38(t) Ausf. E/F

[Adam Durrant]

With the workbench clear I wanted a quick build to consolidate a few of the techniques I used in the Kugelpanzer builds. The wee Trumpeter 38(t) E/F has been in the stash for a while.

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I opened the box to find that at some stage I had bought an Eduard PE set for it (I truly don’t recall ever doing that)…so it may not be as fast a build as I thought

[Olivier Carneau]

So did I with a kit of mine. It's always a good surprise to discover AM stuff you've forgotten.
Enjoy the build.

[Philipp Gross]

Good choice Adam! I've built this one before and it's a nice little kit OOTB, I'm curious how it'll look with all the extra etch

Philipp

[Adam Durrant]

Thanks guys.

The PE set includes replacement fenders. These are a lot of work but one down, one to go! So far I’m here;

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The box on the left rear was a kit in itself. Not being a German tank nerd, can anyone tell me what it’s for? It has five chains hanging out the bottom.

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[Philipp Gross]

You're off to a good start Adam

The little box on the rear is a smoke candle rack. The smoke candles could be dropped one at a time from the inside, then the chain would pull the fuse as it fell. The tank would then revert into the smoke screen and withdraw.

This system was replaced in late 1942 by the well known turet-mounted smoke launchers, which were soon found out to be vulnerable to infantry fire. This in turn was replaced in 1944 by the Nahverteidigungswaffe, a small rotating mortar in the turret roof, which could launch smoke and illumination shells as well as fragmentation grenades for close defense.

Philipp

[Adam Durrant]

Thanks Phil!

The tracks are awful. The details are really soft and there is an ejection pin mark in the centre of each link. I started putting them together then gave up and binned them. I had these in the stash;

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I had planned to use them on another project but I can always get more! The instructions suggest 95-95 links per side but 93 is about right.

[Adam Durrant]

Two nights of cutting plastic and I have two little lengths of track and a massive stack of landfill….

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Back to the main build!

[Vincent Power]

Nice work Adam. Patience is a virtue when putting those tracks together.

Vincent

[Adam Durrant]

…and I’m done!

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All the PE done, muffler textured with modeling filler, tarps from two part epoxy. Most frustrating part to build was the smoke dischargers on the rear fender. Eduard would have you make the mortars out of rolled PE. No matter how much I annealed the brass it was still very stiff so I drilled out plastic tube to get a scale wall thickness instead.

[Milan Mynar]

Great work.