Introduction

Hungarian armour gained more and more attention amongst modellers, thanks to the kits that have being released recently. However, as with any plastic kit there are errors and omissions that happen due to limitations of styrene technologies or laziness of designers. SBS model comes to the rescue, this small company is located in Hungary and they have both access to surviving examples of Hungarian vehicles as well as technical documentation in the Hungarian language. After the excellent series of Zrinyi upgrades they released and which is now followed with a brand new product – 20mm gun barrel for Toldi I tank (Hobbyboss kit). The item (cat no 35011) is just being released. I got my copy at the Moson show, during the weekend. Let’s have a closer look on the offer.

Review

The barrel is supplied in a small plastic bag with a cardboard backer with item name and number printed on it. The packaging is simple, but what else do you expect from a small barrel? The item itself is very impressive. The original gun was based on an Austrian anti-tank rifle Soloturn S18/1000 and was produced not only in Austria, but also Hungary as the 36M nehézpuska (heavy gun 36M). The distinctive feature of 36M 20mm gun was the complex shaped muzzle brake and I must admit that SBS model did their job flawlessly on that part. Simply examine the images provided! Of course, the tip of the barrel is bored and modeller would get authentic replication of that weapon in 1/35th scale. When installing that on your model – 1.5mm of the barrel should go inside the mantlet.

What else is important? This weapon was not only used on Toldi I tank, but also on ADGZ armoured car (I wish they released that barrel a year ago when I was working on my model), TKS tankette (Poland) and Csaba armoured car. Even though Csaba is only available as full resin kit up to date it definitely would benefit from such upgrade as accurate turned metal barrel.