Hi, I'm Damon and I have an addiction to Tank Transporters . . . .(hangs head in shame). I have been addicted for at least thirty years. It started innocently enough, you know, just admiring the pictures of Shep Paines Dragon Wagon. But then, you know, it just sort of happened one day and I was trying to score an Accurate Armour Scammell Commander. Thank God a friend talked me out of that. . .although I still can see it, I mean I held it, and it was so awesome. The smell of all that resin, even through the cellophane. . . .

. . . . Ok, lets just stay focused on the positive aspects that brought you hear today and what steps you hope to take to get better . . .

Oh! Yea right, sorry, Kinda got lost in the fantasy there. So I next found my self trying to score a M911 and my wife helped me fight that one. Then one day after my second child was born I just found my self on ebay and next I new I was buying a Faun. I mean, it all happened so quick there was no time to think, not that I was thinking, I mean, I just needed the fix. . . .and so here I am, with all of you. Well, thanks for listening. , . . .

Ok, so there it is. I am officially out of the closet as a dirty TT'er. I suppose its not that bad, I mean it could be worse, right? Once that first image of the Dragon Wagon was burned on my brain that was it. And when Tamiya came out with their's, oh nelly! Then a few years later Trumpeter drops this bomb on me and I just had to have it, and the price was right too. So although I have had this kit for at least two years I have been afraid to open it as there is just SO much plastic! Even the box is daunting to look at. That coupled with the fact that I cannot seem to find any other builds on here to help me along has lead me to keep this one on the shelf till now. With the Tank Transporter Campaign proposed and started, how could I not? It was like a Sirens call, good luck tying your self to the mast on that one.

So since I cannot find a step by step or even a build log I will attempt to bang this one out myself. The goal is to get this one done with in the time frame set by the campaign and hopefully a load for it as well. I have a great pic of a SLT in A-stan (I think) carrying a Fuchs, so that is my image that I am going off of.

I plan on using either the BIG ED PE set or the Lion Roar PE set that just arrived today. The BIG ED set looks more involved and looks to have more parts so I am leaning towads the LR set as I am hoping it will be less time consuming. We shall see.

Please feel free to ask questions or make suggestions, as I am open to either. I am armed with some good walk around photos from the web of both tractor and trailer, as well as the very thorough WWP book on the SLT. I have some new sand paper, a whole brand new tube of Tamiya putty and a few months before it gets too cold to work outside, without some layers and possibly gloves. So without further ado, lets dive in shall we? Tally HO!

I started this last night after a break in my other three builds where I could do no more work on any at the time and still had a few hours to kill. After opening the box, which is HUGE, by the way, I was confronted by an overwhelming amount of plastic. It is truly frightening for someone who does not have a TON of experience or too much common sense to know better. I have little of both, so good thing.

I have chosen to begin on the trailer as it was the first piece staring me in the face when I opened the box. The under side of the trailer has a BUNCH of BIG push marks that should be removed if you have any self respect or pride. I found this easy to do with some 220 grit paper. Once the surface is more level I went back over the area with some corus cloth (which I find is the BEST thing to have on hand for sanding) to smooth it all away. On the upper side of the trailer bed there are two depressions that need to be filled if you are attempting to make anything close to a replica of the real deal. This is easily accomplished with some Tamiya putty. Once this has set, hit it with the 220 then the corus cloth and you are good to go. Unfortunately for all of us, that is as far as I got last night, but hey, you gotta start somewhere right? The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step? So this is our first step. I am hopeful that progress will not be this painfully slow the whole time, and I am sure you do as well. Here are some photos, to help you sleep better. Cheers.

nice mate, i build too this kit, but no etching set
just out of the box, for transporter campaign

Hi Damon,

good start for the kit, but let me clear out some mistakes about Bundeswehr Tank Transporters. The one in the picture is an SLT-50-3 with armored cabin. The SLT50-3 is the off-road transporter of the Bundeswehr. It was developed to recover and haul vehicles cross-country. It has an 8x8 tractor and 4 axles on the trailer.The SLT-56 or "Franziska" was developed to supplement the SLT-56. It could carry the Leopard 2 but is intented for use on primary roads. Since the tractor is only 8x6, it`s cross-country abilities are limited. As far as I know, no SLT-56 are currently deployed in Afghanistan.
To any manufaturer: How about an SLT 50-3 in styrene??

