Well then, time to blow the cobwebs off this again!
With the announcement of Battlegroup: Malaya now a thing, and a rough timescale of Summer 2025 finally giving me some sort of deadline and payoff for getting this finished, a start has once again been made.
Been a bit too hot for painting small metal figures in the loft this weather (and I probably need to get my eye back in again, anyway) so I decided to ease myself in gently, with what I thought would be two quick builds. Wrong.
These 20mm M3 Stuart Is are not one of PSC's finer kits. I suspect they've been scaled up from the 15mm originals, and what was a very small mismatch in parts fit has been increased accordingly, leading to some major reprofiling of the track inners being required. On top of this, the instructions list some of the wrong parts for the "early" model, which does not help the fit of the turret, the parts have mould seams/flash that wouldn't be out of place on 1970s Matchbox bendy figures, the whole thing appears to have been moulded from edam and I can only assume the .30 cal Brownings have been included purely for comedy value, and are fit only for the bin. It's also rather overscale.
All that being said though, I'm not just ragging on PSC, since everything else from their stable I've built has been absolutely fine, it does build up into a rather charming little piece-
Detailed up with stowage from various sources, replacement .30s from Sgts Mess (on which I drilled out the barrels, for... reasons) and a crew figure from Foundry. The flash around the vision slits was so bad I sliced of the detail and replaced it with some plasticard. Which looks awful
I'd originally only planned on getting one to give my force a bit if forward stretch into Burma 1942, but after eventually finding a decal sheet with markings for 7th Armoured Brigade (while getting it for something else) it had enough for two vehicles, so...
in any case, I've just bought yet another Japanese tank, so fair's fair.
Following this, I decided to try and press on with the Airfix Buffalo. Reasonably pleased so far. I don't usually go in for weathering planes much, but the Far East seems like an appropriate exception. The poor old Buffalo got run ragged and I doubt the ground crews had much chance for any sort of cosmetic maintainance...
That and I'm trying to disguise the absolute hoop I made of washing the rivet lines.
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