Meng AMX-30B

[rfbaer]

It’s French, Cold War and if I may say so, a very pretty tank, if that term can be applied to any tank.
The Meng kit is very good and all I have planned as other than out of the box are tracks. The kit tracks are fine, just personal preference on my part.
One evening in happy town got me here:

I’m using R-Model tracks.

[Annette_Dominic]

Aren’t the tracks going to be covered up?

[Dan]

I’ll be watching.

[rfbaer]

Not this one, no skirts. Export versions only.
And tracks:

I’ve used quite a few sets of tracks from R-Model and I have to say these were the only ones that were actually difficult. I had to drill out the holes in about half the links and at least a dozen came out of the box too goobered up to use. The kit directions said to use 80 links per side but it took 82 to get a comfortable fit.

[18bravo]

Pardon my ignorance, but it’s live track, correct?

[rfbaer]

It doesn’t appear to be. I have pics showing sag and no sag. If I take a link out, they’re uncomfortably tight so I’m going as-is.

[Annette_Dominic]

I thought you wrote the B2 kit XD.

[Bison126]

The correct track tension left a little sag between the idlers and the first roadwheels. So your model is accurate.

Olivier

[rfbaer]

Thank you!

[rfbaer]

IMG_5147 by Russel Baer, on Flickr

[rfbaer]

I had a fun time last night with the upper hull. I added a couple of weld beads Meng didn’t do and got a start on other details. I subbed out a few of the R-Model links for the kit’s spare links on the hull side. Meng managed to add some sink marks in them, the only place in the whole kit they did so.
IMG_5153 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
IMG_5152 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
Other than the sink marks in the spare track links everything else is great: good fit, fine detail.

[Annette_Dominic]

I was thinking about TS-013

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/meng-model-ts-013-amx-30b2--418517

[rfbaer]

Thought that might be the case.

[rfbaer]

I skipped a few pages to get the turret started. I guess I was getting bored with the hull…
Anyway, I did the gun tube and mantlet, got the turret halves together, perfect fit btw, and shaved the solid footman’s loops after drilling holes at each end of each one. I used rhe 20 mm cannon just because it’s cool.

[rfbaer]

[Bison126]

@rfbaer

I used rhe 20 mm cannon just because it’s cool.

It is not only cool but standard on all AMX30s after the .50cal MG was out phased.
Nice build so far.

Olivier

[metalhead85]

Great start Russel, I have this kit in the stash so I’ll be stopping by more!

[rfbaer]

Olivier- That’s what I got from my references as well. It still looks good though.
Richard- Thanks. It’s a bit different from my usual, enjoying it so far.
And speaking of “so far”, I did some more assembly on the turret tonight. I wanted to get it far enough along to get the side stowage baskets on. They’re fragile and have some flash, so I cleaned them up as much as I could while they were still on the sprue, detached and installed them, waited a bit for the glue to set and then finished cleaning them up. I will have a bit of stowage in them, not much as the pics I have show a camo net and not much else stowed when in the field.
IMG_5155 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
IMG_5154 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
And because I want to add all the straps from the footman’s loops to the baskets, I shaved the molded-on blobs that represent the loops and did them in small gauge wire.
Couldn’t help it.

[metalhead85]

Yeah I hate cleaning those types of parts because I always seem to miss a spot.

[rfbaer]

I thought the turret needed some texture to show its cast steel construction so out came the MrSurfacer, thinned with MEK. I’ll take it down a bit tonight. I also got back on the hull assembly.