and most of them were like mine. But some were like the Zvezda/Dragon. I was wondering that maybe there is an early production BTR-80?

I have found some minor differences as well: tha shape of the front rubber "bumpers" (dot shaped for "early", block shaped for the rest), and the fuel hatches on the back open downwards on the "early", the rest is up and to the sides...

Any idea?

Thanks,

Adam

Adam- As you probably know the BTR-80 has been upgraded in various ways quite a few times since it first entered production. The three periscopes and round dampers seem to be the early models- they are the only ones present in the old Concord book on 'Soviet Wheeled Armored Vehicles' (published in 1990). The newer models of the 80 seem to have the four periscopes and square dampers. I remember seeing some pictures of BTR-80s deployed with IFOR and some had the early configuration and some had the more modern four periscopes and square dampers.

Hope this helps you out a bit- I'm very much looking forward to reading your review- best of luck with it!

Thank you Karl, I was thinking about the same, it is just odd that I have never heard about it (unlike T-72, T-55, etc.) despite the fact that this is a basic vehicle of our army.

The article will be for my homepage, unfortunately only in Hungarian, I do not have time to translate it.

Regards,

Adam

I have just made a photo montage for correcting the Zvezda BTR-80 kit, so it will be an up-to date variant. Although there are several other errors and omissions regardless the variant.



Late: my photos
Early: iva-savickii.narod.ru
BTR-80 drawing: www.the-blueprints.com