Hi. Has anybody out there had any building experience with AFV Club's Pak 43/41 yet? Saw it at the local hobby shop this past week end and was just wondering if anybody has gotten around to building this kit yet? An armor modeler I talked to at the shop said that AFV Club was coming out with, or had come out with, brass spacers between the two gun shields that is supposed to make this part of the kit easier to build. He had bought the kit, but so far, hadn't done anything with it. Just wondering what those building it or have built it think about the difficulty of the overall kit.

Yeah, I still have a few spaces under the bed to occupy with some cardboard boxes that need a good coat of dust and cat hair.

Thanks, and take care. Sgirty

Got this on the bench now. construction seems rather simple, but i've yet to see the brass spacers for sale even in Japan. I've started with the chassis for that reason alone. the only real grip i have is with the parts that go around the alluminium barrel as on mine i need filler on the muzzle brake and the sleeve around the middle of the barrel. but it just may have been my lack of careful assembly and clean up. But I would have prefered a resin or white metal peice for the muzzle brake. HTH STUG

I picked up this kit last week and all I can say is wow!! P/E already bent to shape and the details just look awesome ....as for the spacers ...I think I will wait for the brass ones because the plastic ones are tiny and are attached to the sprue not by one but to attachement points..arrrrgggghhhh!!!! Just won't work for a guy like me with fat fingers..lol.
I completly recommend this kit and I can't wait to build it myself...

Rick

Not being sure at all what these spacers really look like, would this be something that could be scratchbuilt fairly easily, w/o the need to buy the brass ones?

Those spacers are very tiny studs. You glued about 20+ of them on the rear shield plate, then snap the front one onto these studs.

The problem is that they are really small, something like 1.5mm in length and o.6mm in diameter. You probably lose some when you remove them from the sprue, but there are 40+of them and you got lots of spare. And they are very difficult to clean. Then when you snap on the front armour, you will deform some of them. But since they are so small, you probably won't notice that they are deformed once assembled.

The problem is how to remove them from the sprue and clean them, and how to make sure you only lose 10 of them. For the copper spacers, you don't have these problem. It is not a matter of detail, but a practical issue.

Mine is assembled, so I don't care about these spacers. But if I get a second kit, I will buy these as well, to save some hours.

All in all, it is an amazing kits. But the usual AFV Club shortcomings are there: too many unnecessory samll parts, slight "off" in fitting and size (e.g. when you join both sides of a component, you will see that they have a very sligt difference in size, like the width of an hair), and their plastic is of a softer type, can be deformed easily . But if you're careful, these are not that critical, and the final model is gorgeous.

I also replace many small parts like handles with brass rod, or plant brass rod into the small parts when I join them.

Below is a link to the kit review over at PMMS. Good pics of the sprues, etc.

HTH,

Shaun

http://pmms.webace.com.au/reviews/vehicles/afvclub/afv35059.htm

thanks for the info gents,

ive just ordered one,
should look nice in a crater with a cromwell driving by!

cheers

joe

While we're talking about AFV Club, I'm sure I saw two sets of crew members for the German 105 gun. There were a total of 8 - 10 crew all in greatcoats serving the gun. I think I saw this on e-Bay once, last year, and never saw them again. Also can't find them in Squadron, or VLS, or any other store on-line. Its like they don't exist. Did I hallucinate this or did anyone else see these figures?

No Bigles, you didn't hallucinate.
I think these figures are from HOBBY FAN. The problem is that they are very expensive.

An alternative is the 4 man crew set by NEMROD. They are clad for summer-time, one having no shirt on. I have these figures and they look realy great. I intend to place them next to a SIG 33 gun.
You can see them at http://www.blast-models.com