Jagdpanther G1 (Meng TS-039)

Hi all, I recently received Meng’s Jagdpanther G1, kit TS-039. This was for a ‘future’ project, but I had hit a mental block building my Tamiya Stug III Ausf. B, and thought id peek inside the Meng box. That turned into more than a peek, and it seems this is now occupying my bench, and the Stug is in the drawer.

This is a great kit from what I can see so far, so thought id share the build.

The box:

Meng offers plenty of differing parts in the box, there is a myriad of all sorts, and there are 4 main options for the user to build. I have chosen option 1, which is a late G1 variant, as shown in the image below, indicated as from the Battle of the Ruhr, March 1945 (each of the 4 options has a full color gloss printed sheet showing, top view, both sides, and front and rear views - I have cropped out the front/rear, left side from the below).

The first thing I did was to purchase some aftermarket tracks, as below. These are the first TRex printed tracks I have received, and some people may remember the first image below from the ‘what the postman brought’ thread, where I gave them a glowing thumbs up. They really are game changers, so detailed, and importantly, so easy to put together. No glue needed, and the pins never fall out as they ‘click’ into place.

They fit really well onto the Meng drive sprocket, super exquisite detail:

HOWEVER, building up the track run I noticed a lot of the track pieces supplied were missing the chevrons on the face of the track (the little raised ridges on the track surface). I put these oddball parts aside, and eventually after building 79 links per track run, I ran out of the proper parts. I don’t know how many links are required per run, but its definitely more than 79! (note, I see that the Meng instructions call for 87 links per run). So I have carried on and am now connecting the links without the chevrons, as can be seen below, the lowest 4 links in the image so far are the incorrect ones without the chevrons. Its a little disappointing, but in reality ill just fit the tracks so these oddball links are on the underside, and no-one will be the wiser. Despite this… these tracks are still awesome.

The kit supplied tracks are quite probably very adequate (individual links), but they require you to glue the guide horns on as separate pieces (two horns per link = 348 guide horns to tidy up and attach!).

Back to the kit itself, the mouldings seem to be very good quality, I haven’t seen any shorts, or mis-matched mouldings as yet. One unique thing I have noticed is that each of the road wheel suspension arms is made up of two pieces, not one. When glued together, there is a bit of a seam that could use filling and sanding as below. On the left is the part after filling / sanding, on the right the same part before its secondary part is glued in. It looks like a sinking issue dictated the need to make in two parts, and to be honest, the filling and sanding process is probably a waste of time, as once in place on the hull, the back of the arms isnt seen at all.

The only moulding issue I have seen is a small sink mark on some of the suspension arms, at the 90 degree bend in the arm, as shown below. Not really worth any attention or remedy, as it will be totally unseen once the road wheels are fixed on.

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At the risk of being labelled a ‘rivet-counter’ and the negativity associated with being seen to be one… :rofl: (see thread titled ‘rant about reviews’), I have picked up a few things to change on this kit to make it a little more accurate.

There is a very good thread on Track-Link by David Coyne about this kit that explains a lot, I wont re-produce it, but if you are building this kit, it really is worth a read. Link below:

TRACK-LINK / Forums / Track-Link Build Logs / Jagdpanther G1 Meng Model

One thing gleaned from the thread is that if building option 1, the idler wheel supplied by Meng isn’t quite right, the actual idler wheel for a later G1 is much larger diameter. Panzer Art provides a worthy resin offering of the idler, their part number is RE-35098. Shown below is the Meng idler on the left, and the Panzer Art Idler on the right.

Also, the Tow Cable heads that Meng calls up on the instructions are quite short, and Rivet Counters may also want to replace these with more accurate longer tow cable heads. At the bottom of the image below is Meng part A44. At the top of the image is some replacements I have, which are Eureka Jagdpanther Tow Cable Set ER-3533. However, if you look careful on the Meng sprues you would find some longer cable heads that could well be acceptable to use… these are the items in the middle! Unbeknownst to me, the solution was already in the box!

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Excellent thread, you are doing a great job with this Jagdpanther, and providing quite useful info. Thanks!

