Category Archives: 2. Reviews

AM Part Review : K59 Productions MG42

  By Dean | February 22, 2012 - 7:48 pm | 2. Reviews
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These days it seems like there is an after market part to replace pretty much everything including field equipment and personal weapons. Many of these sets are in resin so aren’t necessarily cheap so the question really isn’t just how good are they, but also how good are they compared to the part that they’re replacing, not to mention compared to their competitors.

This kit is a resin offering from K59 Productions, a sister company to 1120 Productions, who together make some of the best resin after market bits on the market. Quite possibly the best. It comes in a ziplock bag inside a small, sturdy cardboard box and consists of nine resin parts, a small sheet of instructions, and two small photo etch frets. This all makes up into one MG42 as well as a length of ammo belt, and a 50rd drum magazine.

The moulding on all the parts in this small kit is brilliant, the detail is clear and sharp, there is no clean-up needed other than to remove the various pour tabs and that is quite an easy task. The instructions are clear and simple and the photo etch parts are equally well done and easy to work with.

The level of detail is a step above the usual as this includes not just the expected level of detail with a hollow flash hider and all the correct holes and slots in the barrel cooling jacket, but in what has to be a first at this level the cooling jacket is hollow and the barrel comes as a separate part together with the barrel locking lever. You can’t get better definition than that.

The high level of detail continues inside and out on the receiver with a very nicely done cocking handle and full detail on the loading tray and bolt spring as well as the underside of the receiver cover which includes photo etched parts. The bipod is bang on and includes the earlier style stud type catch mounted under the cooling jacket. 

The ammo belt is the usual 50rd belt and is beautifully moulded while the 50rd mag comes with a separate carry handle plus a short length of ammo belt complete with starter tab. You also get a very nice photo etch sling complete with the correct mounting hardware front and rear and to top it all off there’s even an optional photo etch anti-aircraft ring sight. 

Conclusion. This isn’t a cheap piece of kit, it’ll cost you around $20NZD/$15USD ex-Hong Kong, so is it worth it ? Unequivocally yes. This is the best 1/35 MG42 currently on the market and if you take your super detailing seriously then once you’ve used one of these no other MG42 will do regardless of the pain to your wallet.

If you’re after something cheaper but still good check THIS.

            

AM Part Review : Tank MG-42 ( Early )

  By Dean | February 22, 2012 - 7:46 pm | 2. Reviews
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These days it seems like there is an after market part to replace pretty much everything including field equipment and personal weapons. Many of these sets are in resin so aren’t necessarily cheap so the question really isn’t just how good are they, but also how good are they compared to the part that they’re replacing.

This kit is a resin offering from Tank ( or TaHK ), a Russian producer of resin figures and accessories. It comes in a small ziplock bag attached to a cardboard hanger and you get two early style MG-42 Machine Guns. Each gun comes with a separate receiver cover, a separate cocking handle, a length of ammo belt, a 50rd drum mag, an open bipod, a folded bipod, and a spare barrel case.

This one is the early style with the horizontal cocking handle but unfortunately it is missing several small details to make it a true early style. This one has the latter style flash hider collar with four rings instead of five and is missing the the mounting stud under the cooling jacket use for the bipod when folded. This still allows you to use it as a mid war hybrid as an upgraded early, but you can’t really use it as a true 1942-early 1943 model.

The moulding is well done and is very clean and sharp with only small pour tabs to remove and no other clean-up required. The muzzle is hollowed out and the inside of the receiver has the correct detail for the feed tray and the bolt spring. The cooling jacket has the correct holes and slots on all four sides, though they could be a bit deeper to provide a better sense of the jacket being hollow inside.

As far as the rest of the detail goes this is a very well done little piece of kit, with the only real omission being the lack of the screw-bolt head on the base and underside of the buttstock, something that seems to crop up in pretty much every 1/35 MG42. ( Speaking of the buttstock, to be a true early this should be a black bakerlite one, not wooden so worth keeping that in mind when painting ).

