Introduction

The Israeli Defence Force Droid is one of those pieces of kit that most of us easily recognise, but we don’t know exactly what it does. The general consensus is that it blocks radio signals and so makes the use of IED’s by terrorists and enemy forces harder to do and so improving the survivability of the asset it is mounted on. Why is it called a droid? I really don’t know, but it does look like something from a Star Wars film.

Contents

This product is packaged in the usual end opening card box that Legend Productions so often use, inside of the carton are two Ziploc plastic bags that contain the kit parts and a printed sheet of instructions. The parts break down as follows;
18 resin parts
A photo etched fret
A length of single core sheathed cable
A length of brass wire

Review

A good look over the parts that make up this product does not indicate any production issues to me. The resin parts are free of moulding defects such as air bubbles and voids that I can detect and the photo etched parts are of a reasonable thickness and so should be easy to work with. I will say at this point that I think Legend Productions are restricting themselves as regards the vehicles this product is suitable for, I am sure I have seen it used much more widely that on just the Merkava 2D and Nagmachon mentioned.

The resin parts have very nicely moulded detail present. The two larger mouldings in this product will likely be the ones that require the most care, the pour plugs are quite large and so removal and clean up will have do be done precisely and carefully to avoid damaging the detail or failing to make the most of that detail. The assembly of the droid could be considered a bit like layers of a cake and so should not be too difficult if the parts are cleaned up properly.

The detail presented here by Legend Productions is very high, and checked against online images of the droid very accurate. It is built up in such a way as to make following the process as easy as possible, but the wire needs to be cut and bent into loops, this would be best managed via the inclusion of a former or at the very least a note to identify the length the wire should be. It is in areas such as this that Legend Productions are on the weak side. The product is very good, but is let down by the how to use it. As a sweetener I will say that I like the inclusion of the power cables for the model and these do lift its looks a lot, I also like that the positioning of the droid on the two models identified is clearly shown.

Conclusion

This is an excellent additional piece for Israeli vehicles and should add anything from a talking point to the general eye candy that some additions manage. While I do not know about its operation or exactly how it works, it is a very good match for online reference images. The product is let down a little by the instructions which could do with being better explained, I am sure this will still attract the attention of the Israeli vehicle modeller.