Hans-Hermann

Hans, thanks for the heads up. I did notice that the tractor had only the two headlights and not the four of the fransika, but I am not too concerned about the accuracy of the setting, more on the build itself. It would be nice to see trumpeter come out with the 50-3 however and I am sure that it could be easy to do as an add on sprue(s) to the existing kit. Thanks again for the info. Cheers.

So I intended this to be a strp by step and so it shall be. After the initial cleanup of the trailer I began with adding the "ribs" to the trailer, step 1 in the manual for those of you following along at home. All of this was very straight forwards and most of the "ribs" only needed a bit of clean up from where they were cut from the tree. MOst of these fit really well but a few were tight an one needed sanding.

Step 2 involves adding a plate and some bits to the underside of the trailer. Again all pretty straight forward and the fit reminded me of Tamiys. Everything lines up pretty nicely. Step 2 also requires the addition of the little reflector pieces G2, but I left this step off until the end as these are clear pieces and needed to be painted and I am sure will get broken off too easily.

So far I have noticed little flash and the mold limes are not too bad. The directions seem to be pretty straigtht forward and easy to read. I am hopeful that the rest of the kit is this easy. But I am not holding my breath.

THe only part so far that I have had any issue with is in Step 2 part F8. I needed to sand down the part on the trailer that it mounts into a bit to make it sit properly. Measure twice, cut once is the rule of thumb on these kits, just in case.

Step 3 is next which requires the addition of the leaf springs, which I am sure will be tons of fun. I ahve not begun the axles yet as I am hoping to get the trailer mostly done before starting on those.

Questions? Cheers.

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Managed to spend MOST of the day today doing some building, and it felt quite good. The trailer is probably about 75 to 80% complete right now I think, at least the suspension is, the top side and goose neck will be a whole project in and of itself I am sure.
There are four axles that are the rear suspension each of these consists of a bunch of small parts that all need to be cleaned up and stuck together. Which I where most of my time went today. Each axle consists of 14 pieces. And there are 4 of these PLUS two additional axles that I have not begun yet. FUN! I am going to confess here that I do not have any love for the tediousness of cleaning small parts. Shaving off mould lines and cleaning up the sprue marks is not fun for me. I would much rather get on with glueing and painting. But in order to get a nice result we must put in the tedious work. . . sigh.
in addition to the 4 axles there are 12 "struts"(?) thatt need to be added to each side of the axel that also connects to the underside of the trailer top. This needs to be glued at the same time you glue the axle to the trailer body. Since this is going to be a ton of fun and will require a high degree of patience I have decided to put off doing this until later tonight or until tomorrow. (Yes, among my other vices I am a procrastinator too).
IN between sanding tiny fiddly little pieces of trailer guts I have been adding oil washes to my Land Rover build so that time passes more quickly.






So far there have been no snafus with assembly. The biggest issue has been the push marks on pieces that need to be filled and sanded. The major ones on the trailer underside and part F 36. So far there has been only one place where there will be some PE added and I will wait until later to get those on and I am sure they would get broken off pretty easily.

Although I still have yet to start on the Cab I am on page 25 of the instructions and there are only 34 total pages, so I am feeling pretty confident. I know the cab will be a major project and will contain the majority of the Lion Roar PE I think that starting on the trailer gives me a leg up as I know that once I do finish the cab all there is to do is paint and weather. Real Model resin wheels are on the way here and I must say that I am very excited to get these rather than try my hand at the "rubber" ones.

All in all building is progressing at a decent pace and not quite the ordeal that I assumed this was going to be. Cheers for now.