The other parts are equally well done, though the bipod adjustment knob on the open bipod should really be bigger ( a small piece of plastic rod or stretched sprue is an easy fix ). The spare barrel carrier is very well detailed, as are the ammo belts which include the starter tabs. The 50rd drum magazine is also well done though it lacks any exposed rounds or the prominent starter tab that hangs from these when they are loaded.

Conclusion. So are these worth getting ? Short answer yes with a small qualification. The proviso is that these particular ones aren’t true early style MG-42s, though they can be quite easily fixed. These will cost around $10NZD/$8USD ex-Hong Kong and you get two plus bits in each set. The level of detail is a  lot better than the majority of plastic offerings with really only the Dragon Gen 2 version getting close, although that lacks proper underside detail on the cooling jacket and the inside of the receiver isn’t as well detailed as these are.

So if you want better detailed 1/35 MG42s then yes the Tank ones are well worth the investment, though if your setting is mid-1943 onwards get the late MG42 version, they’ll be both more accurate and more appropriate.

If you want the best MG42 regardless of price check THIS.

      

AM Part Review : Barrel Depot Flexible Ammo Belts

  By Dean | February 22, 2012 - 3:45 pm | 2. Reviews
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This is just going to be a very short and simple review of a small and simple piece of kit that will be quite a handy little addition to many a kit. Barrel Depot calls these “Flexible Ammo Belts” and market them as suitable for 1/48 and 1/35 ( item number BD-R0001 ), and that’s pretty much exactly what they are.

Each packet comes with two belts attached to a pour plug with each belt being 37.5mm in length ( an inch and a half to Americans ) and each round being 2.5mm long so these will work fine for German 7.92mm, British .303 and American .30cal ammo belts in 1/35 ( and they’ll most likely work for .50cal M2 belts in 1/48 though they scale out at around 120mm rather than the .50s actual 138mm ).

When I first saw these I was a little dubious of the “flexible” part of the title but yes they are, these are made of a soft vinyl material and are fully flexible, that is to say bendable, they don’t move at each link like a real ammo belt does, but they can be bent or twisted around and back and into pretty much any shape you like. 

The hard part is getting them to stay in that shape as they tend to want to spring back. So far I’ve tried moulding one to shape and coating it with super glue and that seems to work though it can be a little fiddly as you need to coat them, get them quickly into place, hold them there, then coat them again. If anyone knows of a way that works better feel free to sound off.

The moulding is very good, it’s nice and clean and the detail is sharp. The bullets are a little less pointed than real ones but this really isn’t that noticeable viewed normally ( the close up shot tends to accentuate this point but life size the rounded nose isn’t so prominent ). As I said the bullets are a little more rounded than the real ones but they work, and if you’re suffering a bad case of AMS you can always carefully trim each a little on each side ( it’s easy to do but tedious work ).

All in all they’re not expensive and they’re very handy so well worth having a couple of sets in the spares box.

Kit Review : PlusModel German Heavy Generator A ( Resin Kit )

  By Dean | February 21, 2012 - 8:25 am | 2. Reviews
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One thing that frequently gets overlooked in regular injection moulded plastic kits is the support vehicles, and even more-so the ancillary equipment used to support combat vehicles. Bronco has addressed this to a small degree with the Sd.An.52 Ammunition trailer and the recent Telemeter KDO Mod.40, and AFV Club does the Flak-Sw 36 Searchlight but for the most part if you want these smaller pieces of support equipment you need to turn to resin kits. If you want a German generator to power your radio truck or a small toolshop then you’ll find yourself pretty much limited to this Sd.Ah.24 from Plusmodel, a Czech Resin manufacturer with quite an extensive range ( or go hunting for the hard to find Fine Casts Stromgenerator ).

This kit contains 54 grey resin parts plus a small photo-etch fret and a small sheet of decals. The moulding is sharp and straight, there was quite a bit of flash on this one but it was very light and easy to remove. More importantly ( to me at least ) the pour plugs are easy to remove and don’t involve removing important details when done.

The level of detail is very good and includes such fine detail as separate plug outlet covers. One thing that is missing though is the hand crank ( see photo HERE ) and though this isn’t an essential part of the trailer and is an easy part to scratchbuild I do feel it should be there.

