1/35 Leopard 2A4 *Gefechtsbereit*

[wbill76]

Making good progress on this one Tobi, lots of nice added detail dressing it up.

[Deleted]

great detailing very nice indeed

[Tobi]

The mantlet is one of the kit parts that sports very prominent sink marks. If I remember well the HobbyBoss kit suffered from the same problem, so you really can't count that as a drawback when comparing the two. I used putty to fill and level things out and also opened and enlarged the holes for the MG and the telescopic sight.



The gun is divided in two halves, which is not surprisingly in a kit of that price category, though it seems a little bit out-dated. The overall look and dimensions seem ok, but no match for a turned barrel.



The barrel from RB is really nice, but originally not meant for this kit, so a little adaption work is needed. The end of the kit barrel was cut off and a 5mm metal rod inserted. In this went the resin part from RB, which also had to be sawn off and drilled out.

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[Tobi]

Main gun part #2:

The resin fume extractor sadly had an air bubble in it. At first I only filled it, but was not happy. When looking on close ups of this part on the original machine I noticed some kind of relief-like surface.

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I tried to replicate it by masking the part diagonally with thin stripes and then painting surfacer over it. After removing the tape the edges were smoothed with some acetone. Then I masked it again vertically to the first layer and repeated the procedure.



You can build the gun of the kit in an early and a late version, and the same is possible with the RB barrel. The fifth batch vehicles have been delivered with the early style. From 1994 on the vehicles where retrofitted with a collimator device on the end. The collimator, or Feldjustierspiegel, isn't fully correct from RB. The eye-piece should feature a chamfer when looking on it from above and when joining the parts together it has to be angled slightly upwards.

[paulh.]

seriously impressive stuff going on here tobi.
Lovin' it!

[Deleted]

This is fun to watch you putting all these details in!

[Tobi]

Thank you Bruce!

That is the fun with Revell kits. You can bring them to life with some extra work and make them very individual.

Cheers,
Tobi

[deafpanzer]

HUGE improvement on the main gun! It was worth the extra work...

[Leon]

Agree with Andy on the gun Tobi.Fine job fella.

[wbill76]

Beautiful work on the gun, very nice!

[Tobi]

My reply function would let me down again after working for a mere week. I hope I can sort it out (again), or any updates during my summer holiday are at risk. It will be four weeks and it starts tomorrow!

In the meantime let's have a look on the turret rear. The small box (whatever function it has) is missing the reinforcement stripes on the sides. Revell totally left these out, I added them from stretched sprue.



The canvas cover was cut out, because I found it didn't look good. I'm going to display the basket open and fill it with a camouflage net made from gauze. The antenna bases were also cut and only the plates glued and puttied. The fit was not so convincing and the area here should be smooth when compared to pictures of the real thing. I want to use turned antennas from Schatton, just havn't decided yet which ones to use. Only the bases or the complete antennas? I'm tending to the bases only, but maybe I will just keep them interchangeable.



One can see that I already drilled a good amount of holes for handles from brass replacements. Inside the turret basket a side wall had to be added, too. First I cut a master from cardboard for the ease of adjustment, then used it as template on a sheet of styrene.

[Tobi]

The underside of the already mentioned small box is flat in the kit. On photographs I noticed "something" must be there. I couldn't find the answer, but looking on the same part from HobbyBoss this showed two hinges and a line, so I simply replicated this, better that than nothing.

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Inside the basket some details in the upper area were added according to photographs, just enough to give it a busy appearance. The camouflage net that will be put there in the end will make up for the rest.

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The cable reel is made from Eduard photoetch and really looks sweet, also the small fasteners with the wingnuts. These were all soldered together for greater strength. I'm going to leave the reel empty. Normally this would be used to carry a field wire to establish a secured radio connection between tanks. The corresponding socket is on the left turret rear. I reckon this makes only sense when the tank is operating from a fortified position.



One can also see on the left of this shot that I tackled the teardrop shaped boltheads described by Mike in his review. This was done simply with a file. If that is not sufficient for you, then there is always the option left of making some replacements with a Punch & Die. 

[Leon]

Tobi,your making great progress.Nice work on the stowage basket.

[deafpanzer]

Nice PE work on the cable reels!

[Tobi]

Thanx guys, your comments are the greatest reward.

Finally I've even managed to complete assembly of the tracks. The ones from AFV-Club are almost just built up like the real ones, which makes the amount of work huge, but the result is also ultra realistic.

I was only able to work for two hours or so per day on them, while sitting in the sun. Sweat work, took me four days with interruptions for cruising in my MX-5 and partying. Summer is here, finally...

