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The year is 2025. The New Zealand Army has issued a tender for a light, tracked, vehicle to replace its fleet of NZLAVs. The vehicle must be light, fast and nimble. It must be capable of supporting troops in open country and take on much heavier vehicles, but also be at home in built up areas. Obrum of Poland enter the PL-01 Light Tank. A joint concept venture with BAE in 2013, it has finally been brought to fruition and is now ready for export sales. Based on the Swedish CV-90120T, the final vehicle weighs 40t, has a crew of three and packs a 120mm smoothbore cannon capable of firing standard ammo or guided missiles. An autoloader has 16 ready rounds with a further 29 in the hull. A coaxial MAG58 MG complements the main gun and the commander has a remote weapons station carrying your choice of armament up to a 40mm grenade launcher. The engine is front mounted, and the crew operate from a protected "capsule" in the middle of the vehicle. Passive protection is modern spaced composite armour with bolt on modules that can be replaced in the field if damaged. Active protection suites are also offered, and the vehicle has a modern, angular shape with thermal and radar shielding.

That's my excuse for building this as a potential replacement for the NZLAVs.



The kit comes in the usual robust Takom box with plans in an A4 book format as 3D line drawings. There is a small sheet of decals for 4 marking options, two as concept vehicles, 2 as service vehicles. A small PE fret is also provided. The hull halves, side skirt armour units and the turret upper are separate mouldings. There is a small sprue of clear parts and then three large sprues in grey plastic for the kit. One of these has the link and length tracks, one the running gear, so there is only one sprue of parts for the actual vehicle. Takom also provide a jig for assembling the tracks with the correct sag. The pity is most of it will be hidden once the side skirt armour is fitted.



Should be a quick build, camo scheme will be made-up but that should be fun in itself.

Definitely one of the weirdest tanks out there! I'm very much curious how the kit builds up

Philipp

Looks like a Sci-Fi movie prop rather than a serious piece of military hardware I look forward to seeing you get stuck into this one Adam.

Vincent

Should be a fun project. Looking forward to progress.

Hi Adam,

I'll be keen to watch what you do here. I was looking at this kit the other day trying yo decide if it held an interest for me.

A what if project is a good idea. Imagination is the limit for a colour scheme, and it's simple flat shapes look nice and easy to work with..

A kit review i read said it had pre sagged tracks? I wouldn't have thought this tank would have saggy tracks

There's a jig for building the link and length tracks that models the sag. There are no return rollers so a gentle sag is moulded. Not really an issue as the entire running gear is covered by the side armour.

I'm looking for camo/colour scheme inspiration at the moment. NZ armour has either been some shade of green or tan. For a period of time we used some form of MERDC scheme. I'm thinking it needs some form of "digital" scheme and I do have a cutting mat designed to help masks for this, but I see a lot of effort to do it!

The Dark Grey scheme on the box top is also very effective.

Yeah, not much to be seen of the tracks.

Imagining a new camo scheme can be fun but challenging. That's why i was thinking of this kit myself, so i could some fun with colours

I had a few ideas where i was going to look.

First, the animal world. Sea creatures ESPECIALLY have some very cool camo
https://www.google.com/search?biw=1366& ... CAY&uact=5

And browse some of the schemes gamers put on their tanks
https://store.steampowered.com/news/pos ... 1512135014

Or how about what BAE have done with the CV90
https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/cv90-mkiv

My other thought was to do a throw back to an old camo scheme such as the Solomon scheme on WWI tanks. I saw a model on Instagram of an AT-ST walker that had been painted in a Caunter scheme, it was very effective.

Made a start this evening. As usual, the Takom sprue attachment points are huge, but they have been smart with ejection marks all hidden, and nil to very little mould lines or flash.

What you get in the box;



Not a lot really, so should be a quick build....famous last words

Already got the running gear completed. The track "forms" for making the link and length tracks do double duty to align the torsion bar arms, but its not really needed as they are a firm press fit so essentially no play at all.

More to follow...

That looks like a nice simple kit Adam

Those track building jigs are handy