Dragon

1/35 Sd.Kfz. 265 Kleine Panzerbefehlswagen

Kit Number 6218

Reviewed By Chad Richmond, #10346

MSRP: $29.98 USD

For the last thirty years or so, the only Panzer I Command vehicle has been the Italeri kit, which was not the greatest building experience.  Now Dragon has given us a state-of-the-art kit that shows several other versions are to be offered.  The Panzer IA European and DAK versions have already been released.

When you open the box, you find that it is indeed full.  There are eight trees of plastic parts numbering 435 parts in gray plastic and three clear headlight lenses and a photo etch fret of optional parts.  A very nicely done decal sheet is included that gives the builder the option of five different vehicles.  The selections are 2.PzDiv, Germany, 1938, 9PzDiv, Holland 1940, 4PzDiv, France 1940, 5.leighte Div, North Africa 1941 and 11.PzDiv, Balkans 1941.  All of the markings except for 2.PzDiv are for vehicles with a commander’s cupola.  Since Carl McLaughlin is working on a pre-WWII armor book, I opted to build that version.  The fact that the only markings on the vehicle are the red and white checkers that go all around the top of the “turret” made the selection easier, also.  More about that later.

Construction starts typically with the suspension and tracks.  Since I have yet to figure out how to build a piece of armor with tracks installed before painting and have the paint job be presentable, I did everything but the tracks.  You have to do a lot of painting as you go, due to the complexity of the early suspension.  You can even make it a working suspension by utilizing the small plastic rings that are on the suspension trees. Everything went together well, but the road wheels will wobble side to side, which makes for some alignment problems later.  The lower hull and all of the suspension were painted at this time.

The parts breakdown for the upper hull is composed of 30 parts alone, without the cupola.  If you build one of the versions with the commander’s cupola, there are another 7 parts to be assembled.  The “turret” area is particularly interesting, as it is done in appliqué style, making two side pieces, a front and a back, and a roof.  The Italeri kit was a whole lot simpler, but did not have anywhere near the detail that Dragon has produced.  This parts breakdown means there are a total of twenty-four angles that have to be absolutely perfect for this structure to come out right.  The roof alone has eight angled surfaces.  If you take your time and do a lot of dry fitting and slow drying glue, you can get everything very, very close to being right.  The only filling I had to do was on the roof join and the bottom face of the aft wall.  That one was uniform, so a narrow piece of Evergreen took care of that.  The roof joins were taken care of with Tamiya’s superior putty, a toothpick, a Q-Tip, a brush and some alcohol.  The end result was no sanding other than a light brushing with 0000 steel wool.

Up to this point I still haven’t tackled the fiddly bits known as the track links.

I painted the entire vehicle using Model Master’s Panzer Dunkelgrau, which looked good to me.  As I stated earlier, I really like the pre-war red and white checkerboard band around the top of the command structure, until I started applying the decals.  The decals are all too long for the surface they are to be applied to, and don’t conform to the angles of the sides.  The bulge for the machine gun gave me particular fits.  But, with the combination of strong decals, perseverance and a lot of Solvaset, I was able to bend the decal around the curve and all of the angles.  Just don’t start counting my red and white squares and examining their shape!  I only had to do two very minor touchups with some white and some red to cover some gaps.  Tamiya’s colors were a perfect match.  I used an oil wash on the whole vehicle and let that dry.

My oil wash got to dry for a long time, because every time I started fiddling with the tracks, I came up with a million excuses to work on something else.  The track links (all 216) of them are extremely fragile and a great deal of care must be taken in cutting them from the sprue and then in cleaning them up.  I broke many of them just scraping mold seams.  There is a slight bump on one side and a corresponding indentation that allows you to snap the links together, but it’s not enough to hold the tracks together due to the softness of the plastic and the ease with which it can be bent.  I have to admit that I hate individual track links.  I know they look better and can be displayed in any position you want, but the hours of grief they have given me!  I assembled the tracks in four different sections, two long runs and two curved sections, painted and weathered them, and put them together on the suspension.  Everything went together great, except that I had my normal individual link experience; I had a space left that was only ½ a track link in length.  Once I inserted another link, on one side it didn’t look too bad, but for some reason it was very noticeable on the other, giving a sag appearance that shouldn’t be there.  There wasn’t a whole lot more that I could do.

The kit overall is really good, with no major fit problems.  The construction of the vehicle itself was relatively uneventful, except for the lining up all the angles to get a good fit.  Tamiya’s thin liquid cement or Tenax 7R are the blessings here.  I did find the model to be quite fragile, though, because I kept breaking something on the suspension, every time I handled it.  The only real problem I had was the antenna and its cradle.  For some reason, both of them were molded like a snake.  I never really got the antenna straight, but close enough for it to look okay.  Even with the fiddly little track links, I will build the other versions, as well.  It is a welcome addition to my collection.

My thanks to John Noack and Dragon Models for the review sample.

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