Introduction: Adapted from the olive-drab.com website: The Light Tactical Trailer, M1101/M1102 is a single axle, two wheel trailer designed to be towed by a HMMWV. The high ground clearance trailer consists of a cargo box mounted on the Light Tactical Trailer Chassis. The two types are:

-Trailer, Cargo: 2-Wheel, Light M1101
-Trailer, Cargo: 2-Wheel, Heavy M1102

The M1101 and M1102 trailers have the same tires, wheels, and track width as the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV). The Light Tactical Trailer for general cargo is designated by two model numbers, the M1101 and M1102, depending on its loading by weight. That is, there is no physical difference between the M1101 and the M1102 models, other than the dataplate. The two model numbers are used to regulate the Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW), based solely on the vehicle towing the trailer. For example, when the GVW does not exceed 3,400 pounds (1542 kg) the M1101 cargo trailer can be towed by a HMMWV M998/M1038 series prime mover. Both the M1101 and the M1102 trailer models can be towed by a HMMWV M1097/M1114.

Review: This will be my first build review of a resin kit here. I will be presenting the review in a few installments over the next few weeks. This is a true multi-media kit with parts in resin and photo etched brass. The kit comes packaged in a sturdy, light weight corrugated, top opening box with the parts in small zipper bags. The silver box has a color photo of the assembled and painted kit. The kit comes packaged in five zipper bags. The larger, flat parts are even packed with sheets of light weight corrugated board to ensure they stay flat.







The instructions are the nicest I have ever seen in a resin kit, in any kit for that matter. They are reminiscent of those produced by Eduard. Assembly is shown in 12 steps on 8 pages. Resin and photo etched parts are shown in different colors for clarity. Resin parts to be added in each step are shown in slate blue, photo etch parts in gold, and existing resin parts in gray. The instructions actually show mating surfaces where glue is to be applied in pink, which is a great feature. There is a two sided sheet of paper with a NATO three color scheme on one side and desert tan on the other. Colors are only listed as NATO olive green, NATO brown, NATO black and US Army sand. Decal placement is shown on the color guide.

Installment 2: The kit is cast in a slate blue colored resin. There was no breakage and only one part detached from the pour blocks. The resin parts come on 19 pour blocks. The pour blocks on the large parts attach all along one edge and have small supports in a couple of places. These will require sanding all along one edge. There is some curve to all of the large parts which will require the application of gentle heat to flatten them. The smaller parts have small attachment points which should be easy to remove. There is a little flash on the openings of all of the small parts. In some cases this flash is thin and will be easy to remove, in others it will require a drill or careful removal with a knife.













There are two sheets of photo etched parts. The smaller of the two sheets is roughly twice the thickness of the larger sheet. The kit also features a complete set of SKP’s beautiful resin on metal colored lenses for the lights and reflectors. There is a 2.25” X 2.5” decal sheet included as well. There is a comprehensive set of stencils and data plates. There is the option to build the model in the towed or parked configurations. My kit was missing resin parts “C” which is the three marker lights that are mounted along the rear, bottom edge of the trailer.

Installment 3:
Detail: The detail on this kit is fantastic. It places this kit on par with the best on the market by Legend and Live Resin. There is a fine texture on the parts similar to that on kits in plastic produced by Tamiya and Dragon. I have recently taken a large number of photos of an M1102 at my place of employment. This kit seems to capture all of the shapes and structures of the prototype perfectly. The kit appears to be well engineered, but doesn’t appear to be well executed once you start to dry fit the parts.

Assembly:
Step 1: This step starts assembly with just the trailer floor, fenders and floor tie downs. I prepped the resin parts at this point for steps 1 and 2 and performed all of the dry fitting for these steps. It is here that I discovered that while the kit is well planned out, the engineering of the parts is only just acceptable. The fenders and sides of the trailer need flat surfaces to mate to but once the pour plugs are removed, it is hard to figure out how much more material should be removed to expose the mating surface. There are small pips on the pieces that help to align the parts. None of the corresponding holes are shaped correctly, nor is there a corresponding hole at all for one of them. That said, on to assembly! After removing a ton of material along the edges of the floor and the fenders it was time to move on. Because I did a lot of prep I noticed that there was a step along the back edge of the floor when it should have been flat. If the step was left the rear wall wouldn’t have been able to sit straight up and down. The fenders required a bit of cyano glue run along the gap with the floor. I then added the photo etch tie downs to the floor. They can be bent easily so that one side or the other could be shown either folded flat or shown up for use. There is even a small grommet on the floor of the trailer where the wire for the tail lights passes through the floor. I drilled out the grommet and where the wiring attaches to the tail lights and the rear side marker light.







