Last August I had the opportunity to see an M1296 Stryker Dragoon “live” at the:





at the “Camp Kasserine” in Grafenwöhr.
Knowing that Panda Hobby already announced the kit I took several photos.



Since then I had been waiting for the kit.
So, it arrived last Monday at my place.



As we had a holyday in Germany last Wednesday I immediately started working on it.

When I opened the carton I was a little unpleasantly surprised, for some reasons:
- there were minor flash on a lot of parts (This shouldn’t happen on a new mold!);
- there are some pin marks at visible parts;
- the round panel attachment bosses are really soft molded (Okay, I am used to Trumpeter Strykers, so maybe I am biased at this point.).

I followed the assembly instructions by starting with the four gearbox differentials.
In this first step you could glue the four parts E45 in place, and due to my experience you should. Even as the mount of it is not satisfactorily resolved. Because the outer diameter of part E45 corresponds in no way with its opposite at the lower hull. In the end I used a 5mm drill to guide E45 at place.





Right at the next step, there is a mistake in the instruction: Part D69 and the “left” part E16 have to change places!



The location of the part C20 is woolly, so I used part E34 to fix it to the right place.



The rest of step 1 and step 2 is nice to work. Everything fits properly and some parts even without glueing, for example parts E52 and the nicely rebuild large shock absorbers E43 and E42. They are a really an improvement, compared to the Trumpeter parts.
The parts of the driver enhancement kit, E44 will be glued to its place, after painting.
Also, I haven’t glued B7, the lower front plate to place, because of the mentioned problems with the panel attachment bosses. I will decide later how solve this.





To be continued!

Peter

This is looking Kool! I'll definitely keep an eye on this build.

I was wrong, I made a mistake!!!!!!

First of all is here a photo of the item, on which I made the mistake. It shows the lower front plate of the Panda kit.



During my research on the round attachment bosses on that plate, I discovered that Panda Hobby molded the bosses in a correct way.
They even tried to reproduce small tie down loops on some of the bosses at the upper hull.

My problem was that I believed that all of the attachment bosses would look the same: a screw, a big disk and on top a small disk, sometimes an additional tie down loop. As I mentioned before this was wrong!

So, as you can see on the next photo, there are different possibilities on even one vehicle.



The following two photos show, that the lower front plate looks exactly like Panda reproduces it on the kit which means, only a big disk and a screw at the upper two rows and a screw with a very small disk at the lower two rows. At the plate belonging to the driver enhancement kit it seems that there are screws with the “normal” small disk.






So again: mea culpa!!!
This part of the kit is just fine.


Peter

Not much for this week:

I worked on the rear side of the vehicle. I will leave the instruction behind and assemble upper and lower hull as well as the rear side, next.
Hopefully it will be easier to handle the thing in whole.

At part D77 I replaced the three discs by new ones from a Voyager Model set, which is called “fastening bolts for Stryker”. Also from this set, are the two tie down loops, at the upper left and right corner of the rear section. Al these original parts are really wooly and had to be replaced, at least in my opinion.



Peter

Dear modeling fellows,

Haven’t had much time during the last two weeks, so this is just a little update.

As announced, I assembled the upper and lower hull, plus the rear side. This worked out very well. The three parts fitted together real smoothly and there was no need for any rework.





Then I decided to complete the tires, but there I experienced an unpleasant surprise.
As you can see on the following photo, there is a “cross” of material over one side of the tires. It was hard to get rid of and it took me some time to do so.



After some tedious attempts I successfully used nail scissors, as you can see on the following photo.
From left to right it shows the original tire, then the tire without the “cross” and after all, the finished one.




So far, for this time.


Peter

Dear modeling fellows!

Again, I want to share the progress on the Panda Hobby Dragoon.
Right now the chassis is ready for painting. The missing parts are all either built or / and will be added after painting.
Next step will be the assembling of the turret.









I will use this state of the modeling process to draw a little interim conclusion of this kit:
Basically every part of the kit needed some care!
There is small flash on a lot of parts, which I found unusual for a new kit. But what really slowed me down, were these “tongue like” parts on some of the ejection points. They are hard to sand and off course always at the wrong place.
The tires are the worst I have ever seen and I still don’t understand why this company makes such an unnecessary move, building stiff material crosswise over the tires.
Some parts are overdetailed and because of the tiny details, construction was a bit fiddly, other parts miss the necessary details.
All in all, these aspects made the building more challenging than I expected.
Off course in the end it will hopefully look like a Stryker Dragoon and end up as a nice looking model.


Peter

Thanks Peter for sharing your experience with this kit.
Keep on the good work!
Olivier

Merci beaucoup Olivier!

It is always great to hear some encouraging words.


Peter

I agree 100%

Worst cleanup of ejector marks and pin things I’ve ever had. Just ridiculous. Same for dumb tires, but they clean up ok.

Im hoping it looks better painted, but seems kind of “chunky” next to the trumpeter strykers...

Just finished one. I agree, the cleanup of parts was the worst part, but I think all in all, once painted (still working on weathering), it does turn out reasonably well.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts as you build the turret.

Thanks to both of you for following me through this project.

We all seem to make similar experiences with this kit.

And, Thomas, looking at the turret sprues, your remark sounds like a warning…….. !?!!!!


