I painted the entire composition with Revell enamels – 79 being the main color and 57 as well as mixes of the two used to vary the shades in different places. I also added the white rectangles on both the Horch and trailer fenders, but these almost disappeared under the dust I applied later.
Seats were brushed with Revell 381 and given a thin acrylic wash to accentuate the molded-on uneven surface (again a nice touch by Dragon). Tires were sprayed Revell 78 to simulate a bleached/dusty effect, and then added to the vehicle body and the trailer. The exhaust pipes and muffler were basecoated with Revell 37 to simulate rust and glued on the vehicle. I then proceeded to add some metal chips by drybrushing Tamiya’s X11.
Since I got the kit to build as a reviewer for Armorama I started almost immediately after taking the pics. Here’s how the build went through.
I started by adding the lower engine compartment/radiator face and the firewall to the vehicle body.
Horch front
Other than filling the seam line in the front wheel arches these fit fine.
Wheel arc seam
Next step was the suspension. After carefully studying reference images I glued parts B9 and B10 first, and then proceeded to add the suspension arms.
Frame and suspension
Please note that all 4 parts are labeled B7, but the parts intended for the rear axle have an extra pair of locating pins. With these fixed I glued the 8 springs (parts B8) to parts B10 and B11. So far fit has been very good. I cut off the representation of the rubber mudguards and replaced them with thick aluminum foil.
Well the DML people kinda got it wrong, because the box top says “Typ 40”, where the boxart and the parts depict the earlier version (Typ 1a). It has the spare wheels exposed on the vehicle body sides, while the Typ 40 has flat side walls, as the spare wheels are located inside the vehicle body.
The kit contains 91 parts, including
88 plastic parts
2 photoetched parts on 1 fret
1 clear part for the windshield
The Dragon team has simply included one of the vehicles found in the Horch 1+1 combo (kit 7378) and added a towed 20mm AA gun.
There are 54 parts used for the Horch “jeep”. 50 of those are located on sprue B.
Much-smaller than it’s Soviet counterpart below, the FLAK-38 is represented by fewer parts. The crew consists of an aimer/gunner and a loader.
Details are well-represented on the gun – even bolt heads on both sides of the armored shield are represented. Please note that transport trailer and ammo boxes are not included.
The flash hider is a bit too bulky, but should be easy to replace with a self-made cooking-foil detail. My main concern is that the sprue gate that is located on the barrel is almost as thick, so care should be taken when separating that detail. It could also use some seam-line cleaning, esp. on the small shield just in front of the breech.
Russian kit manufacturer Zvezda has literally exploded with news during the past year. They’ve announced a massive ammount of kits in various scales – from 1/350 ships through a number of 1/72 war gaming (snap fit) sets to 1/48 aircraft and 1/35 figure sets and armor kits.
I am going to have a look at three WW2 72nd scale sets tonight that are intended to be used with Zvezda’s own board gaming system “Art of tactic”:
