Afternoon.
Seems the tickets have gone well, ice creams to be served along with the Pims by our very own Steve "Rivit " Jones, in between holding Richards step ladder. Firstly thanks to Pete Low who has offered some shells very kind of him.
Simon...... Seat on the front row. Thanks for the offer of help, as you can see I'm ok for the shells but I might ask for help re the books .
Andrew........ You're more than welcome, from your distance there's a chance it will look pretty good .
Rick............. Hi ..... Some may remember I bought this for my Stalingrad Dio, but was quickly informed that it didn't exist then ! So moving on a couple of years it has now serviced.
Ian ...... Nice of you to join, the build has gone quite well and for me fast, the best bit will no doubt be Zimmerit and the damed camo which some members are looking forward too. Mr Jones in particluar
so hang in for some fun.
Richard.........Greetings. as you can see Steve has offered to hold your steps l. I should check first that he is qualified
Steve...........Hi ..... and thank you for acting as barman and general refreshments officer. Whats this about camo ! the Zimmerit will be bad enough.
Yesterday saw quite a lot of assembly, it went ok, apart from my first glaring error of putting half the suspension the wrong way round
Its ok now, I do like the plastic used by AFV very forgiving. I managed to cut out some very thin section on the back deck, on two of them the join was wider than the part , but all survived.
There are some extremely small parts, the sprue can look like there is nothing on the end, but you can see a small part, the wing nuts are one example . I've not lost anything up to now as the apron has managed to catch two items that were launched by the tweezers.
Now for some photos. I do have one question relating to the barrel. When It goes together there are two halves to the inner section.These had studs on which fitted on to the barrel. There was only one way to fit. yet my results are different from the drawing On the drawing the two cut outs on the barrel are straight , where as mine are at an angle. The only way around this will to remove the one on the outer casing so the outer case lines up .
As above .
The overall parts on the bench
The section above was fun, the lower edge that was so thin is at the bottom of the shot.
There are two colors used on the sprues, some have " late Strum Tiger printed on.
I shall build it as it comes, the only addition will be some pewter and the Fruill tracks.
Now I remember some one recently doing some home made Zimmerit, was it Ron If so could some one give me the link to the page.
Earlier on I looked at the rifling to the barrel,............... and put it down, going off now to PMMS to read what he said.
Thanks for looking in, help would be appreciated on the points I have mentioned and any other pit falls that I may encounter.
I can see why I stick mainly to Russian :smirk:
John.