Hi Rob,

An excellent and informative blog. Nice clean build on the kit. Looking good so far.

Not one I'm likely to build, but the blog will be of great value for those who do. An interesting vehicle too.

Cheers

Al

Great stuff!

any chance of reposting the pics? or posting a link to see the pics?

Thanks for the comments guys, pleased you like it!




Yes apologies Matt, Photobucket is a real PIA at the moment, my bandwidth seems to get zapped instantly. Heres a link to the album with the complete photos:

http://s43.photobucket.com/user/afv_rob/library/Meng%20Char%202C?sort=3&page=1

Rob I have noticed you are continually exceeding the bandwidth of your picture hosting provider resulting in your Blogs being impossible to follow. As the Blogs you are currently doing are for items supplied by the KitMaker Network I have spoken to Jim Starkweather about this issue. In order to resolve the issue Jim S has increased the storage space in your gallery on the KitMaker Network and requested that you contact him via E-mail.

Tim to resurrect this blog as I near the start of painting this monster. One addition I was eager to add at the time was the tail seen on several of these tanks, thankfully such an item is now iavailable in resin from NIKO Model:





This is essential for modelling tank No.92 'Picardie' which my tank will be. Here's some period shots of 'Picardie's' tail:







The NIKO Model kit is very nice and well moulded, construction is fairly straightforward although I'd suggest a bit of experience with resin before tackling it. The instructions are quite straightforward:



I started off by removing the excess resin between the side support struts. The excess resin is essential to ensure the piece doesn't warp.









The two pieces are joined together, which is quite tricky:



Here's the bottom plate:



This part must be soaked in boiling water to make the resin flexible and then shaped into a curve to fit onto the skid frame. Its quite a difficult process to get right and if I were doing it again i'd probably heat the part with a hairdryer instead, the resin tends to dry quite quickly so you don't have long to manipulate the parts. I got there in the end though:







The tail easily clips onto the bogie mounts on Meng's kit, pins are included to secure in place.









Overall I'm very impressed with this little NIKO set, it adds a little more length to an already massive model and adds an extra point of interest. With that now complete I hope to get some paint on this very soon....

Hello Rob, very nice build. Don't know if you noticed, Niko's instructions show Meng's kit part A2 mounted on the tail skid. It's a taillight, though Meng's instructions don't mention that. In those photos of 'Picardie', you can see it mounted on the tail that way. Probably mounted that way only on road marches, not in the field. Also, be aware, the French tricolor on the kit's decal sheet is the wrong way 'round, the blue field should be to the left. It's an easy fix. Looking forward to seeing more. Al