Having looked at the standard of competition I hardly dare enter this, but it's such a good idea that I wanted to support it!

This is Italeri's 1/35 Panzer IV Ausf H, the commander comes from Academy. Not a build I enjoyed, although I'm moderately pleased with the outcome. The instructions were a pain in the a e since the sprues weren't numbered I had to refer to the instructions for the build, then to another part of the instructions for a diagram of the sprue to find the piece I wanted. There were significant fit issues with the shuerzen, especially around the turret. Furthermore, it seemed I managed to break off a different piece of detail every time I handled the model to either add more pieces or paint it

Still, there are some happy memories associated with this kit; I built it while watching the Ashes and now there is space in the stash for some DML kits

Nice looking tank you have there.
Also the camo looks nice but a bit strange, I have never seen it.

Did you use the italerie tracks??

Rotbrun on dunkelgelb wasn't that unusual - there are plenty of examples of it on tanks around 1943-44

I actually nicked the tracks from Tamiya's Panzer IV Wirlbird as the Italeri ones were too tight - another moan about this kit! :-)

I think it looks gr8 especially the way you have done the camo scheme and how real the decals look
I hope to be able to build something this good one day

John

Hi Sean,
Nice job, good painting and positioning. The only flaw is with your unit research. I do not believe the 20th Panzergrenadiere Division had a 6th Panzer Company.

I like it otherwise.

Chris

Sean,

Very nice, good looking camo and dust effect along the bottom of the skirts.
Some pointers for future projects,
The left hand tracks are the wrong way round,
The driver and co-driver hatches have the signal ports..
These where ommited from the late Ausf F2. But that's not your fault, .

Nice figure aswel.

Cheers
Henk

Thanks Henk. Getting the tracks the wrong way round is a "D'OH!" moment #:-)

What do you mean by the signal ports? I'm not overly familiar with the different Panzer IV variants, and this was an OOB build, so could you expand on this for me? Ta

Thanks Chris - I have no reason yo doubt what you say - I just followed the scheme for the decals that was outlined in the kit's instructions!

The signal ports are those round 'lids' in the middle of the driver and co-driver hatches. They would presumably be used to fire flares through. Although why the driver would fire flares is not clear to me either... I guess that they would have been used for ventilation mostly, but at any rate, from the late Ausf. F2 / G onwards the hatches did no longer have them. I don't know this kit, but I suppose that they didn't do their homework... Still a good looking model.

Cheers
Henk

Nice looking Panzer Sean. I like the job you did with the dusting. That's something I'm trying to master now but always seem to go too far.

You say the sprues weren't numbered?! I know Italeri's sprues are numbered kind of haphazardly, but I've never seen that before! That must have been a real pain!