I have yet to start on my FAUN kit (for the Tank Transporter Campaign) so I will be watching this with great interest.

Let me know how the AM wheels/tires look after you get them as I too don't like the kits offering.










~ Jeff

Jeff, will do and I will snap some photos of them so you can see for your self, good or bad. Have to admit now that someone is paying attention I feel a little more anxiety as I have never REALLY worked with PE, save for the little I did on my Blazer build last year, which was like one piece. . . .

Managed to get the 4 rear trailer axle assemblies and the "struts" on last night, several choice words were uttered (loudly). But they all got on and none the worse.

The thing that I found frustrating was the struts fit in to both the trailer, aligned with a hole for the "pin" to go into, and with the bottom/top (depends on how you see things) of the axle, via a pin and hole again. The issues is gravity. Once you set the "strut" into the hole on the trailer top is is going to fall down with out the axle there to keep it upright. (Follow along closely as this is going to get confusing quickly.) In order to keep the "strut" upright, you need to glue it in place, which immediately presents the problem that you do not have it pointing the correct way to line up with the hole on the axle. Now, you COULD try gluing the axle down into its hole/pin combo but then you can't get the "strut" to line up when the axle is down. You see the dilemma, right?

My solution was to get some glue on the trailer hole and set the "strut" in the closest place that I could figure for one side. Glue the axle into its spot, then set the "top" of the "strut" repeat on the opposite side, while the glue is not completely set. Note that I am religious with my use of Ambroid Pro Weld, liquid glue (read FAST setting time, like seconds) so you can imagine the fun I had doing all of this. I am sure that there is a better way to get this done, but it did not reach my brain then or now. So, it was, what it was for better or worse (let's hope better).

The two front axle assemblies are next to do then, their placement. Part F36, was the one with the pin marks if you remember, that one got the Mr. Liquid Putty treatment and although I thought I put plenty on, it did shrink a bit and sunk into the hole, just slightly. This was hit with Mr. Surfacer 500 last night and we'll see how that looks. If its good, sanding and gluing for him tonight. Then onto the front two axles. Took a few quick shots last night that I will post tonight for those of you following along. All for now, cheers.

I hear you Damon and it's noted too. I have been warned about what *&*! I will have at that point so we'll see.

I too use APW on everything so it should be fun!










~ Jeff

Hallo!

My building is legible here:
http://www.hcmodelling.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2412

WOW Kampits! That is really nice!

Maybe mine will just stay in the box and go on eBay!










~ Jeff

Looking good so far. And tank transports are a seemingly not-too-often covered subject. This'll be interesting to watch.

Ok, photos that I promised are below. Managed to get all of the rest of the axles on the trailer last night with out too much fuss. This is of course AFTER I figured out that I had the wrong size metal rod. . . .Once I figured out that the reason that the rod did not fit the axle housing was that it was the wrong part everything seemed to go swimmingly. This was of course AFTER I had uttered several choice words.

Oh well.

I put together the four front hubs even though I know that these will soon be replaced by the resin wheels that are currently on the way. I just wanted to see how they looked on the axles.

Goose neck is next and I am sure that will require some of the Lion Roar PE that is sitting here next to me, mocking me. (it mocks me so). . . .On to the pics.







The front two axle housings had some SERIOUS flash and "extra" plastic on the inner surfaces that MUST be cleaned up in order for the rod to sit in it. This must be done carefully as the parts are fragile and can easily break although I did not break mine, trust me on this. I went after it with a good sharp No 11 blade, carefully, and then some fine sandpaper. Other than that it has been smooth sailing so far. Cheers.

What resin wheel/tires did you order and from where?

The Real Model wheels from Lucky Model. They were the only place online that I could find them. They just got resupplied on the 18th of Oct and I pounced on it. Should be here in a few days and will post a review and some pics once they arrive. Cheers.

