The Dragon Jagdpanther G1 is now on tracks.
As expected, connecting the upper and lower hull was harrowing. The front and left side fit fine. The rear is a fraction off but some tape brought the seam together. At this point in the gluing process, the right rear upper hull flares out about 2mm. Using a whole lot of glue and tape, starting at the front, I slowly closed the left side seam. Once the tape is removed, the seam will continue to experience a lot of burst stress. Will the glue hold? No clue.
About 12 hours after joining the hull halves, I built up and installed the tracks. This goes rather quickly with Magic Tracks. There are 16 special track links, 8 for each sprocket. Nine or 10 per sprocket would produce a better result but I made 8 work. Instructions call for 81 Magic Tracks and 8 special links per run. My model uses 80 Magic Tracks per run. The exact distribution, starting on the sprocket, going backward, around the idler, and forward, back to the sprocket, is 5 special links, 80 Magic Tracks, and 3 special links. The join point is not glued.
While installing the tracks I made another rookie mistake. Earlier in the day, after joining the hull halves, I built up all 16 special tracks. That way, they would be dry when fitting the tracks much later.
Unfortunately, I did not glue together the 8 center line wheels at the same time. I only remembered to do this after assembling both track runs. As a result, some glue ended up in the axle hole of each center line wheel. There is now a very real danger that when I pull the suspension apart for painting, some of those wheels will stick. This could lead to broken axles, broken road wheel arms, broken tracks, and broken detail bits.
As primary references, I am using Panther Tank: The Quest for Combat Supremacy, and The Combat History of Schwere Panzerjager Abteilung 654: In Action in the East and West with the Ferdinand and the Jagdpanther. My goal is to build two ‘idealized’ 654 Jagdpanthers. The Dragon G1 will represent a vehicle from the first batch of 8. The Meng G2 will represent a replacement machine received much later in the year.