Okay, first of all, the ammo racks are all wrong. There should be four rounds of ammo across, not three, and there should be four racks deep. The kit provides nothing below the first. The ammo is WAY to big. I scratch built two more racks under the first, but there was no room for the fourth. I bought two sets of Verlinden 88mm ammo for the Flak 36/37 and added them to the racks. The practice rounds added some variety to the kit. Also the used cartridges add a nice touch in the basket.
Move the periscope blocks and stowage bins on the interior of the back of the turret to match with the picture drawn in the middle of the instructions. These drawings are more accurate than what the instructions say anyway, on all aspects of the model.
On the turret floor, scratch build your own gas can rack from strip styrene and add in aftermarket gas cans.
The tow cables were often just thrown on the back off the hull, over the engine covers, or was mounted from the front tow shackles to the rear tow shackles and draped over the hull, and the track changing cable was usually just stowed in the turret bustle. If you leave the track changing cable off, add in some brackets to match the ones pictured at the tank museum website. Glue a short strip of styrene to the hull, allow to dry, then bend over itself, leaving a gap where it is bent. These should be very small.
Under the floor boards of the turret should be two more boxes for ammo stowage. There are two main ribs that run from the front to the back going over the torsion bars, with several structural supports. These are what the battery boxes and the ammo bins sit on. Go tothis site for more information on these strakes.
tiger1.infoLooking down on the turret, the kit turret is symmetrical, but the actual turret is not. The left side of the turret should be bowed out by about a millimeter and a half to accomodate the gunner.
Someone told me verlinden makes the ammo stowage bags for the machine guns. I should have gotten some as the ones in the kit are oversize and there should be many more than the kit provides. The image in the middle of your instruction should give clues as to placement.
The gyroscope is placed to far aft. Remove the positioning mold and move it more towards the front corner.
Be very careful with the placement of the transmission, as it will interfere with the glacis plate fit if it is not pushed down far enough.
The rack for extra track links was a field modification, so use your own judgement on it.
Do not follow the color instructions that come with the kit. Check out the pictures here for more realistic colors, although I understand they are not completely perfect, but they are pretty close. Look under the journal.
http://www.tiger-tank.com/ I wish I had found this site before I did the interior. It's the best site I have found for interior shots.
You might want to add some wires to the fuse box. Make sure and run a wire from the fuse box to the extractor fan.
Something I thought about doing was to modify the "breadbox" beside the driver to open the door on it and show more ammo. Lastly, keep in mind soldiers were never satisfied with what the book says they got. They always picked stuff up along the way. I added in a few potato mashers, a couple of Mausers for the driver and gunner, with accompanying magazine pouches, and a "liberated" Thompson. I modelled a Tiger from sPzrAbt 501 on the eastern front in the winter of 43, so I also added whitewash, but not Zimmerit.
I hope I helped a little.
Rob
? Yep, I'm trying to chicken out of attempting to replicate zimmerit on a reasonably expensive ( $Oz) kit.
