Still tinkering away with my Leopard Frankentank models.This one is a conversion from an Italeri 1A4 into the Danish 1A5 type.Plenty to change and add to make a Danish version.Luckily i have the old Accurate Armour( Dan scale) Danish conversion.I also have a few oddments in my spares like the Emes sight and a UN leopard set so at least i can make another couple.I altered the commanders periscopes as Italeri give you 6 instead of the 7 on the tank.I made some new scopes from plastic beam filed to shape.Today ive been blanking off the range finders and need to refine them with some filling and sanding and add the weld beads from Epoxy putty to match pictures.The EMES sight wasnt too bad to do.Gingerly cut a square in the turret top to add the shelf for the sight to sit on.Its passable at a distance and added a bead of Greenstuff putty around it to depict the weldbead around the bottom of the sight
Hehe totally.Leopards always have been number 1 on my list closely followed by M60 series,Abrams,Chieftain,Cents,Just wish there were top notch early Abrams kits.Ive got the Panda hobby M1 and Ipm1 but heard horror stories about them.Your builds really have me interested in Bundeswehr tanks from 1960s onwards.
I do tend to get wrapped around my own Bundeswehr axle I must admit. I should really concentrate on the other MBTs of the time; I like to think I achieved that albeit fleetingly with my US M48A2 - an important tank but outside of Vietnam livery, not often seen at the shows. I also hope to do an M60, but the plain vanilla version of the early 60s, not the A1. The Dragon kit, I believe the only one in 1/35, has disappeared off the face of the earth, but I have a cunning plan.
I don’t think the Panda Abrams is anything to worry about - I think it’s a pretty good kit. I started it some while ago, and there it languishes, on the shelf of no hope but I can’t remember what stalled me. Probably a tangent involving a Leopard(!) My first Bundeswehr build - if you ignore the ancient Tamiya Leo I tackled when in barracks (not a success) - back in the mid 70s, was the excellent Italeri M47. I did it some years ago, and can’t quite remember when. I passed it on to my local model shop fairly recently but have no idea what he did with it. There’s a few errors in the uniforms but I always like the juxtaposition of early Bundeswehr uniforms, so redolent of the Wehrmacht, with more modern kit; any way, here it is:
I converted one 25+ years ago by putting an Academy M48A5 turret onto an Esci M60A1 hull, reshaping the back of the turret with epoxy putty and making a bunch of detail changes to turret and hull, of course.
Really interesting read Brian.If you are desperate to make an M60 i have a DEF models conversion i will never get around to making.Even has a set of the earlier T79 tracks in it.I believe the conversion is for the Esci or Academy kits.
Exactly what i did Jakko.Well tried to do mate,I didnt do a good job with the turret if my memory serves me right.I still think i have LO models bits somewhere!!!
At risk of further hijacking this thread, I hope Brian posts his M60 project! I built the DML one a while back, having committed surgery to fix the more fixable issues with it… (I believe I used a gun from the old Lo Models set, and gun shield from Tamiya’s M48, but it was a few years ago.)
