I was interested in venturing out into the small scale world and was wondering if the ACE BMP-1 kits are any good. Any information would be helpful.

TIA,
Chris "toadman" Hughes

I bought the BMP-KSH command vehicle. It was a limited run kit that was characterized by thick sprue attachment points, crude molding and really terrible looking tracks. I would not recommend the kit to anyone.

Visit www.ontheway.us for reviews of Ace kits.

Thanks for the link Rob! It looks like the BMP-1 received a good review.

Chris

The kits are quite crude when compared to the likes of Revell, Hasegawa etc but they are generally accurate in size and shape. Some of the smaller details are not always clearly defined and the parts do sometimes need a lot attention when cleaning them up, but with some extra effort they can build into quite good models. The range also has some interesting vehicles that just aren't available from the more mainstream manufacturers.

The BMP-1 is one of the very early releases and ACE has improved their moulding abilities since. I believe the BMP-1 was reissued with some minor improvements (open hatches for example). Some of the kits also include photoetched parts. Here's a build up of the BMP-2D kit which has many parts hull in common with the BMP-1 kit. More photos are here:

http://www.btinternet.com/~alex.clark2/smallscale/BMP2D/index.htm



HTH