Thursday, July 18, 2013

Military Illustrated Modeller Issue 28

The M1A1 Abrams is the main weapon of the US Army, Army National Guard and the United States Marine Corps. Its development is the 3rd generation of tanks post WW2. In recent years the M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams fleet have been going through a complete overhaul programme to bring them back to a 'like new' condition. In addition to the overhauls, an armour package has been developed for urban activities; TUSK, or 'Tank Urban Survivability Kit'. There are two versions of this system; TUSK I, commonly found on the M1A1 and TUSK II, found on the Ml A2. There are several kits to depict the TUSK Abrams and Tamiya has just released the TUSK l/ll in plastic. Perfect Scale Modellbau along with Legend Productions offer resin upgrades for the Dragon Abrams kits. Because there is no plastic kit of the M1A1 with TUSK I, I choose to use the Dragon kit with the Perfect Scale resin conversion. I like to depart from the regular instructions and assemble, mainly so small parts are not damaged during the fitting of non kit-parts like the large resin bits. The Dragon kit is one of the best kits but still requires checking and re-checking of parts to insure proper alignment. Once the main kit parts are in place I start in on the resin parts.

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