8,8 cm FlaK 18 (Sf.) auf schwerem Zugkraftwagen 12t, Trumpeter, 1/35 scale, kit review.
Hi everyone and welcome to the kit review of the 8,8cm FlaK 18 auf Selbstfahrlafette, schwerer Zugkraftwagen 12t, by Trumpeter in 1/35 scale.
What we have here is a quite unusual vehicle: It is an armored 12 ton halftrack with an 8,8 cm FlaK gun mounted on the bed in the rear.
About 10 of these vehicles were built (other sources claim 25 vehicles. It seems like the sources are a bit messed up).
They were mainly used by the Panzerjägerabteilung 8. Initially intended to destroy bunkers of the Maginot Line,
but they were also used after the French campaign in the war against Russia.
This kit is already a few years old. Trumpeter offers a couple of nice halftrack variants of all sorts.
All of them seem to be tricky to build, due to their complexity and the high part count. However, once you managed to put it all together they look nice and are well detailed.
One should not forget that Trumpeter kits often feature some mistakes. This seems to be a problem with this one here, too, but i do not know any exact details.
All i know is that it is not perfect, but that should not bother us at all.
Those, who are bothered by the inaccuracies, have to do quite some resarch and correct it.
The box is very solid an crammed inside with a lot of parts. We talk about almost 800 parts in total. It will be a complex affair to build it.
I like the fact that Trumpeter protects some of the very delicate parts with some extra foam material. Very reasonable.
Besides that, various armor and chassis parts are sitting in a separate section of the box to prevent them from getting smashed.
A great way of packing a kit, thats how it should be.
Let´s have a look at the instructions first. On the front page we get the usual safety notes and legend to symbols.
Right here we get a big spure map, it shows all the included parts and sprues. As you can see there is a lot of material, some of the sprue are included multiple times in the kit. Some photo-etch can be seen here as well, certainly not an easy kit.
The assembly starts with the gear box and engine. It seems to be very detailed by the looks of it.
Not a lot will be visible in the end, but in case there is, the details are good.
Here we deal with the running gear parts. Looks all good to me.
The front axle can be kept movable, same applise for the steering mechanism.
Here we have the main frame, which consists of a lot of parts. All to easy you can get some fit issues here.
One has to work very carefully here, in order to make sure that all the wheels touch the ground later.
Splitting up the frame in so many parts is not ideal in my opinion. Other brands manage to make this as one piece. Here things are a bit more complex, so be careful.
All in all i can say that the instructions are pretty clear. I think we can easily work with it. Usually there are many parts to be installed in each step, but it can be managed.
Here we still put on more parts of the chassis and running gear.
As you can imagine by now the kit is rather complex.
The tracks here come as individual track links, split in two pieces: We get the actual links and the rubber pads, which go on top of the tracks.
As far as i can tell you can keep these tracks workable - very nice indeed! It is very similar to the tracks of the Famo tractor by Tamiya.
I really liked these back then when i built it, so i will do it in a similar fashion here.
The radiator has all the details, even inside where you can barely see it.
Floor of the drivers cabin with various cranks and pedals. Pretty much all stages of the build include photo-etched parts.
Now we slowly get into the assembly of the superstructure. Here we have the armored bonnet. My first impression of this is positive.
Here we see the crates for the FlaK gun ammunition. They sit at the rear of the vehicle in a little rack, which comes in the kit as a photo-etched part.
Having this part as a PE piece is advantageous, because it is much thinner and therefore in scale.
On to the driver seat and the headlight casings. They come as photo-etched parts, too.
The armored driver compartment over here is really interesting in particular.
According to what i have heard the shape of it is not entirely correct, but i personally do not care that much to be honest. It will be alright.
Now we move on with the FlaK gun. We have two options here: A two piece plastic gun barrel, with a photo-etched part for the rifling - you roll it up and glue it in. This is not my preferred choice, because the other option uses an aluminium gun barrel, which is excellent to have.
The FlaK gun is again a very complex and time consuming piece with a lot of small parts. It will be essential here to maintain a goo view on the project, otherwise you might forget to install some parts.
There are two options for the gun shield: One is made out of plastic, the other one uses photo-etched parts, which is absolutely amazing.
The PE shield will require some experience, but for the beginners or those, who want to achieve a quick result, we have the plastic part.
The cylinders of the gun elevation mechanism can be kept workable. I really like that, because it allows you to position the gun the way you want, which can be required for certain scenes.
Not bad at all i have to say. Certainly not a kit for beginners, here you have to know what you are doing.
The painting and marking guide is printed on a separate sheet and in color. Although i like that, it is not really important here, because the vehicle is simply painted grey.