Peter

That's why I'm waiting for someone else to release one...

Dear modeling fellows!

Now the turret!!!

First of all, I’m now pretty sure that Thomas tried to warn me!


After overlooking the user manual, I decided once more not to follow it - the reason, part “E1”.



According to the user manual, over 90 pieces of “E1” should be cut off from the sprues and glued to the turret. I tried, failed, reflected and came up with an alternative solution.

I drilled 0,7mm (0,0275) holes at all the positions where the part “E1” was supposed to be. Then I cut a 0,64mm (0,025 inch) rod into 3mm (0,1181 inch) pieces. These pieces were glued into the drilled holes. To make sure they’re all about the same height, at the outside of the turret, I used a piece of a 0,75mm (0,030inch) thick plate, as a template.
I am pretty glad that Germany had a holiday last Thursday, so I was able to carry out all this work during these days.









As you can see on the photos, I also glued the rear wall “B26” to the lower part of the turret, hopping it will be easier to connect the upper and the lower turret parts, then.

@ Richard
Sounds like a good idea right now!


Peter

What happened in the meantime?

After making a hedgehog out of the turret, I was confronted with the anti slip coat. The anti slip coat is quite smooth on the main vehicle, while on the turret it’s different. The anti slip coat there is really rough. So I had to decide how to display this on the kit.

Finally I tried something new (at least for me). I build this prominent anti slip coat out of sand. Actually I ordered special aquarium sand of very small size (0,1 – 0,3 mm /0.00393 – 0.01178 inch grain size).
Well,I am now the owner of 25kg!!!! (55 pounds) small grain aquarium sand.


After making some tests I masked the turret, painted it with the later color and sprinkled the sand with my fingers on place. After approximately a minute later I removed the masking and let the paint dry over night. Then I carefully painted highly dilute clear gloss over the sanded areas and also let it dry once more.
Only then I drilled the remaining holes into the sanded areas and completed the hedgehog.

Meanwhile, I built part of the turret inside, to be able to glue the upper and lower part together for easier painting.

Finally I glued the turret together, and it fits really well.








Peter

Peter, nice work. Great work around for all those bolt heads (or whatever part E1 is). Your solution is brilliant!

Hi Thomas,

thanks a lot!

I am not 100% sure what these pins are. I guess they are fixing points for additional armor plates. In this function they would serve as spacer between the additional plates and the turret structure. But as mentioned, I’m not 100% sure.



Peter

Not armor plates, Slat armor.

Servus Hermann,

very interesting!

May I ask where you got this information from?


Peter

One area I had problems with was the PE for the 7.62 feed chute. I ended up buying the flexible chute from Live Resin to replace the mangled PE.

I am not an expert on this vehicle but the "pins" on the picture I believe are mounting points that have a plastic cap or something similar covering the bolt hole. You can see it in the center of each mounting lug.

I asked the soldiers at last years Grafenwöhr Volksfest.

Servus Hermann,

thank you for your answer.

It is always interesting to get to know where the source of important information dwells.

Peter

Anti slip coat!!!!


As mentioned before, the anti slip coat on the turret and the anti slip coat on the main vehicle is of a different kind. In the post above I have described how I had made the rough anti slip coat on the turret.





In this post I will concentrate on the anti slip coat of the main vehicle.
To create this smooth looking anti slip coat I tried out different things:
I took the sand, which I had used for the turret and grinded it down to smaller size - didn’t really work.
I thought about abrasive paper of small grain size - too complicated to apply on the vehicle’s surface.
I made some attempts with putty and a hard bristle brush - looked awful.

In the end I experimented with just paint. I guess every one of us knows that paint, which is sprayed with too much air pressure, will dry before hitting the surface of the model. The result is a rough looking surface, feared by most modelers…. especially car model builders.
I wanted to use this “mistake” as an advantage.

I made some samples and sprayed them all with Revell Aqua Color acrylic paint no. 361, olive green. After letting the color dry on different samples, I masked them with tape and sprayed the very same color with diverse air pressure and distance.

The samples showed below were made with nearly 4 bar air pressure and at a distance of 30cm (1 foot).



The result looked satisfying and I decided to use this technique on the model.

After spraying and giving the paint some time to dry, I started the masking process.
This took me more time than I had expected. Every single fastening bolt had to be masked with masking liquid. Also every vertical surface had to be masked, plus some other parts, which, for some reasons, are not to be covered with anti slip coat.
The masking process took me 3 hours.





After spraying with high pressure, followed by unmasking, I wasn’t really happy with the result.
The difference between the surfaces that were covered and the surfaces with “anti slip coat” is hard to recognize. A possible reason could be that the whole vehicle is far more diverse than the samples I used for testing.







Also the fact that my old compressor gone broke and I’m now using a new different one, could have had some influence on the result? Actually, I don’t know.
And above all, the time consuming masking process is a great disadvantage of this technique.

I’ll continue trying - but not on this model. I still have the ambition to build an authentic looking anti slip coat for Stryker- and other military vehicles.


Peter

Hi Peter,nice work so far! If it isn’t to late you could try pumice powder for your anti slip. It comes in various grades,fine or medium works for me.

Ivan

For a really nice scale effect, you could try the Rustoleum textured paint method. It is easy and comes out looking great.