Month: July 2021

Revell Sd Kfz 7/1 in 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 9 Comments
I am slowly getting through my pile of kits and have had my eye on this one for a while. I recently made an old Esci AA gun on the back of an Opel Blitz, and this was another in my stash of Anti Aircraft vehicles. Revell make very nice model kits which are always excellent to build and this was no different.
This is an armoured halftrack with a quadruple 20mm gun on the back. You can model the gun in firing position with the sides of the halftrack lowered into a flatbed or leave them up in travel mode. I left my sides up as if the vehicle was on the move.

The kits is very nicely moulded and has good detail. The tracks are particularly nice and although the instructions say put them in warm water before attaching to the wheels, i didnt need to. They are flexible plastic and in one piece, which again makes a change from nasty rubber or vinyl, or fiddly link and length.
I did have to drill a few holes for some the external details and you do have to drill a few holes in the back of the halftrack too. The trailer at the back is a nice easy build and i added a few bits of stowage on the top. Be really careful with the gun barrels as they are very delicate, you can probably get metal replacements somewhere.
Its a fun kit to build and would look excellent in firing position with some crew firing it.

German Motorbikes Zvezda and Italeri 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 9 Comments

It is always good to have some super speedy reconnaissance vehicles with machine guns. Like having sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. Also good. Zvezda produce a great little motorbike and sidecar for a few dollars. The kit is very simple and only a few parts, will go together in minutes. Just remember to keep the riders separate for painting as it is too tricky to paint them once they are glued in position. This does mean that you have to leave the front part of the sidecar off so you can fit the passenger in once he is painted. This was the only piece that was tricky to do and i had to do some surgery to get the last piece to fit in. I also dumped the plastic base it came with and made my own from MDF as usual. Great kit and great value. I might buy some more!

The Italeri kit comes in a larger pack with two single bikes and two motorbikes with sidecars. You get extra figures to make different options, with helmets or caps, and an LMG or SMG in the sidecar. So that’s nice you can vary how you build your bikes. Kits are again very simple and take minutes to put together. The only thing is i had to use super glue as the plastic rejected all my usual plastic cement. I also tossed the supplied bases away and made my own. Each passenger and rider has a bum toggle that i removed so positioning was easier. That way you are not trying to shove the toggle into the hole in the seat. Just glue the dudes on. Again another good kit and nice to have options. Great value as you get four bikes in each box.

I painted them all German grey and the figures field grey. Added some dust, but kept the process simple. I actually have the other two bikes from the Italeri kit I finished a few years back, and I may have to redo them in the same way.