Nice sets, depending on the price. Voyager, for example, usually makes you buy these in sub-sets, especially the tube to hold the cleaning rod.

Certainly, looks like a noble effort. However, it disturbs and saddens me that such an extensive update kit is required to correct a mainstream, latest generation kit, or is it? If it is, then why are we asked to pay in excess of $40 for plastic kits these days. I always wanted to build the RSO w/Pak 40, and I bought all possible upgrades for the old Italeri kit, including all 3(!) Aber PE sets. I never got to finish it, however, and was very excited when DML released their kit. Now, I am kind of glad I have not purchased it yet and I am not sure I ever will, even though the mainstream review of this kit was quite positive. Does it mean that no matter how good the base kit is, someone will always find something in it that needs to be corrected, or I am missing somethging here? Cheers, bob

Bob, I think there are several factors at play here: 1.) Even newly-released kits get it wrong: And those that do need corrections. It shouldn't happen, but it does. Kit makers spend a reasonable amount of time on a project, but they can't make it exhaustive, not for $40. 2.) Popular kits lend themselves to "gold plating": You can build most kits released today OOB without problems. There might be fit issues, and other defects associated with the task of bringing CAD drawings to market, but many AM upgrades now are for "rivet counters" like myself (said with pride). You don't HAVE to have a turned aluminum barrel or PE mud guards. 3.) There will always be details that could be better: The DML Sd.Kfz.7 series, for example, is very good. You could build most of these kits OOB. The "mesh" on the FlaK versions, though, is wrong: it was really slats, not wire mesh. But the technology for doing the slats in styrene isn't there, and PE versions are either too complicated or too expensive (see my review of one AM set here).