Assembly is very easy, it’s quite a simple kit and the instructions are clear and easy to follow coming as two double sided A4 sheets printed with black and white line diagrams and broken down into 20 steps plus a painting and decal guide. Though straight forward it’s a surprisingly big piece of equipment, being similar in size to a Kubelwagen.

You get the option of having the side doors open or closed which allows you to have it being towed or deployed, though you will have to use a little brain power to decide which parts to locate differently to depict it in transit as the instructions only show it made up in a deployed state. This isn’t too hard to do though as it’s pretty self explanatory, and I guess PlusModel assumed that with all the detail builders would want to show it off.

In conclusion. If I had a complaint about this kit it would be that no wiring is included, nor a wiring diagram, though the cover art does show wires in place. It’s a personal niggle but when it comes to radios and this sort of machinery I feel like it isn’t really complete without the wiring and it would be nice to see manufacturers including at least a guide to save the builder having to try and find the references themselves. 

All that aside this is a very nice kit of a very handy piece of equipment. Being resin it isn’t cheap but it is worth the price. Also being resin it may put some people off if they aren’t experienced in the medium but this one is actually a very straight forward build with the proviso that due care is taken with the parts clean up. Definitely worth picking up if you have need for this type of kit.

WALKAROUND : You’ll find a very useful walkaround of a restored Sd.Ah.24 HERE.

                       

Book Review – Westwall ; German Armour In The West, 1945 : OPG ( Under The Gun #3 )

  By Dean | February 8, 2012 - 2:48 pm | 2. Reviews
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The Oliver Publishing Group is a book publisher based in Australia who provide a high quality range of reference books on armour. Westwall ; German Armour In The West, 1945 is the third book in the “Under The Gun” series which combines text, black and white period photos and photo plates showing various camouflage and marking options, many of which are taken from the photographs.

The quality of the black and white photos is very good, with the clean-up of the originals done extremely well, giving good clear images. If you’re familiar with the Panzerwreck titles then these books are in the same category when it comes to the quality of the photos.

Where these books really stand out for me though is in the level of research. Over the years ( or decades ) we’ve had many books covering various aspects of WWII armour and they have varied from the very bad to the very good, and what usually decides which end of the scale they end up in comes down to the level of accuracy, which itself comes down to the level of research. In that respect these titles are definitely up there at the top end. Just a quick read through the research credits shows that the author went beyond just collecting information from the usual sources to throw in time spent on some of the best armour related forums on the net.

As to the actual layout and content of this book, the text isn’t presented in the usual “story accompanied by photos” style, but rather in blocks of standalone text together with extensive photo captions. There are also two extremely useful unit structure tables ( one for Oberbefehlshaber West, the other for Panzer Division Clausewitz ) and a full page breakdown of which units had what armour and how many of each.

As far as the photos go there are over fifty that vary from quarter to full page, with the great majority being half page or larger, and as mentioned are nice clear images with each being accompanied by good, informative text which on occasion even goes as far as to point out features which have become fainter with the photo clean-up process.

The coloured section comes in the middle with six pages of full colour artwork, and again you can see the attention to detail here. These are a huge help when it comes to referencing vehicles as they were in the final months of the war. The layout is very similar the artwork in the Panzer Colour books ( which are likely better known to those of us who do actually get into the whole research thing ), or even the colour sheets that accompany Bison decals ( who have done accompanying sets of decals to compliment OPG’s books in the past ).

I love these sorts of books, for me they’re hugely useful in researching ideas for builds and for getting an idea for how a particular unit marked and painted their vehicles and I do like when books like this are specific to a particular location/point in time. But even if you’re not the sort who really cares whether or not the markings on your model are historically accurate to the month and the town these are a facinating read, just looking over the various photos of the period. 

This is a damn good book and I really can’t recommend this one highly enough, it should be on the book shelf of any fan of WWII armour, and German armour in particular .

Author : Dennis Oliver
Publisher : Oliver Publishing Group ( www.oliverpublishinggroup.com )
Pages : 34 containing B&W Photos and colour artwork plates
Binding : Softcover
Size : 212mm x 297mm
ISBN : 978-0-9806593-6-8
 
 

 Click on thumbnails to enlarge images.