By Antonio Busciglio
The model I wanted to build was the version that ran on the Tour de Corse in 1984 season, driven by Attilio Bettega (who lost its life in the same car during the 1985 season) with Cresto as a co driver. The Martini livery makes this car absolutely stunning, but also quite demanding for the modeler. Moreover, the only plastic kit available on the market is the not so recent Hasegawa kit. In my opinion It’s quite well designed, easy to assemble parts, good general fitting, good materials quality. However...
By Michael Mandau
Brach Models, who is known for their wide range of conversion sets and full resin kits of almost unknown variants and models of World War II tanks, recently released another great product. This time they brought up a set of Italian Assault Guns, one of them is the Semovente M42 75/18, which I am going to build here.
By Mario Covalski
To improve the Heng Long T-90 I read some books and gathered information/photos from the web. This little research made me know more about these compact Russian tanks T-72/T-90, and so I grew my interest in them. So I bought the 1/16 T-72 Trumpeter kit. This kit was designed not only for static but also for RC. The static version has some extra details and modifications, reminds me the, T-34 from WSN, a brand with which Trumpeter sold the T-34 RC. The philosophy of the T-72 is the same, I still believe that the T-34 gearbox with its motors, would fit in the hull. Perfectly.
By Antonio Busciglio
The model nicely reproduces the shape of the car, but most of the details are missing, or oversimplified due to production and technology issues. On this basis, I decided to build this model adding as much detail as possible for my skills. As an additional difficulty, there are nearly no detail sets for this kit, so it would be necessary to add them from scratch. In particular, I used a large number of resin rivets and bolts, some turned bolts, leftover photoetched from my spare box and a lot of scratch-building. In this tutorial I’ll describe all the building process in detail. I hope you’ll enjoy building this model as I did.
By Michael Mandau
I was always fascinated by those tiny tanks with their unique and compact design and I had planned to build one for quite a while. Recently I got an old 1/35 scale Dragon #6030 Hetzer early version. This kit is almost 13 years old and you can clearly see some missing details but in overall it’s a good model. For some additional details I bought the Eduard 35385 Hetzer photoetched set which would be used. For me it’s a big inducement to use the old despised kits with minor additional parts and show what still could be done out of it. Together with the etch-set the total price was below 20€ and therefore also something for modelers with an economical budget.
By Fabrice Marechal
Certainly, Italeri offer us a kit that, once finished, is really a beautiful and shocking model due to its size, we are not accustomed to seeing a Fiat 500 in 1/12 scale. There is very little to be changed or improved to make the most of it. Unfortunately, some construction steps are not easy to understand and instructions are not always clear. In this respect, Italeri did nothing to facilitate the modelers’ work, and assembling the headlights, window frames, bodywork, etc., are a bit complicated. I built the model almost out of the box, enhancing the painting and assembling was correct and error free as far as possible, and I think it will be an excellent guide for those who want to face this project, having in advance the difficulties you’ll have to face and a good painting guide.
By Mario Covalski
In May 2001 I wrote a brief preview on the Protar's 1/12 Alfa Romeo 179. This wonderful Formula One was one of the few cars in modern F1 history which chassis and engine were the same brand. Is this model really difficult? This is the key question for this model, and the answer is NO. If it were a Tamiya model, that is to say the same matrix but injected with Tamiya plastic and having the quality control of this huge Japanese company, I would say that this is one of the most delicious models I have ever built. Unfortunately, it has some flaws, mainly due to its poor quality than to the work of the Protar craftsmen.
By Mario Covalski
This article will be useful to anybody who wants to pursue this project, I decided to write it in the form of an instruction manual, following the steps set forth in the Tamiya's instruction manual, but also indicating all modifications to be made in order to insert the "Perfect Parts" metal parts, along with suggestions and advice on my experience with this model on every stage of the construction.
All general recommendations on the use of CA and handling of metal and photoetched parts can be found in the previous articles.
By Jose Angel García Martin
The aircraft I’m representing here belonged to the Cyclons of the US Navy and I considered to build it due to its attractive camouflage even the radar cone what makes it very interesting for the modeler. Its yellow and sand colors weathering and “washes” were the final push that made me take the decision of choosing this version. My idea was to represent the aircraft in its first stages of the Ejercito del Aire. The aim of this tutorial is to share with the reader the work, with simple techniques and materials available to all, it can be easily reproduced by a less experienced modeller.
