Been thinking about dipping my toes in the water with another German halftrack build; this time i want to build an Sd.Kfz. 250; I don’t see anyone other than Dragon offering this particular model.
Curious to know if anyone here as built it and how good/bad was the overall build.
One of Dragon’s older moulds. from the late 90’s, Reynier. It was the first release of the ‘Alte’ - the first kits in the line were ‘Neu’. The details are a little soft and/or chunky in places - mainly on the headlight supports, rear Notek light, trafficators, etc . The curved panel under the front is very thick in the kit, from memory.
It goes together okay, but the torsion bar fit is loose and you need to take a lot of care to make sure they are located correctly, else your road wheels will be out of alignment all over the place.
With care where you add glue, you can make the tracks workable to get the right sag.
Details wise, it doesn’t depict the upper hull overlap very well:
It doesn’t have any bolts to add inside the drive sprocket, that the rubber blocks are secured by.
The instructions tell you the mesh is diagonal mesh, it isn’t. Initially it was a square mesh
Also, just to make sure in case you miss it, that last pic is of a very early type. Note the headlights mounted on the upper hull and the 2 slot driver’s visor.
I used the Dragon lower hull and running gear as a donor for my SdKfz 252 ammunition resupply vehicle. The upper hull was a Plus model conversion meant for the old Tamiya 250/ 3 or 250/9 kits.
As you can see, that conversion kit was for a very early 250 vehicle with the early features I mentioned above.
PS The Tamiya kit shows all of its 44 years of age…
Peter, you are a star. I have this model waiting on top of the ‘soon’ stack. Thank you for posting all that information and those pictures.
Nudge back to the top. I was still shaking the bushes around on eBay for a nice kit and discovered that Das Werke released a 250/1 kit back in 2022; also watched the review made by Modelblau Koenig on YouTube and after seeing the kit itself assembled, it kind of gave me hope.
I am also finding some older Tamiya kits, along with the Dragon kits… So now, i am stumped as to which one will be best suited to build.
I’m already seeing that this Tamiya kit, being much older, will not have as much details as say, the Das Werke kit; (yes, I know. the Tamiya is a different variant than the Das Werke) but on the flipside, i have never built a Das Werke kit, so I’m not sure what to expect.
Looking forward to following this 250/1 build regardless of which kit you decide to build Reyneir!
I’m definitely not up ro speed on the 250/x kits but I recall thinking in the 1990’s the Tamiya one was showing its age.
I think I’ve wittled it down to two versions. The above mentioned Das Werk 250/1 Neu and the 1979 Tamiya 250/3 “Greif”. Here are my reasons; the Tamiya will be easy to build and it will give me enough practice for when i tackle the Das Werke version.
Like i stated earlier; both kits are miles apart in terms of complexity; not to mention both are different variants with the /1 being the standard personnel carrier version while the “Greif” /3 is Erwin Rommel’s personal command vehicle (one of them anyways). So it will have historical significance.
Isn’t the Das Werke version just a re-box of the DML kit? I have both the DML 250/1 “Alte” and “Neu” versions, I think the “Alte” is OOP (though available on evilbay) but the “Neu” is still readily available.
Yes, its a complete copy.
So, the Das Werke is a DML re-box… wasn’t aware of that. Probably save myself some money and get the DML version then…
The Dragon/DW kit mixes the interior parts from a /1 and /5.
Are all of the Das Werks kits reboxes?
Most of them are. Some are mixes of other kits. Some are new.
I think there is some Roden in there as well
Just look at the lower right corner of their boxes.
They also re-released som Revell kits and re-badged them as MBK.
I did some editing in your post.
Greif in German means Griffon (or the imperative form of the verb Greifen, to grab)
Grief is sorrow in English (nothing in German)
Reynier. I would not get the Tamiya one. You will be disappointed. It is inaccurate and very simplistic, with chunky parts, an a lot of missing details. The drive sprockets are nubs of plastic, nothing like the rollers on the actual vehicle. The tracks are very basic indy links that do not represent the overhang on each side of the rubber shoe, poorly represented radio set, the list just goes on and on. Just look at the instructions:
The 250/3 actually had the hull of the Sd.Kfz . 253 leichter Gepanzerter Beobachtungskraftwagen (called the Z hull, as opposed to the standard E hull), which is essentially what I referred to as ‘the early hull’ above. This is not replicated correctly in any 250/3 kit except the very latest version from Dragon - kit 6911, so that is what you should get if you want a 250/3.
The Z Hull has differences in the slope of the rear plate (it is shorter and angled less steeply, therefore fillers were added) and the front visor plate was also steeper. It has the 2 slot visor guards, lifting hooks on the engine deck and rear compartment, larger hinges on the hatches on the side of the engine bay, a visor port in the rear door, it has welded , not bolted, floor plates, etc.
If you want a 250/1, then get the Dragon ‘Cyber hobby’ one you posted a pic of. It is essentially the same as the Das Works one from what I have read.
Thanks for the advice… I knew i would regret getting thew Tamiya kit because of Tamiya’s notoriously inaccurate kits from the olden days.
I am definitely narrowing it to a couple Dragon choices…
I had to go looking to find them but I knew I’d built a bunch of these back in the late 90s. They are all Dragon kits.
I don’t recall much about the builds other than the tracks- for individual links, they weren’t bad at all.
Apologies for the pictures, there are lots of shadows on the backs of the shelves.
The star antenna broke off a long time ago. Note the lawn ornament poses.
Nice work on all of them.
