8404 Diorama Studios

After the UPS fiasco, getting my hands on this bad boy was a happening worth waiting for. Got cracking on it on Leap Day afternoon and made a huge amount of progress – testament to the kit’s quality, there are a ton of parts but nothing overly complex; cleanup is a breeze thanks to the lack of flash and good mold alignment. The upper surfaces have the anti-slip coating molded in which is nice; it’s not overly done, equally nice. So far as accuracy goes, LTC(IDF, Ret.) Michael Maas of Desert Eagle Publications and the Israeli Armor Museum at Latrun assisted with the kit’s design and development. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there probably aren’t going to be too many errors in this kit, not when you have a SME involved in the kit development.

In the space of roughly two hours I managed to get the lower hull and 98% of the suspension built; that also includes time outs for laundry changeovers – SWMBO is a saint but I also have my chores and laundry is one of them. Had it not been laundry day I would have closed up the lower hull entirely without a doubt, thanks UPS you did me a solid…