A couple of questions.
I recently bought the old Academy PzIV H on clearance at my hobby store. I've heard its not a very good kit, but thought it might be an interesting conversion project. The kit doesn't come with any armor skirts - for either the turret or sides of the vehicle.

First of all, does anyone know how common this was on the H model? I get the impression that most came with both types of skirts, though the the side ones were often removed.

Secondly, how would I go about converting the kit to an G model - most of which don't seem to have the skirts? Would I have to leave off the AA machine gun? What other changes would have to be made? I wouldn't mind modeling it after an Africa Corps G model I saw in a book, with a panzer grey base coat and sand yellow painted over top of it.

Any expertise would be much appreciated.

First of all, you have one of the poorest PzKpf IVs made. It was a copy of the Tamiya kit, which was much better, but still very old (1971ish). The first PzKpf IVs to make an appearance in North Africa was the short barreled Ausf. D, but it was used for close support and not as the main attack force. The up-gunned version, the PzKpf IVF2, was also referred to as the "Mark IV Special" (Italeri's kit) and the last version used in Africa was the Ausf. IVH. Side skirts were common on vehicles used against the Russians and then on the Western Front. It was common to see them with side armor in various states of repair. Ausf G, H & Js were used without armor skirts in Italy.

Yeah, I heard it wasn't much of a kit, but it was cheap enough ($10) that I thought I would take a shot at some aftermarket parts for it, maybe even raid my old Tamiy PzIV D kit for some parts (like the cuppola) to "de-evolve" it into a G model. I'm pretty new to armor modeling - and really new to building anything other than out of the box. I figure this is a good, cheap subject to experiment on. Besides, it'll be an interesting challenge to try and turn a crappy kit (which it really is) into a nice model. :-)