Postie delivered my next Tiger 1 kit today - Rye Field’s Tiger Initial #5075.
Naturally couldn’t wait to get everything out of the plastic bags. My 1st RFM kit & looks like a really nice kit. From my initial glance through the instructions, I noticed there were a couple of options for items for which supporting info isn’t given to make option choice easier.
Anyone with some background to assist here, or for that matter, any other tips to be aware of?
Cheers
I have some background but I don’t have the kit. Can you tell us what those items are?
David
G’day David
The main option I’m looking at is the hull top - B1 or G1, depending whether the vehicle had the cables fitted/not fitted. Even then, if fitted, whether they were the thin or thick cables. I’m not sure if I read on your site what the config was for these very early tanks.
Next is the front fenders & turret ventilator (?). RFM give 3 options for the fender tread plate - at such an early stage in this tank’s engineering life, surely only 1 specific tread style would’ve been used. Which for #100 was…
WRT the ventilator, the option is for a flat bolted cover or a ‘raised’ cover with hand-hold. I’ve seen this option given on the Dragon kits too - was there something more definite on which was fitted?
Thanks David. I appreciate your advice
The ventilator had a cover with a handle. You were supposed to use it when submerging. There was no other reason to have it on.
Yes, there were different styles of tread plate used, but in most cases the photos are not good enough to identify them.
We have very poor photographic coverage of the tool stowage on these nine Tigers, but we can see that it varied.
I believe the first of these tanks arrived without tow cables. They had almost no tools. On the rear deck beside the turret were two short crowbars, one each side, as drawn by Hilary Doyle. And the gun cleaning rods were forward on the left of the roof. Later - or perhaps on the Tigers that were built later - they had the “thin” tow cables.
David
Excellent. Thanks David.
So based on that info, I could use a bit of modelling licence along with some logical thinking IAW the normal development of fitout of these vehicles in line with the 2 colour callouts in the instructions esp. with tools, cables, tread plate
Actually I was wrong, the gun cleaning rod had portions on both sides of the roof.
Yes, we don’t know where the tools were put on most of these Tigers. We have a photo of the back of “111” with a very nonstandard tool set on its back wall.
David