At this corner we get a paint chart, refering to Mr. Hobby, Vallejo, Modelmaster, Tamiya and Humbrol paints. A fairly reasonable selection.
We do not get any further information about this specific vehicle depicted here. We can see a white K letter on the front fender, so it seems like this vehicle supposedly served with the Panzergruppe Kleist in the Russian campaign.
Let´s have a look at the plastic parts now. Here we have the armored driver cabin.
It is very thin, so be careful not to twist or damage the part.
There are a few ejection pin marks inside. I doubt that much will be visible later.
The part feels a bit too smooth, there is no texture on it at all. I do not know whether or not there should be any weld seams around these smaller plates up here, i have to do some research on that. No matter what, the part could have a bit more metal texture on it.
The platform comes also as a single piece and features a very nice anti-skid texture. I really like it.
Right here we have some thick bits of the sprue gate. It will require some careful cleanup, but that won´t be too tricky.
At the bottom side we see some rather big ejection pin marks. They are not very deep, though. If they are visible and you do not like them you can pretty much just sand them off. I think one can get away without filling them first here.
The part itself is slightly bent, but it is relatively thing, so with some gentle pressure it will fit alright.
I have noticed that the sprues in this kit are all fairly small and numerous. That means that we have to juggle with several sprues at the same time during the assembly. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. I personally prefer bigger sprues.
Here we have the main parts of the frame. Looks decent to me.
I can´t see any major flaws, like flash or such defects.
Again we see a lot of ejection pin marks, most of them won´t be visible in the end, some of them will. You have to keep an eye on that during the assembly and plan ahead.
However, when it comes to the details this looks pretty good to me.
Here we get many parts of the engine , which is very complex and detailed in this kit. That is a nice thing, Trumpeter really put some effort into this.
It is notable that the parts have a lot of connections to the sprue. That will require some additional work to clean the parts up.
Again i can not see any major problems, the details look very crisp to me.
Here we find various parts of the bonnet and the front fenders.
I like how the front fenders come as one piece. It will ensure that they sit perfectly parallel. Very nicely done.
The floor of the drivers cabin has a nice anti-skid texture.
The radiator pieces look decent. Maybe the ribs should be a bit finer, but we won´t see it in this case.
The armor plates are again lacking some texture.
It is not a big deal, you can fix that with some Mr. Surfacer to create a texture surface.
What i do not like that much are the tools, their clamps look very simplified to me.
In this case it is recommended to replace them. I bet most of you guys have some spare parts from various Dragon kits, you could use them here.
Inside the fenders we have some more ejection pin marks. I´d fix that by simply smearing some mud in there to cover them up. Problem solved.
On this sprue we get various small parts. The molding quality is good.
I have noticed that the newer Trumpeter kits tend to be very fiddly due to their high part count. They are very complex.
This might not be the taste of everyone. However, i know some modellers who want it to be exactly that way. This kit is for them.
Just make sure you know which modeller type you are first.
Here we get more parts of the chassis and running gear, like the leaf springs. They are split into two halves, which is probably not ideal.
However, you won´t really see them in the end, once you installed the interleaved wheels infront of it.
Besides that it looks good to me. These parts here belong to the winch, which is a typical feature of most German halftracks.
It can be seen pretty well from the bottom side, so it pays off here to spend some time with this section of the build.
The next sprue is included twice in the kit, it features more running gear parts, like leaf springs, sprocket wheels, idlers and rims of the front wheels.
As always it looks nice.
A thing one has to keep in mind when it comes to such halftracks is the fact, that the sprocket wheels do not really have "teeth" as we know them from other tracked vehicles, but little rolls. They had also rubber rims.
It is quite tedious to paint this detail up this way. Here it is nicely rendered, you can actually see that the teeth are little rolls with rubber rims. Very nicely done.
This sprue is included three times in the kit. We get even more wheels here.
Each wheel has four connection points to the sprue, so this calls for a lot of cleanup work. It is time consuming and frustrating for many modellers out there. Well, we have to deal with it, there is no way around it.
At least all parts have sharp details, no defects are visible.
Let´s move on to the 8,8 cm FlaK gun. This is the main sprue.
This is the plastic gun shield, which can be replaced by photo-etch. We take a look at that later.
It all looks good to me. Again there are many small and fiddly parts, so assembling it will be a challenge for sure.
The gun shield has ejection pin marks at the inside. What a shame.
It certainly makes the photo-etched alternative even more attractive. At least you will have less agony with pin marks that way.
It is very nicely done overall, nothing is damaged either. Some very neat bolt detail right here.
Here we see the two piece gun barrel. Towards the muzzle you can see the space, where we are meant to install the photo-etched tube for the rifling.
All in all this is an option i do not recommend. The aluminium gun barrel is much better.
