Howdy Chaps.
Trumpeter 8.8cm Pak 43 Waffentrager.
This is one HECTIC kit...
690 plastic parts, 140 photo etch, metal gun barrel and brass barrel sleeve.
Mudguards are all metal, as well as the Gun Shield.
Waffentrager's (literally, weapons carriers), never made it in time to time to actually contribute to the war effort, although apparently one did fight in Berlin in the closing days of the war. This particular actually did exsist along with a couple of other prototypes but was destroyed after the war.
If I have it right, these were based on the E25 chassis.
Ok, so here I am at the mo...
If you have one of these, or intend getting one, theres one or two things you need to know.
Firstly, the Mudguards.
You can either leave the moulded plastic mudguards in place, or cut them off and replace them with the PE ones.
Quite honestly, Id leave the plastic ones on.
Once youve removed the plastic ones from the hull and spent the couple of hours bending and glueing the PE ones on, you come to the point where you have to join the hull to the chassis, and its at that point that you find out that because of the way that the PE is attached, they dont fit together... So you take them all off, join the hull and chassis together and start again...
Secondly, the tracks.... There are 104 links per side, (she's a big bugger) there is something amiss with the toe end of the track, in that the it appears a smidge, like microns.. too big. Its not a huge issue, but it makes an already sucky task even suckier....
anyhoo, more as we go along...