Send me your address. I send you new wheels for trailer as sample.
Miloslav

So been a long time since I posted here. Excuses listed in order;
1) Two other builds were taking up my time and those had immediate deadlines.
2) It was freaking cold in my garage (where my bench is) for most of the winter.
3) I got sick, twice (and still am) so yea. . .
4) I had been waiting for the wheels to arrive from Lucky model (they did back in Dec) and there is some SERIOUS clean up that needs to be done to these, not even sure if I can use them.

So beyond the excuses, I have been trying to keep my business above water and January is a very slow time for business here, things are only now starting to get back to "normal". I have managed to do some cleanup on some of the wheels but the trailer wheels really need to be replace. Miloslav has offered to send replacements, but still waiting for those to arrive. I am hoping that I can get some of the PE elements on the trailer without the wheels so that things can start moving forward again.
Although I could start on the cab/tractor I know that most of the PE is there so I am hoping to get some experience with it before diving in to the rest of it. I will try to get some pics snapped soon and post them here so that we can get back up to speed with this build log. Sorry for the delay, but sometimes the 1:1 world takes priority. Cheers.

Update:
The very next day a wonder outs little package arrived from my friend Miloslav, the FULL set of resin wheels. Not just the replacements for the trailer but a whole brand new set of wheels, and mind you that this was at his expense. He did not even ask for shipping and the original set was bought on lucky model, not direct from Real Model. I know that I have seen people post a few negative things about Miloslav, but I will stand should to shoulder with him from now on. The guy produces awesome additions to our hobby, makes amazing things for us all, and takes time to post both pictures, but thoughts, suggestions and takes input from all of us too. So three cheers for Miloslav and Real Model for all that they do. Thank you and updates to follow soon.

Ok pics to follow tonight, no excuses. Managed to get the goose neck started a few weeks ago, then needed some time to let the putty set so I could sand, and last night started assembling. I am also in the progress of building a Leopard 2A3/A4 (I have no idea how to tell them apart), that will probably end up as a "load" for this beast. Trying to adjust the paint color on the Leopard, as it seems to "light" do me and needs to be more dark green and greyish rather than green/yellowish. Again, pics will help. The new wheels from Real Model are SO NICE, way way better than the first set I purchased, so extra thanks to Real Model and Miloslav. More tonight. Cheers.

The goose neck for the trailer is almost finished. The PE that I have been using is maddening. The set itself is great, really detailed and pretty easy to follow if you pay attention and really look at both sets of instructions and mark where you are going to use the PE. The issue is that I am really a novice at PE, I can bend stuff, but application and placement (with glue) seems to be my weak point. The Lion Roar set has these TINY freakin parts that if you do not have amazing vision (I am fortunate that I do not yet need glasses) you are going to lose these parts. I managed to figure out, way late, that if you can figure out how the sub assemblies go together, sometimes it makes more sense to glue them to the vehicle and assemble ON the vehicle rather than the other way round. Again, hind sight 20/20. . . .

I am sure that some of the PE will need glue touch ups as we go, but for now things seem to be holding. While I am working on this beast I am in the process of finishing a Leo 2A4, and picking up an M1A1 from 1994 that I started in college. I figured that I could handle an easy build, get comfortable with the paint and weathering that this will need AND provide a load for this with the Leo 2. The abrams was just mocking me from the shelf and I figured that it needed to be taken down from the shelf. I also think that with a project this big that I am going to need some distraction from the PE and micro detail, so there you go. I have not been diligent with photos on this but will get some taken and updated tonight hopefully.

All in all this is turning out to be a fun project and even though there are some issues with this kit, there are not insurmountable. A little putty and some corus cloth. . . no problem. Cheers.