Next week I'll take a break from holiday and attend a business meeting at KMW in Munich. Perhaps I will be lucky and see one of the overhauled A4's for Hellenic Army. Don't know if already all of them have been delivered. If not I will try and have a close peek, unfortunately no pictures!

Cheers,
Tobi

[danb.]

Great work Tobi the PE work is immense on this build looking forward to seeing these tracks

Dan B

[Tobi]

A little update for Dan (and all the others) about the tracks. I finally finished them, including paintjob, and they were a pain in the @$$!

The tracks look fantastic, but are also incredible fragile, plus I must have caught a bad batch, because so many end connectors already broke on the sprue. Also those that were intact were later prone to damage, every time in the same place. They say the track is workable, but once mounted I'm going to glue everything in place to prevent further damage. I already have to recover several broken connectors and I am running out of spares. Luckily my suspension doesn't work anyway.

The Revell track which can be also seen in the picture has flash, ejector pin marks and soft details, compared to the AFV one. The teeth are also bigger. It displays the correct number of 82 links, however, to achieve the same track-length with the AFV track I needed 83 links per side. One will hardly note this in the end...
Thus I needed all of the links on the sprues, but that was mainly because I managed to loose two or three of them in the sink during cleaning!



Comparing the spare track links with the replacement track I felt I should replace these as well, so the fixation on the bow plate had to be scratched in the aftermath, too.



Please note that the end connectors are mounted false in all the pictures. The bolt head should face to the outside where the rubber pads are. I noted this mistake right after taking the pictures and when comparing them to my references. It makes perfectly sense btw when you bring to your mind how the track is running around the sprocket wheel. So back to the bench for another couple of minutes and changing the orientation of 332 end connectors! The instructions from AFV club are simply wrong, only the orientation of the middle connector is correct. Don't worry, my crazy giggle has gone away after two more hours and I feel now much better again.

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[danb.]

Nice work on the tracks buddy a area a personally hate when building AFV s cant wait for the pictures of the whole tank all these little pics are just a tease lol keep up the hard work

Dan B

[Tobi]

Jul 26, 2013 1:43:57 GMT -5 danb. said:

Nice work on the tracks buddy a area a personally hate when building AFV s cant wait for the pictures of the whole tank all these little pics are just a tease lol keep up the hard work

Dan B

You're not alone. I enjoy Friuls the most. Most of them are easy to assemble and very durable once assembled. Vinyls are an absolutely no-go for me...

Cheers,
Tobi

[Leon]

Tracks are looking really good Tobi.Keep up the good work.

[Tobi]

Apart from the track interlude for Dan let's head back to the turret.

On the front sides of the turret there is a mould line. This was scraped off with a sharp scalpel blade.

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The weld beads on the turret sides have been reworked the same way as on the hull, as they are only depicted as smooth lines without any texture in the kit. One can see a untreated line next to the shut welded ammuntion hatch for comparison. This feature is correct for a fifth batch vehicle, in that the ammunition hatch was only discarded during the manufacture of this batch (towards the end). So the later turrets already came without a cut-out, but it could have been found still on the earlier production vehicles of the fifth batch.
There should be a second weld bead close to the one near the ammunition hatch and I later added this from stretched sprue. If I had to make a guess I would say this is because of the "Bereitschaftsmunition" which is stored behind the loader in the turret rear. There has to be a massive bulkhead in there, as ammunition will blast the turret top in case of an explosion for safety reasons. Also to be seen in the picture are the flag holders next to the commander's hatch, both have been drilled out.

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When mating the side parts with the turret, I glued lengths of stretched sprue in the joins to cover up small gaps and make some more weld beads.

[Tobi]

The handrails for the turret sides are very delicate to remove from the sprue, because they sit on huuuge gatings. If I remember well I even did this job with a mini saw for resin parts, instead of using a more common side cutter!

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Here's a little trick: use a slighltly thicker glue and apply it from the inside. No glue marks to be seen, sometimes this method comes very handy.

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The smoke dischargers were refined with the parts from Eduard. Instead of using super glue for attaching these I took Microscale Kristal Klear. To me it appears that this is nothing more than some kind of white glue, however it has good filling qualities and the join remains a little more flexible. Should use this more often for PE parts, with super glue these sometimes can come of again rather quickly...
In the lower row three of the dischargers normally are set to the outside in a fan pattern, on the kit parts this is only true for the last two. However, the angle for the second one is that small on the real machine, it will be not too notable on the finished model, I think.

[Leon]

Making excellent progress Tobi.Nice job on the weld beads.

[wbill76]

Moving right along with this one Tobi! It's too bad that the workable tracks came out so fragile, could be a combination of bad mix on the styrene and poor design of the tracks themselves...I've seen styrene workable tracks that were pretty tough and others that would fall apart if you just looked at them the wrong way.