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As an aside, one of my newest tools is this simple etched scrapping tool from Voyager. Great for scraping seams on round parts, and not flattening them off. Works wonders on the cable ends… and would work a treat on two part barrels. Worth its weight in Gold, A+

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Simplicity + function = genius!

A++
Definitely like this thread! :+1:

Picked up same kit last week and look for to the build log.

Agree, I have had mine for several years and it’s a gem, absolutely useful for any cylindrical part.

This is where we are with the build currently.

Meng gets bonus points for supplying a clear sprue, with all of the optics / vision blocks etc. moulded in clear plastic. The only other ‘modern’ kit I have for comparison is Takoms Jagdtiger, a kit which does not supply a clear sprue of optic parts. Clear moulded parts allow the opportunity to paint a semi 3D effect vision block, by first painting the clear part in chrome silver (all surfaces EXCEPT the lens), then painting over the same surfaces in darker color, and lastly paint the lens surface translucent green or similar, the result is as below, which I think looks pretty good… just have to remember to mask it all when painting the vehicle.

At step 3 of the Meng instructions, there are shown two different options for the forward most bump stop. The instructions don’t give much advise about the two options, but from what I can tell the part “D14” is a less common bump stop, which was only ever fitted to Jagdpanthers produced at the Miab production facility, and they were only fitted to the first 100 or so units produced there. By my reckoning that means anything produced from about September 44’ and after would have the kit parts A26/F35 fitted. I have fitted the A26/F35 parts, as im modelling something produced after September 44’, the item described is circled in green below.

You have to decide pretty early on (like before doing anything!) which of the 4 variants that Meng offers you are going to build, as there are a myriad of various holes of various sizes that need to be drilled from the inside of the hull before you can get into the build. All the various holes relate to equipment to attach to the structure The very small ones seen below are for foliage loops that will get added later. The jack block gets a few scratches gouged into which.

Grab handles replaced, P/E screens fitted, little brass bolt heads fitted to the PE screens, spare tracks underway (track pins, and track retainer pins still to come). There used to be a full length moulded plastic ledge on the sides, just below the spare tracks, which was to mount the side skirts. This ledge was removed, and will be replaced with folded P/E items, but before removing the plastic ledge I used it to scribe in a line on the hull to help align the replacements… I got a bit carried away and the scribed line is a little deep. But should help aligning the P/E parts later on.

Still loads of things to do… any feedback welcome, I wont be offended! Ideally I would like this to be pretty accurate, so if anything looks amiss feel free to sing out.

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This is looking really cool! Great PE work. Excellent attention to detail. I like the effect on the periscopes. Very realistic. This is an outstanding build!

Great blog

Question, good sir,

I bought a set of Eduard PE, and along the edge, it had little hexagonal holes like the ones in the center of this tool. Supposedly, you could heat up sprue, press the PE and create bolt heads.

Would that the case with this tool, maybe?

Yeah, you are exactly right. The purpose of the holes is that you can create nuts by heating sprue and pressing in the holes. I haven’t tried myself so not sure if it works or not. Have you tried it at all?

Or, you can just buy them…

http://www.missing-lynx.com/reviews/modern/mengsps008reviewcs_1.html

However, the reviewer did say that this was a great idea and well made, so it probably is an awful buy.

:rofl:

The holes were on the edge of the PE fret and that is only 1/8 inch, 3-4mm, so it was too flexible to really be able to press into anything. This tool looks more substantial and should provide the proper resistance.

Where did you get it?

Summer in the southern hemisphere means I haven’t had a great deal of bench time, but I did get back into this over the last week or so, mostly working on tools and smaller details.

Added spare track links from evergreen rod, and added track retainer pins from 0.3mm copper wire.

Foliage loops added , also from 0.3mm coper wire.

Making some good headway, plenty yet to come!

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Rear stowage bins complete, and ready to mount. 4-5 hours total perhaps. I read that a light sand all over will help the paint stick, which makes a lot of sense, good tip.

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Those stowage bins look outstanding David, :+1: :slightly_smiling_face:.

G, :beer:

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Looking fantastic!

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Bins on. Started on the front mud guards, they are not playing nicely :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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That is some lovely neat PE work… I wish mine looked 25%as good as that . Great work :+1:

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