Peter Ganchev reviews Zvezda's Braille scale Panther D and then builds it!



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Thanks!

Nice review, Peter. Not sure about it being a third of the price of the Dragon equivalent, at least in the UK it's between 50 - 60% of the price. Separate tools sound good, and I take it the tracks are soft rather than styrene ? It looks like it could do with a little weight to sit it down on the tracks.
Thanks.
Oh yeah, is that just me, but the photo of the tracks is a bit psychedelic isn't it?

Hello Matthew and thanks for the kind words. Where I am DML's T-34s go for about 15 Euro and Zvezda's sell for 6, so it is 2,5-3 times cheaper indeed. Guess the LHS got the right supplier.


The tools are also well enough reproduced for the scale and a wargaming kit. Tracks are hard styrene and I missed to incude the note that on the pics those yellow lines show the molded-in grooves to ease the bending over sprockets and idlers.


It's probably because I did not follow instructions and they ended up a bit tight. I built each side of the track/suspension separately and tried to stretch the track and push the whole assemble on each side. These troubles prompted me to add the advice in the review.


Which one?

Thanks for your reply Peter.
On the price, prices are all skewy in the UK anyway. I have come across this before where it seems it is possible to get a kit produced in the Ukraine, sent by a vendor from Poland, including the postage, rather than buy it from a vendor within the UK. I wonder if maybe they are driven all the way over by truck which is probably expensive, whereas the Dragon kits probably arrive on a 150 000 tonne cargo ship... who knows? Also any price of anything in US Dollars, read exactly the same figure (or more) in UK £s despite the exchange difference.

I must admit that I also found the styrene tracks to be a little tricky on those two MPK kits I reviewed - getting them to join up at the right point with the correct amount of tension.

The photo - no, it was just me, it looks fine now!

Thanks to the pins in the wheels and the track runs joining the two ends of the track will pose no problem. The first and last track interlock like on the real thing (not overlapping like many DS tracks do) and the join is virtually invisible.

As far as transport goes - you are probably correct. Most Zvezda kits I have say the distributor is a German company.