MAC 1/72 20mm Flak 30

KIT:

MAC 1/72 20mm Flak 30

KIT #

72053

PRICE:

$18,98      

DECALS:

None

REVIEWER:

Scott Van Aken

NOTES:

 

BACKGROUND

For a look at what's in the box and a brief historical section, please visit the preview.

 

CONSTRUCTION

Construction begins with the cockpit......No.....Wait.....I've been doing too many aircraft. Construction begins with the gun mount. The parts on this kit are not large and as I mentioned in the preview, all of them need to have the edges cleaned up. Break out the Opti-Visor! This is not a kit that will take a long time to build. The plastic bits go together rather quickly. However, the application of the etched metal bits will require some care to get just right.

I did run into a few areas of concern. One is that there really isn't enough room between the gun mount plates for the gun. I glued the gun mount panels on the lines shown on the platform, but when it came to attach the gun (not an easy task as there is not any positive locators), the upper part was farther apart than the base. I'd suggest mounting the gun barrel assembly to the side plates before gluing them to the base. Not easy, but one way to ensure proper alignment.

It is during this and other construction stages where the very detailed drawings came in handy. Thanks to them, I was sorta able to figure out where parts should go and be sure that things were properly aligned or not.  The actual construction of the plastic pieces was easily accomplished in just a few hours of cleaning and gluing.

The kit actually is done is two stages. The first one is the assembly of the plastic bits. The rest is the attachment of all the etched brass parts. I had no trouble cutting the brass (I use scissors) and with the help of an Opti-visor and tweezers, was able to attach things pretty well. You have to make a short section of stretched sprue for the manual azimuth wheel in front of the gunner, but it isn't a problem for most of us. It was the gun shields that caused me a problem. Though I thought that I had things properly built, I was unable to get the lower shield to mate to the lower gun frame as shown in the instructions and drawings. The upper mount kept it too far forward. As a result, I had to glue the shield braces lower than I'd have liked. It also meant that the small barrel shield was too far forward. 

In hindsight, you need to think ahead to the etched brass bits before you start gluing anything. This basically means paying attention to the gun shield. I found that on my kit, I had the gun  mounted a bit too far back and the upper gun mount was too far forward to get the proper alignment for the gun shield and braces. I highly recommend on your kit that you assemble the gun shield and then do lots of dry fitting of the plastic parts prior to any gluing to make sure that all will fit as advertised. If you don't, you'll have the problems that I did late in construction.

 

CAMOUFLAGE

Well, one has three choices: overall Panzer Grey, overall Afrika Korps Desert Sand, or a combo of Light Green and Sand. I chose the latter. I painted the gun and the trailer separately. It was a simple job of first painting on the Sand and then the Light Green. I used Humbrol Colors suggested by a local armor expert as I'm rather clueless when it comes to crawly things. The paints worked beautifully as is the norm with Humbrol. When it was dried, a wash was put on it and I drybrushed it to bring out some detail (and because it seems to be the thing to do with military subjects). T

FINAL CONSTRUCTION

Acutally this consists of two things. One was gluing the wheels onto the trailer. The other was attaching the gun to the trailer. In order to make it easy to load and unload, the gun attached to the bottom of the trailer. I had to thin the attachment arms at the very end to enable them to fit into the slots on the end of the trailer. I also had to remove a small wedge of plastic from the back of the gun mount so it would properly fit to the underside of the trailer. And that was it.

CONCLUSIONS

That was really a pretty painless kit. It took me less than a week to build (greased lightning for me), was easy to paint and was something that I'd not built in a LONG time. It was fun. With all that brass in the shield, it is nose-heavy so you do need to be careful to display it either glued to a base of some sort or attached to a hauler. Without the trailer, it will stand on its own, but barely. It is a kit that I can recommend to all who are not real fearful of etched brass and can handle the somewhat small parts.

December 2002
#1254 in a series

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