Cody, I enjoyed your review. Funny enough, I was working on an in-box review of this kit myself. I thought I would just add some comments that I had drafted to this comments section.
The box says the kit should represent an April to May 1943 production configuration. How close does Dragon come to fulfilling this statement?
An April 43 production vehicle should incorporate all of the following, at a minimum:
30mm Zusatzpanzer on the front hull and superstructure
Smoke candle dischargers on the turret
Notek headlight replaced with the covered headlights
Commanders copula with single piece hatch
7.5cm KwK40 L/48 main gun replacing the L/43 main gun
Turret and hull Type 1 schurzen installed
Dragon includes all of these items in the kit. Therefore, you can build a reasonably accurate April 43 production version. The kit also includes the L/43 barrel if you want to build a final version of this configuration since the switch over was made sometime in April 43.
A May 43 production vehicle should incorporate all of the following:
Incorporation of the Filzbalgfilter on the right rear fender
Moving the antenna mount to the left rear hull
Removal of the smoke candle dischargers from the turret
Dragon does not include the first two items in the kit. The smoke candle racks can simply not be installed and the hole filled in with putty. Therefore, a May production version is only accurate up to the date when the first two items were incorporated. After that, it would not be correct.