Next installment will be Step 2 and step 3.

Thanks for the detailed look, I'm looking forward to the next update!

Installment 4:
SKP works fast and already sent me resin parts “C” which turns out are cast in clear resin. This wasn’t entirely clear in the instructions. These photos are from Google Photos. My first attempt didn’t work so I had to make some adjustments and got them the photos to work. I hope this is a fix for Photobucket. It is behaving badly as most of you know.



Step 2: Sorry this took so long to post. I had some issues with this step that required a lot of cleanup and sanding. I am going to deviate from the instructions slightly by adding wiring for the taillights here. Other than wiring and brake lines, this will be an out of the box build. This step begins with adding all of the side walls to the floor. This is where most of the kit’s problems will occur. Most of the parts require very careful trimming to ensure the mating surfaces have a flat, square surface to mate with. The bed floor is slightly smaller than the mating surfaces which will leave a gap around the floor if not shimmed. Unfortunately I chose not to shim and instead trimmed the mating surfaces. This led to the sides being slightly too long. I had to trim the rear wall by almost 2mm which led to the mating surfaces not matching as well as they should have. While filing them I ruined the 45 deg angle of the mating surface so there was a gap that I had to correct. I didn’t realize this until I had one side already glued in place. I had to file off detail on the inside corners which I had to replace with styrene strips. The side walls lined up okay, but should also have been shortened slightly. Because I didn’t shorten the sidewalls, the short wall sections that go either side of the tailgate needed to be shimmed. All of this made for a complicated step 2! The alignment pins on the sides are useless and had to be removed. Some of the photo etch parts in steps 2 and 3 align with small pins on the resin parts. These pins are supposed to represent the fasteners that hold the parts onto the body. They are slightly too short for this.















Step 3: This step adds the top corners to the bed and the tailgate assembly. The resin parts that make up the corners of the bed went on easily. There was just some careful sanding required to ensure these parts went on flush and square. There are a couple of photo etch parts added to the tailgate here. The longer parts require a careful double fold that is best done after studying photos of the real thing. There is no way to judge how to fold these parts by using the instructions. The other two parts are tiny and if you aren’t careful, they will feed the carpet monster.









That’s it! Steps 2 and 3 are done. I have step 4 done and will upload it soon as installment 5.

Installment 5:
Step 4: In this step a lot of photo etch is added to the bottom. The base for the axle is also added in this step. The main photo etch pieces that attach on either side of the bottom front didn’t have the right overlap. I am not sure if this due to a mistake on my part or not. The resin axle bases fit very well once the alignment tabs were removed. They were useless and actually hindered placement of the parts.











This is the end of step 4. Step 5 looks like it will be an easy one and I’ll cover it in installment 6.

Looks like a perfect kit?

Hans-Herman, it really is a good kit, but it is far from perfect. I've made some mistakes that I hope this review will help others to avoid. I am hoping that it will finish up into a great little model. I am going to take this all the way to a paint job. It sure does fill a void. I still hope someone, Bronco or Trumpeter, will make one in plastic.

Regards,

Eric

Trumpeter should start with the M1095 MTVT.

Hans-Hermann, at least there is already a model of a trailer suitable for towing behind the the FMTV trucks. There isn't a model of any trailer suitable for towing behind a HMMWV. You should be able to convert Trumpeter's M1082 LMTVT to an M1095. From photos it appears that it is just an M1082 with a second axle.

Regards,

Eric

Installment 6:
In the following drawing I tried to show the issue I had in Step 2. The floor and the trailer frame are not lined up like they should be. The floor is significantly smaller than the frame. When the side walls are attached, this will lead to a gap all around the floor next to the side walls. I chose to trim back the frame which led to the problems I had with the side walls being slightly too long. A shim glued all around the floor would be better, but will lead to quite a bit of cleanup. Neither option should be necessary. The kit should have been engineered better.



