The postman arrived to day with my Panda ZTZ-99A in her satchel and would like to give my option on opening the box.

There won’t be any photos as I have difficulty uploading them to the site.

The kit comes in 9 sprues, upper and lower hull, small PE set, a sheet of decals, an instruction booklet (or as it is called – user manual), a small colour painting and marking guide on one side and the other has a black/white diagram of all the vehicles from the 2015 parade and position within the group of 19 vehicles and lastly a full size (this is 1/35 full size) black/white painting guide.

The upper hull while simple (and I feel this is a fact of the actual vehicle) is of a good standard. I know I previously courted controversy with this statement but the underside of the lower hull shows its T-72 heritage (I compared this to the underside of both my T-90 and T-72M4CZ and they are similar note similar not same) and this is where the similarity with the T-72 ends so please lets no go there again. The detail is very crisp and well defined.

The sprue breakdown is 2 sets of B - individual track links which are nicely detailed and the injector pin marks will be covered by set C x 2 the track pads.

Next, set D x 2; these mostly have the running gear with a couple of other bits such as fuel drums, hatch covers etc. These items are again well done with detail on both sides of the road wheels being clean and sharp. The drive sprockets are well defined and crisply detailed. In an interesting move the running gear is fixed to the vehicle with closed top caps which fit inside of each and are part of the D sprue instead of poly caps, however with strategic gluing the running gear should maintain an ability to rotate if you wish.

Sprue F contains parts for the upper hull, fuel cells, stowage boxes, track guards etc. detail is good. One curious item marked a F1 (which is not listed in the instruction) appears to be a track jig (very handy).

The turret is on sprue E and the only disappointment is the barrel; this is in two parts and is an upper and lower so the join will be on the side of the barrel. In this day and age of slide moulds (and other than ease of production and probably cost) I find it difficult to understand why companies do not produce a single piece barrel either in plastic or metal. That bug bear aside the barrel detail is still good. Overall the turret seems well detailed even the moulded smoke launcher wire to me is acceptable. The mantle canvas cover shows quite realistic folds and bolt detail. The hatches look very nicely done even with the moulded handles.

The last sprue GP has all the clear part for headlights and other lenses.

The PE is simple (but not bad) and has the screens and mud flaps. Decals, enough to cover the parade vehicles and a couple of others decal 3 and 4 which I’m sure I shall locate their purpose during construction.

The build is broken down into eighteen easy to manage parts with no section appearing to be to complex.

Painting is covered by two sheets, the first is an A4 glossy with all five aspects of the vehicle visible with only one drawback and this may seem picky but what colours do I need? Yes, there is a lack colour identification and by this I mean two colours are listed Gunze H303 for the dark green (good) but also indicated for both the light and dark brown. The other is H18 (steel) for the track. The following link provides the best picture for the digi cam on TJ101

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5637/20490951643_77636a4706_o.jpg

at a guess I would suggest for the base green FS34102 such as model master 1713 Medium Green; dark green FS34096 such as Tamiya XF61, darker brown possibly Revell 85 brown and the lighter brown model master 1735 Wood however these are just my quick picks and me being me will angst over for a few weeks before I come up with what I feel are good fits.

The second larger sheet is a full size 1/35 black/white five view of the vehicle, this will come in useful when trying to work out where to place your masks, on this these link provide excellent guides to reverse masking for the digi cam

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/174352&page=1

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/157067&page=1

The kit includes three parts that are particular to vehicle TJ-101, these are F22 a star mounted on the front ERA and E43 and 44 which make up a bank of eight speakers to be mounted on the rear right of the turret though there are no wiring instruction and I’m not sure how this was wired in reality.

The only down sides I can see so far is the barrel, the lack of plumbing for the external fuel tanks and the vague painting instructions. Unlike Panda’s Tunguska this kit is not over engineered nor under engineered with a parts count of about 667 with almost 300 of those being track part this is going to be a terrific kit straight out of the box for newbies and those with some experience.