Dear Damon,
Reading your story about the SLT build I see some parallels to myself!
I am working on this truck for over one and a half year now. Using Eduard etch sets for the interior and exterior, next to the Real Model wheels for both trailor and tractor.
My (Dutch) M109's were sometimes moved around by the mono colored Nato OD series, being the first (test) series, purchased by the Bundeswehr. Therefore, I am still doubting about applying a mono or three colored appereance.
A few things, which may be of importance:
1. The Real Model wheels for the trailer do need bigger holes since they do not fit on the Trumpeter axels. I had to reduce length of the models axels to make them fit and, since I will make a static model, will glue them straight on the brake drums. Drilling the resin wheels is no option since the risk of breaking them is too big. (in my humble opinion)
2. If you load a Leopard ( ) on the trailor, do not fix the so called ' fix link's to the goose neck's side, but put them aside. They go from the goose neck to the tow eyes of the Leopard's front. If you do so, you need to lenghten the fix links. This is no issue since the fix links can be installed with a pin at any time you have finished the trailor and Leopard. Normally, all AFV's were driven almost against the goose neck and tightened with the fix links. That is why there are to wooden strips on the goose neck. (But certainly, one of our German modeling colleagues may inform us better!!!)
3. The goose neck has some large holes. Here you have to add some hydraulic and pressure air piping, since they are very visible, even if the model is finished.
4. To have all the details you should purchase Wings & Wheels Publications Bundeswehr Tank Transporters in Detail. (ISBN 80-86416-44-5). It is all about the SLT 56 ( Trumpeter's truck) and the SLT50-3. You will then find out that there is quite some mix in the Trumpeter box of details of both tractors. E.g.:rubber guard on the on dashboard bar. The SLT56 is divided in three, the box give a complete covered bar!

By the way, and misusing your blog: do you coincedentally know where I can find resin Bundeswehr (1980-ies dress code) soldiers? I want to put some of these men next to my build to show its impressive length and size.
No driver will fit since the models chair are incorrect and actually too high, compared to the original. Now I have a single man, wearing a parka, but maybe there are some " barrack clothed" guys in resin available, who could show some truckers action around the trailor..........................

Looking forward to see your build continuing. I will certainly follow your blog.

Paul;
always great to have a companion on a long journey! Yes I have noticed the wheels and the hubs issue and had not figured out how to overcome that yet, but I think you have given me an idea.

2) Yes, crossed that bridge before I had realized what I had done, but I think I will make my Leopard in motion onto the trailer, which if you have never seen it done, it quite a feat!

3)Will be adding the lines at some point but am trying to figure out how everything goes together right now, and I have the WWP book always open on the desk. It is a great reference. I am hoping to use it for my next Faun build when I do the other trailer.

4)I have noticed that there are some combinations of both, but had not noticed the covered bar, thanks for the tip.

My suggestion on the figures is the old Tamiya British stretcher party. Simple fatigues, and berets would not be too hard to do a minor conversion with some LBE and weapons. Good luck!

Damon,

To fix you Leopard to the trailer you might consider the chains from MR Modellbau: Spannschloesser und Zurrketten for the SLT series, item no. MR-35296.
I bought them to hang them on the goose neck and to fix my Dutch painted MLRS.
In the beginning the German Bundeswehr took all possibilties to pick up loads to gather experiences with the first series.
I even managed to drive one (illegally) during one of the transportations of our own equipment, "supervised" by a German Feldwebel!
I can also recall these SLT's hauling former east block equipment from US barracks in Grafenwoehr, GE, so, a SLT with a T55 or alike will not be historically wrong.

I have been holding off getting the Mr. Modelbau tie downs and stuff for the Faun and the HET, but I am sure that when I have a decent supply of cash, it is going to happen. But yes, there will be some tie downs and such ready to hold the load. I think that a tank actually mounting the trailer could look cool, but again that means that I need to have the bottom of the tank looking proper. . . . uh oh.

on YouTube there are somefilms which show Leo's crossing ditches. Here you may find the things you want to know.
My favorite is the one called " Leopard 2A4 testdrive".
Most likely civil engineers from our Ground Weapon Systems workshops since no soldier would even consider doing the tricks these guys do in his wildest dreams!
A battalion commander would go nuts seeing this.

Paul;
too bad you never got to see me drive a tank. I pulled some stuff at Graff that almost got me beat.