This photo shows another one of the issues I have with the kit and that is with the placement of some of the pour plugs. The detail on the wheels and tires is very well done. The tires are however marred by a very poorly placed pour plug. Instead of placing the plug on the tread of the tire, it is placed on the rear facing sidewall. No matter how carefully you try to clean this plug off, there will be some loss of detail. I can only guess this was placed as it was so that the loss of detail will be hidden in the wheel well. You can be the judge. I placed it next to a HMMWV wheel and tire from DEF. The detail compares favorably. If you want to model a loaded down trailer, you will have to do some careful grinding off of the tires from the SKP wheels and the wheels from a set of DEF tires. The two can then be mated for a set of correct wheels with sagged tires!



Step 5: In this step the towing assembly, the torsion assembly and the data plates are added. When the pour plug is removed from the towing assembly there are small air bubbles all along the surface where it is cut away. I noticed this where the pour plugs are removed from most of the parts. Another nice feature of the instructions is there are actual measurements given for the placement of the data plates. Then SKP did something odd, they put the measurements on a different page which you are referred to. I cut the measurements from the later step and printed them on Step 5 prior to assembling the parts. Everything went together well. I did have to sand less than a mm off of the torsion bar to make it fit without putting too much pressure on the mounts.







Step 6: The only parts added in this step are photo etched braces for the towing assembly. On the real trailer these braces are attached with a ton of rivets. In an effort to model this area correctly SKP used very well done photo etched parts. My only issue here is the fold lines. They are done with a series of perforations or dashes that are etched through the material. Once they are folded, the perforations are still visible at the folds. It will be impossible to hide these. Other than perforations, this step has some amazing detail.





In the following photo you can see the fold lines and the perforations that were used to show you where to fold the parts. In this photo you can also see the white air bubbles that were left behind after the towing assembly and the torsion assembly were removed from their pour plugs.



That’s it for installment 6. In the next installment I’ll cover Steps 7 and 8.

Eric, I'm not seeing the images in your last post?

Mario

Same here.

Hi Eric, not that easy. M1095 uses the same longer cargo body of the M1083. I build me a M1095 a while ago. I used the cargo body and the frame of the M1083 truck and build the front frame and axles from scratch. I serves as trailer for my M1084/LTAS combo. But I like to build the M1095 OOTB rather scratching again.

Hello all, I can see the photos on my computer but not on my Kindle or phone. I'll mess with the links for a while.

Regards,

Eric

Edit: Google Photos is a pain in the butt. The address for each photo is very long and they do not like to paste into MS Word without adding random spaces. I can see all of the photos on all of my devices now. Thanks for the patience.

I can see the photos now, thanks!

The PE looks very extensive but the end result is great.

Mario

Mario, it really is a lot of PE for such a small model. All of this comes from two small sheets! Another point is you cannot leave any of the PE off because they are not just replacements for molded on detail. Every piece is essential. My skills will definitely be challenged as the tilt tie downs are going to be added soon. There are quite a few and their placement will need to be very precise to ensure they look like those on the real thing. I've had to pull a few PE pieces off after my cyano glue grabbed too quickly. It's a good thing I have a pair of Xuron smooth jaw needle nose pliers. I had to use them to smooth out a couple of mangled pieces. I have learned a lot so far building this little beast.

Regards,

Eric

Hi Eric,
Tips & Tricks: I glue small pieces of resin or PE to a very thin shim of styrene, trim of the excess shim and then I can use ordinary solvent/glue for styrene to glue the other side of the shim to the plastic part. This allows a little more time and gives more precision than gluing with CA or epoxy.
Thin styrene can be bought as sheets (Evergreen for instance), one sheet goes a very long way, or recovered from some types of vac-formed packaging (test with styrene glue to check if it is usable).
In theory this method could be used for larger parts as well but I havent't tested it. Gluing resin to resin could be done by adding styrene shims to both parts, not tested but it should work ...

Thanks for an interesting and informative build review !