[Tobi]

Guys, I feel the urge to thank you for your feedback and your nice comments. I really enjoy being here, together with such a great bunch of modellers around. Please forgive me if I don't manage to have a look on every single post in the forum and only commenting even fewer. If I try in doing so I won't get to modelling anymore!
...

Besides of his six periscopes, the TC has an independent, stabilized, 360° rotating PERI R17 for battlefield observation. It has a magnification of 4x/12x and can be attached to the gunners sight, so the commander can see what the gunner is seeing, including thermal images. The commander can also slave the turret to his line of sight in an override mode, for directing his gunner to the target.

I didn't do much on the PERI, just removed the moulded on brush guards and replaced them with new ones from stretched sprue.

[Tobi]

The gunner has three possibilities for observation. A 12 o'clock periscope in the turret top, a telescopic sight in the mantlet (TZF Turmzielfernrohr FERO Z18) and the main sight (HZF Hauptzielfernrohr EMES 15) with range finder, right from the gun. The TZF is a kind of backup, but also used to determine if the gun is clear when in hull down position.

For the gunner's periscope there was no suitable part in the Eduard set (actually A5/A6 don't have it anymore!), so I settled again on lead wire like on the drivers hatch to make a frame, but only after puttying and sanding some sink marks
The EMES 15 can be modelled either open or closed, but I found why not both? First the cover was cut in two pieces and stretched sprue inserted. Next I drilled open the holes in the turret. The hatches are then inserted and the stretched sprue heated from the inside with a cigarette lighter (at least that was the plan and at first it went fine).

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Oops, too much heat applied when trying to install cover number two... worked so well with the first one!

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Normally this would cry for a new turret, but I had already invested too much time. Luckily the pictures taken before the throwback (No. #2) would enable me to fix it and restore the details.

[Tobi]

Here is the solution, which was my original plan, but was discarded due to my never-ending laziness. Making a bushing from brass pipe has two advantages. The guidance length for the hatch is larger so it won't twist so easily on rotation, and you reach it better with the lighter. Again I took the rough road, even when knowing better.



And here we have it. A working cover for the EMES 15. The more narrow and higher flap is for the daylight channel/range finder, the other for the thermal image optic. After cutting the cover in two I had to add a little stretched sprue to compensate a gap, you can see the white line of putty and the sanding marks on the narrow flap. Now it's a tight fit.

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[Leon]

Nice work on the covers Tobi.A nice little extra detail.

[Tobi]

Almost nearing the end! From bottom to top, now only the turret roof is left.

The skate ring for the MG on the loader's hatch is a little thick, but there is not much you can do about it. Heavier weighed that some of the pins were not fully moulded, same was true for the hatch itself. I drilled the faulty pins out and inserted new ones made from stretched sprue, the ultimate weapon in this build...



Revell tried to replicate the locking mechanism on the loader's hatch, but they got it completely wrong. It should be exactly the other way round, the handle is hinged in the center of the hatch!



I made a new handle, new springs from copper wire, and a retainer eye behind the hatch to hold it open. For the hatch of the commander there are two pins located behind the cuppola, where it will rest on when it's opened. These were lacking a tiny little step and I made it with a file. The lifting eyes behind the hatches are moulded with a solid base and are glued into creases. However, I found it better to cut them out in the middle (so they become a U-shaped) and fill the holes with putty. Also some mesh screens were added in the openings of the air intake for the hydraulic power system. Later I found a photo on my harddisk that I took three years ago at Eurosatory, showing the mesh should be in "x", not "+" style, so I corrected this also.

[Tobi]

Jul 29, 2013 14:52:49 GMT -5 @dickyf said:

More spellbinding blogging here Tobi - nice work on the sight covers...I must admit I'd have done it the opposite way round....metal pins with styrene bushing for me...dunno why but there yer go!

I assume from the sound of your job you have pretty good access to these vehicles?

Unfortunately not, I'm in the truck business, engineering department, designing vehicles mostly for German, Swiss, French and Italian Army. Occasionally I get to work with KMW in partnership projects. I was pretty involved in GFF4, if that tells you anything.

When I was a child my dad was the CO of a maintenance training unit, instructing soldiers how to service the Leopard 2 among other. They had one(!) single tank in the unit for that purpose, as a live example. It was in yellow olive, right in the mid-eighties and I climbed a lot on it after school!

One day on a demonstration they would roll with it over a scrap car and I was in the commander's seat during that!!! Tell you what, you don't notice anything of a car in your way...

Cheers,
Tobi