PlasticPanzers.com Forum

You asked for it.

Here are a few images of my recently completed Sirene. It's a 1/20 scale model of autonomous hover tank Kow designed in 2006. He based the original design on the Robosweep. A useless link> floor sweeper <link that does little more than push dust around. Kow added numerous kit greeblies and lots of auto body putty to complete the design. Due to the sheer size, no injection kit has been released. In late 2017 FutchFactor released a limited run resin kit of this design in which I assisted identifying donor parts and sending parts to be used for the master.

Despite the size - the single piece main hull is a little or 12" long - it was a quick build because of the clever kit layout. I used the motor mechanism of a Robosweep I found in a charity shop/thrift store and added a few leds. The gearbox did not have enough power to move the model and I forgot to turn on the LEDs for the photos.

I wanted a used but not overly weathered look. The sheer size of the kit posed some issues with everything from handling the model, wrapping my head around weathering, to fitting it on my photo station.









Additional images can be found here: Za-603 Sirene

Amazing as usual!

Hmm, I see Panther grilles and a railway bogie

Philipp

Wow....Really nice looking!

Thanks!

Some of the donor parts can be difficult to ID. One of the most challenging was one Futch found - the large rear deck boxes have aircraft wings glued to the sides. But what kind? I was able to ID them as a 1/72 F4U Corsair based off the spacing of the shell casing ejection ports. But not just any Corsair. Futch went thru three different kits to find the correct OOP Heller Corsair with folding wings. Another challenging one was the PzIV hull air vents. These come from the Dragon Flakpanzer IV Kugelblitz. No other kit has the parts configured like this.

But Kow uses everything. The base of the "shoulders" that is blended to the hull is an M&M candy heart shaped container. The half spheres are from a Japanese toy that can only be found in street corner vending machines.

We call this kind of research "MaK Archeology." Picking apart Kow's designs to find what donor kits he used and its a real international group effort.

""We call this kind of research "MaK Archeology." Picking apart Kow's designs to find what donor kits he used and its a real international group effort.""

Love it Bryan

After your explanation it all becomes clear, though the wings are still a mystery!

It looks good even though it must be a big one!

Great work

Steve H

So cool Bryan, keep posting these builds, you are wetting my appetite to try something other than tanks/planes