As you can see there are countless small parts on this sprue. There are some shells, too. Interesting.
They could be a bit more detailed, especially at the bottom side. They are just flat there, although there should be a firing cap. That would have been nice.
Most of the parts are very filigree.
I recommend to have some good tweezers ready when you start to assemble this kit.
The sprue with the ammunition crates is included twice.
The crates look very nice. As far as i can tell they are split into three parts each.
There is really not much to say about this, we have a few small parts as well, they all look fairly nice.
The sprue for the track parts is included ten times in the kit. I really like how everything is proteced with some foam material. I appreciate that.
We have here the actual track link and the rubber pad. There is a tiny bit of flash here and there. Nothing major though.
It is nice that the parts have only one connection point to the sprue each, this promises a rather quick progress during the assembly phase.
By the looks of it the track might be workable in the end, which i personally appreciate very much.
The front tires are made out of vinyl soft plastic, the quality of them is very good.
The tread pattern looks superb, i have rarely seen better ones when it comes to vinyl parts.
There is only a tiny bit of flash at the inside edge of the wheel. We do not really have to clean this up though, because in the end we will shove in a wheel rim, which will cover that section. I don´t expect this to be a problem.
Not all model builders like vinyl as a material, i personally do not mind it.
If you mind it you can get some resin replacements. That is certainly not a mistake and increases the level of detail.
However, i am sure these vinyl parts will look fine in the end.
As i mentioned before the kit also comes with an aluminium gun barrel. Here you can see the rifling at the muzzle. Very nicely done.
I can not spot any flaw here, it looks perfect. In my opinion this is absolutely the option you should go for when you build this model.
I really like the fact in general, that Trumpeter still gives us such goodies in their kits right away. This used to be pretty much standard few years ago, especially when it came to Dragon kits. Nowadays it became a rarity, which bothers me.
It simply enhances the model kit so much and in the end saves you money. The metal part is also engineered to fit perfectly, so you can install it without the usual required adaptations.
Besides that we get three brass tubes. They are for the recoil cylinder as well as the gun elevation mechanism.
Such metal parts are usually better than their plastic-counterparts. I appreciate it very much to find these in the box, because it saves extra work and enhances detail.
The kit features two photo-etch frets, this one is the bigger one of the two. It holds the parts for the gun shield of the FlaK gun, as well as some smaller bits and pieces.
I consider this to be definately superior to the plastic shield. The thickness is to scale and you do not have to deal with annoying ejection pin marks.
At the inside of the shield we find markings for other parts, so we know where they are meant to attach. This will avoid a lot of guesswork during the assembly.
Photo-etched parts require some experience. However, due to the size of the parts, i think it is doable and maybe a good project to gain this experience.
On the second fret we find an air intake grill, as well as a few steps and the ammunition stowage rack.
One thing i have noticed with Trumpeter photo-etch parts is their thickness, they are much thicker than the ones of other brands. This can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage.
I personally think it is alright the way it is. The parts are pretty solid and that makes it easier to work with them.
However, the in-scale thickness might not be perfect. The photo-etched parts are probably too thick. I don´t mind that to be honest.
Furthermore we get a metal chain, some wire material and a thread.
The thread is meant to be the steel cable of the winch. I am not the greatest fan of these threads, maybe you can replace it with a thin metal cable. That is probably the better option.
We only need a few links of the metal chain. They are meant to secure a bunch of pins at the FlaK gun.
The wire will be used for the hinges of the gun shield. Apparently one could fold some sections of the shield.
Everything got considered here, i really appreciate that.
Finally we take a look at the decals. They come on two sheets.
This one has all the dials of the intrument panel in the drivers cabin. We get them all separetly as well as all in one decal.
I don´t understand why this is the case, but this means that we certainly get some spare dials for other projects.
On the second sheet we get two crosses, a bunch of license plates and the K insignia of the Panzergruppe Kleist.
The decals seem to be fairly thin, the carrier film is small, and they are very shiny.
According to my own experience one can work with Trumpeter decals, but i am not the biggest fan of them.
One thing is for sure: You get a lot for your money. In this country the kit costs about 50€, but you get a lot of plastic, photo-etched parts, metal gun barrel and small accessories.
Under such circumstances i do not mind the alleged small inaccuracies of the kit when it comes to proportions or positions of certain parts. I personally can tolerate that.
This kit is certainly not meant for the absolute beginners due to the high part count and the photo-etched parts. I think all the others will enjoy this one.
It is not the kind of model you quickly build during a weekend. It requires more time. Well, model building is not a race anyway.
So far, so good. I have nothing else to say about the kit.
I hope you enjoyed this review, see you again in the next video, your Hamilkar Barkas.
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