I bought these kits each for under €10, roughly $10.
2 Obscure Russian kits of 2 almost equally obscure Soviet tanks.
And as so often you get what you paid for… or do you? Well, let’s see what you actually get, then.
The T-30 comes in a weird, vibrant grassy green, the plastic feels kind of soft and the sprues have some hefty attachment points. Lots of flash and detail is… basic in certain areas.
Instruction sheet is just that; a doublesided copy on an A4-format… in Cyrillic.
The there’s the T-60, the superset edition. It comes with flexible plastic brushes and an array of paint… probably more suitable for a kind’s painting than for modelling. Glue is included and has a very heavy smell of nailpolish remover.
Instruction sheet is much more professional, about 8 pages, many of them in colour.
The sprues are a light grey, plastic feels less soft, detail is ok and very little flash. Moldlines are present.
The T-30 is pretty straight forward, not many pitfalls. One however is the fit of the tracks, especially over the sprocket. That was a struggle, since the teeth aligned badly with the holes both positionwise and sizewise. I discovered later that that caused misalignment of the links.
Also it was suggested using the provided coverplate for the propeller and rudders, but I just could not resist to use those. How often does one get the chance to add those to a tank?? This meant I had to scratch a retaining bar, since that is not provided. It also meant adding what I suspect is the exit for a bilgepump on the front. Not shown on the manual, but provided with both part and locationindicator. This alo meant scratching a bowplate/trimvane.
The MG is waayyy out of scale, looks as big as the 20mm on the T-60, so I replaced that with some stretched sprue to look more to scale.
A lot of putty is needed to make the bowplate look like one single part. I drilled out the maingun’s barrel too.
The grill/mesh on the rear was replaced by actual mesh, since the kitpart looked… let’s just say off. And yes, that is flash visible inside the turret ring. A “feature” quite common with this kit. Lots of cleaning to do.
Now… the Mistercraft T-60… That has its issues as well…
For starters some very visible features like the grills/mesh are simply missing. They are easy to fix, but still.
For me there are 3 major gripes; 1) the fit of the tracks linked to the positioning of the idler. When using all the tracklinks, and you must otherwise they will not link up, the idler ends up far too high, which makes it impossible to fit the mudguard in the right position! There is also no indication what’s however as to how to position the idler, so you are left with setting tracks, positioning the idler and fiddling with all this simultaniously!
Which brings me to gripe nr.2; the fit of the tracks/links on the sprocket. There is no chance in hell you can make that work without seriously sanding down the sprocketteeth, which makes the links fit, but a real pain in the lower rear end to align.
The other issue is that a lot of parts, again some highly visible, are NOT included in the kit, yet shown on the manual… where some are marked as not included.. ?? So no tools, not extended exhaust and the mudguard “brackets” were just solid bricks of plastic. So had to be redone in sheet styrene. Visionports on the turret got lost, so had to be redone as well.
Good work there ,many years ago I made a SU 76 from the same company the T 30 was ,it was very hard plastic and had a very soapy finish to it and it was very heavy but I loved it
Congratulations on your effort! Many years ago, I built a HiPM Sd.Kfz. 232, and you reminded me of the issues with fitting the tracks and fenders. In that case, it was a matter of wheels, fenders, stowage boxes, and the hull—I had to do quite a bit of cutting and adjusting!
The T-30 has gotten wintercolours. I just had to try that fancy Russian pattern. The patchy appearance is done deliberately and the greenish patch is where the crew gets in and out of the vehicle, thus wearing the white down.
The T-60 is kept basic green, but with decals to break that up a bit. Kept those rather generic, but there appears to be no real standard in style, shape or positioning of markings.
