Continuing with the 'Modelling the..' series is this one on the M113 series. These vehicles started out as simple 'boxes on tracks' Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs), but have evolved over the years to much more than that. Some of the more modern versions are nearly indistinguishable from the original. The author of this volume is active duty Canadian Army and involved with a trials unit so has first hand experience with the type. This series has evolved into a pretty standard format that provides an introduction that provides a brief history of the type as well as some useful tools and materials.

There are five construction articles in this book. All of them are 1/35, mainly, I suppose, to the dearth of available kits in any other scale. Each article is rated just a bit more difficult than the previous one, though none of them are out of the box so your lowest rating is a 2 out of 5 and that is a kit bash which combines the materials from several kits to complete the projects. For sure, the modeler has to be well-heeled to do any of the projects!

Without further ado, here is a brief rundown on the articles provided:

#1 is a YPR-765 PRAT which is built by combining an AFV Club YPR-765 with an Academy FIST-V and other bits coming from Italeri and Tamiya kits as well as several aftermarket sources. Scratch building skills are also needed.

#2 is also a 2 of 5 kitbash to make a K263 out of two Academy kits (KIFV and M163A2) as well as few photo etch sets and other bits.

#3 is an M92 PNMK rated 3 of 5 and based on Accurate Armor's M92 PNMK conversion set and the Academy FIST-V. More aftermarket brass bits and a bit of scratch-building are needed for this as, really, is required for them all.

#4 is rated 4 of 5 in terms of difficulty and is a 4X25mm SIDAM air defense version. It is based on the Academy M163A1 with a long list of aftermarket bits. The gun turret and housings are basically scratch built but make into a most impressive model. It would have been nice to have included plans so that others could duplicate this variant instead of the multiple pages of images of the completed model, but those are not provided.

#5 is the most difficult build, a Lynx Command and Reconnaissance Vehicle based on the Hobby Fan Lynx C&R kit. Again, a long list of aftermarket bits and a lot of scratch-building went into this one.

All of the articles show the various models under construction so you can see what went into the building of each subject. This is followed by numerous photos of the completed kit, all very well done and crisply rendered.

The final part of the book is a bibliography, listing of available kits and aftermarket bits, a museum listing where you can go to see the real things and a paint chart (which to me is of dubious use as they are not paint chips and the colors all seem streaky and pretty close to each other).

So, once more a very nice book that covers five excellent and well documented builds. Though I'm primarily an aircraft builder, I have been able to glean information on techniques that I'd otherwise not know about. The quality of the builds are first-rate and that alone makes this a book well worth having.

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