/ Robin

Installment 7:
Hello again everyone, I know it has been a while since my last update. I have had a ton of stuff going on and just haven’t had the chance to work on this. The following is a photo of my solution to that horrible pour plug on the tires, replace them! Actually I damaged one of the tires trying to remove the plug. I decided it would be easier to use a set of DEF Model tires from a HMMWV set, DW35003 which is a set of sagged Goodyear MT tires. I used the spare tire from two sets as it isn’t sagged. The tires on an empty trailer have a flat spot, but no noticeable sag. I carved out the center of the DEF wheel leaving a round depression. I was able to scribe around the rim on the SKP set and after a few passes with the back of an Exacto #11 blade the center of the rim and the brake assembly fell out. I separated them with a razor saw and then sanded the center of the SKP hub close as you can see in the photos. The brake assembly will be glued to the axle and then I’ll add the wheel assembly. Using this technique, you would be able to use a set of sagged tires to show a heavily laden trailer.



Step 7: This step finishes off the suspension with the addition of a few resin parts. The shocks and the hubs clean up very easily but are a bit tricky to mount on the model. This is one of those steps that requires you to grow a few new fingers on each hand. Also added are the tie down loops. These are a real PITA to remove from their pour plugs. Each of them is attached by between three and seven spots. They are a poor design. Luckily I only broke one and I was able to use one from a Tamiya M1025 kit as they are exactly the same. So far, other than a few minor issues, this is a very well done kit.









Steps 8 & 9: In these two steps you build the trailer jack and stabilizers. These go together easily. One weird thing of note here is that SKP gives you an alternate design for the wheel on the jack, but doesn’t mention it in the instructions. The kit includes both a spoked wheel, which is shown in the instructions, and a solid wheel. The solid wheel, sadly, is not as well detailed as the spoked wheel. The spoke wheel has undercuts between the wheel and its cradle, while the solid wheel does not. I was easily able to carve this undercut into the solid wheel. Also, none of the stabilizers, which are made out of square tubular steel, are modeled solid. SKP should have been able to cast these pieces with depressions to represent the hollow tube ends. The example I photographed at work has a solid style wheel so that’s the one I chose to use. I shortened the jack as per the instructions for a towed example. I added a rectangular base to the solid wheel like SKP added to the spoked wheel. Photos I took at work show this feature. I also used the shorted stabilizers which are for a towed trailer as well.









That’s it for installment 7. In the next installment I’ll try to cover Steps 10 through 12.

Hi Eric,

That is some beautiful detailing sir!

Regards,

Maher

Looking nice Eric. It sure is a nice piece of equipment we needed. I hope other modern trailers will follow soon from these manufactures. 😉

Building mine right now. Great kit, the only things missing are the saety chains and the brake hose.

Thanks for the detailed build blog.

I've been eyeing that SKP trailer for a while, now seeing your build I'll definitely buy it, altough it's a bit pricey it appears to be worth the high sticker tag.

I have another trailer from another Czech brand and it's really sub par, you pay for what you get...

Cheers,

Christophe

I have been on the fence about buying this kit and reading this review has made up my mind to buy it. Looks like a great kit, but more important, what a great build review/blog. You have produced the sort of review that helps both the manufacturer of the kit and your fellow modellers.

Kudos to you Sir.

Installment 8:
Hello all, I haven’t posted to this blog in a lonnnng time! I sat down and decided to get it off of my bench and to use it as a practice piece for a wiring technique I wanted to try out. I have some Xuron Pro Photo Etch Scissors and used them to cut very thin strips of a Coke can. I also have a pair of short, needle nose tweezers that I use to form loops with the aluminum strips. The wire used is various gauges of copper wire from spools I bought on Amazon or at Hobby Lobby. Using photos from my walkaround I made drawings of how the wiring and brake lines are run and then followed those for placement of the copper wire as I worked. Because I had most of the structure complete before I started it made routing of the wiring far more complex than it should have been. I did most of the wiring before I started the brake lines. That was a mistake as the two interfere with each other. These photos are of the wiring before I start on the brake lines. I used super fine wire coiled around another piece of wire to create the plastic chafing protection seen in some places on the real trailer. If I had to do it again I would add the brake lines/wiring for the most part before adding the tow yoke to the bottom of the trailer. I would have to add the rigid brake lines first, then add the wiring, and finally add the e-brake cables. As it is I did most of the wiring and will add the rigid brake lines next.

Here are the tools and raw materials used:



And here are the results. Like I said this is almost complete. I will add a couple of small pieces once I have the brake lines done:









That’s it for this little installment. Next installment will cover adding the rigid brake lines.