Here is the second kit I have recently finished. It is of course the kit from Meng. The kit is of course well engineered and fits together perfectly. Perhaps bit more photoetch details could have been included  along with the large side armour plates.

You will need to add your own anti-slip coating on the upper surfaces, though having played with it with two of my recent projects – RG-31 and Merkava 2D, I am not that much afraid of it as I used to be.

Before I have finished it, I was questioning why would Hobby Boss want to release their rendition of this vehicle in such a strong competition from Meng. Well I could now say there are things that could be done in more elegant way than Meng had. There are places where simply Meng cut the detail too much for the sake of simplicity.

The machine gun cradles for examples are just too crude – essentially they are solidly molded with machine guns so that machine gun can only be positioned in one elevation – horizontally (and plus of course loss of detail…).

Second main area are tow cables and their eyes, which are again done in rather crude (I would almost say stupid) way, it is even hard to explain, you have to see it. I will definitely replace these with some proper metal and resin aftermarket pieces.

It seems that Meng is really in competition with Tamiya who will produce more dumbed-down kit…

See next part