By Michael Mandau
Because of the unbelievable size and the never completed prototype-phase, this vehicle was always on my wish list to build. But I just didn’t wanted to build a regular E-100 that have been seen plenty of times before I like dirty paper-panzer with unusual features. So I decided to create a 1947 E-100 Aus. C fantasy tank in a “what-if” scenario. Therefore I was able to get the early Dragon 1/35 #6011 quite a while ago. Due to the fact that this kit celebrated its 20th birthday this year, my expectations into detail and quality were not too high. Nevertheless, Dragon made a got job two decades ago, but some parts had to be exchanged and complemented.
By Jaime Pastor Pueyo
I bought this kit years ago but, as usual, it ended up in the shelves close to dozens of boxes. However, someday I found a photo in a book, and I remembered where the kit was stored. When I opened the box, I could not put it away again.
By Mario Covalski
This article aims at leading the reader through the assembly process of a Tamiya Datsun 240Z in 1/12 scale. On next pages, I’ll explain the different techniques I used for the construction of the models, and though some of them are obsolete, they’re still very useful for beginners. Although this article is focused to novices, I think that even will be useful for advanced modelers to take ideas and several recommendations, if they have not built this kit yet.
By Antonio Busciglio
This tutorial aims at sharing the building process for the Tamiya kit. The Leyton House is a typical Tamiya kit of the nineties, with good quality and details, but with several fitting issues. I wanted to build a curbside model, focusing on the car shape and livery, rather than the inner mechanical details. It would be an almost OOB build, with modifications only when they were necessary to achieve a better fit and / or to increase the overall realism.
By Mario Covalski
The aim of this tutorial is to share with the reader the work of adding some details to the plastic, with nothing more than what I had in the spare box, spending very little money in the electronics, but trying to get a model that looks like a scale model and not a toy. In order not to disappoint anybody, I’ll not going to place the emphasis in the mechanical or electronic improvements since they are widely known, but will share the simple modifications and/or additions I made which are easily reproducible. I took some artistic freedom in some areas, to my personal taste, but I indicate the way it should be.
By Fabrice Marechal
When I was asked to build the Italeri Mirage, I was really excited. I had dreamed since long ago with building and representing the weathering using new technologies on an aircraft. As some friends know, I’m colorblind and never could realize about the colors of an aircraft weathering. I used to build a lot of 1/72 Matchbox kits (some military vehicles) as a child , sometimes painting them. Anyway, nothing to do with the new techniques and besides, since the age of twelve, I’ve not touched a military kit.
By Mario Covalski
This short tutorial is similar to the one I wrote about the Abrams, both were built at the same time and I used common solutions, so the reader will find much of shared text with the Abrams. The aim of this short article is to share with the reader, the work of adding several details to the plastic with no more things that I had in my spare box, with a minimum electronic inversion, gear box, wheels…etc. but trying to get the aspect of a model that looks like an hobby grade RC Challenger and not an expensive toy. In order not to be disappointed , I’ll not concentrate in the mechanical or electronic improvements since they’re widely known and the work done was the minimum as possible.
By Claudio Kalicinski
As you probably already know, the Italeri kit is a reboxing of the Occidental kit. This kit was harshly criticized because it had some nose shape problems. I read in other web pages that the kit was fixed, but it wasn’t. However, this reboxing looks far better, with its stunning box art and large decal sheet, than the previous Occidental release.
By Jose I. Hernandez Diez
Tamiya have been offering high quality motorcycles kits very detailed and good presentation. If you add to this the modern detail sets, the result will be a superb museum piece that will look striking in any showcase, this is the case of the of the Yamaha YZR M-1 (#14104) to which I added several aftermarket. The aim of this article is to share with readers my experience in the construction of this model with these extra sets, so here I will basically refer to their use.
By David Guardia
My dear friend, J.J Aos, who is himself an encyclopedia, gave me all the necessary information to place it in Pakistan. Although it is common to find pictures of Chaffles of late production, the early ones were also seen, included in the last Pakistan's 1971 conflict with India. Of course, exactly when I finished my model painting, Bronco Models offer the final release, Have you heard of Murphy’s law…?
By Alessandro Prini
Building a F50 GT starting from a regular Tamiya F50 was quite complex. The transkits that are available up to the moment I’m writing this article, do not convince me, they have thick parts and lack of detailing.