I will try to build a German half-track Pakwagen from AFV Club this time. It was a half-track vehicle used in Germany during World War II and is commonly known as the Pakwagen. The vehicle was a variation of an armored personnel carrier with an anti-tank 75 mm PaK 40 anti-tank gun. I bought a 251 half-track kit in bulk a long time ago, and it’s one of them. Now it may not be easy to find them sold as new ones.
The chassis is being assembled. The bottom of the AFV body is molded with anti-slip edges, so it is quite precise.
Rolling wheel assembly in progress. There are a few more rolling wheel parts as it is a type that overlaps wheels like King Tiger and Panter.
The assembly of the lower part of the AFV is almost finished. I’m thinking of using the Hobby Boss connection-type track for the footwear, but it’s quite difficult to put it together. I’ve assembled it once before.
It’s time to paint the inside of the half-track. It is quite troublesome to have a kit with a painting process in the middle of AFV. Trucks and open-top AFVs usually have to be painted inside on the way.
I tentatively assembled the upper part and there seems to be no problem.
(2023/12/16)
The interior of the AFV was painted dark yellow. The inside of the tank is whitish, but in the case of the open top, there seems to be a lot of dark yellow.
The fine details such as the meter and the crew’s bench are also painted with a brush.
The Half-Track has a complicated polyhedral structure, so there are gaps here and there, and I filled them with putty. It is a light curing putty, so it was just sunny and the sun was shining, so I put it by the window to harden the putty. My cat is also basking in the sun, probably because it is cold in winter.
The body part is almost complete. It’s still a long way from being finished with the anti-tank gun attached and the track attached. I fill in the gaps with a lot of putty.
This is the connecting track for the 251 half-track of Hobby Boss. The price is reasonable, but it isn’t easy to assemble.
(2023/12/18)
The plastic is soft and feels different from Tamiya and Italeri plastic parts when cut with nippers. There are so many gates that it’s hard to separate, but I can’t help it.
When all the parts of the connecting track are separated, it looks very small. In the end, it was enough to spare a few pieces, but when I first saw it, I was worried.
This Hobby Boss connecting track is quite difficult to assemble, and I had to trim the fitting part of the long square part on the ground to fit well. I think I assembled it with a similar process when I made it before, but I can’t remember anymore. I bought it, so I’m going to use this track kit, but the rubber belt caterpillar that comes with it probably won’t bother me much. The assembling of a track is rather painful. When I’m working on an arduous, lengthy process, I watch my favorite videos, cartoons, and listen to my favorite music.
I managed to wind up one side of the track. This is the second time to assemble the Hobby Boss 251 connecting track, but it is still a little difficult.
(2023/12/23)
The 75 mm gun had a metal barrel. The round circle and the barrel are straight, so it has a precise feeling and is very good.
The shield is also made of brass plate. After painstakingly assembling the AFV body, the materials suddenly became luxurious. I got used to this assembly because I have made AFV Club 75 mm anti-tank guns before. It is a little hard because the parts are many and tiny.
I just put an anti-tank gun on the base, but the assembly was completed. The inside of the car is quite narrow, so it feels like the gun was loaded forcibly. It’s probably operated by about three crew, but it’s small. I think the half-track is light, so it will shake a lot due to the reaction of shooting. It looks good when it’s armed among 251 half-tracks.
The shield is double-layered and the thickness is reproduced with brass plate.
There are not so many exterior vehicles. I changed some of the clamps on the front part to the Aver etched parts, and it improved the precision.
I thought it would be completed by the end of the year, but it will take a while.
(2023/12/29)
The inside of the half-track body was masked and blocked. The inside of the armor is somewhat uneven and difficult to attach cleanly.
I painted it black. Thin parts such as the rear boarding door are seen here and there, so I felt again that painting with a dark color is effective in preventing the see-through, even apart from the painting effect. It’s hard to tell when it is in total darkness because the inside of the car is blocked like a tank, but there is a noticeable part when the AFV is open-top.
A basic dark yellow paint was painted.
Since the shape of the car body is complicated, I focused on airbrushing while paying attention to the unblown parts, but I forgot to paint the important anti-tank gun after putting away the paint and cleaning the airbrush. I can’t be bothered to do the same work again, so maybe next time.
This is the quiet compressor of AERO CROSS which was replaced last month when the Airtex one broke down. The sound doesn’t seem to bother my wife when she is relaxing in the next room, so I recommend it to people who hate working being a noisy or small workplace. I chose it based on YouTube videos of various professional plastic modelers. I feel a little underpowered when blowing thick paint, but it’s acceptable for me.
Since I live by the coast, I went to see the New Year’s sunrise. From Chigasaki Beach. I thought there would only be about 10 people, but I was surprised to see hundreds of them gathered. There are a lot of early risers. Japan places importance on the New Year, and Japan has a custom of carrying good luck with the first thing. Japanese love everything for the first time of the year.
(2024/01/02)
The instructions of the AFV Club didn’t show many painting examples, but I think I will finish it with a slightly irregular bandwidth of tricolor camouflage that I like the most.
The red-brown belt is narrow and difficult. But when I paint this, it suddenly looks like a German military vehicle.
Everything so far has been airbrushed. I tried to paint the track and front tires with airbrush thin blowing as much as possible. I think I can manage with a new compressor.
I wonder if AFV Club decals are not very durable. This one deteriorated so much that some of them shattered when soaked in water. Some of the unit marks and nationality marks are not included in the original, but I used them from other kits to fill a little space. I’m going to blow clear and protect it properly.
(2024/01/05)
The German Half-Track under build, Sd. Kfz. 251/22, 7.5cm anti-tank self-propelled gun has finally been completed. This is a pretty old kit from AFV Club. Even recently, Dragon released it about two years ago, but I wonder if this is a repackaging of an earlier product. Dragon may be good because it has connected tracks from the beginning. But the price is rather high.
The body was armored to protect the crew from the small fire. However, there is not enough defense force for the attack from the anti-tank gun because the armor thickness is thin.
This time, it is a tri-colored camouflage striped type with a very thin red-brown width. This kind of image was common in the latter half of World War II.
Some of the decals were so badly deteriorated that they were unusable, so others were used as vehicles for the 3rd Armored Division of the Wehrmacht. Most of the battlefields of this division were on the Russian front, and they were active in Kursk Tank Battle, Cherkasy, Kyiv, Dnieper, etc. In the final stage, they also participated in the siege of Budapest. It is unclear whether this type of vehicle was deployed to the 3rd Armored Division in the first place, but it is one example.
The 75 mm anti-tank gun was painted dark yellow without camouflage in the example. This gun is only mounted in the hollow, not glued. However, the edges of the armor on both sides interfered and did not rotate so as to secure the shooting angle. I don’t think the actual AFV could be rotated much.
There are various pieces of equipment in the open-top AFV. That said, some of the equipment is at the front of it, and I can’t see it that clearly even though it was assembled and painted. The fire extinguisher, seat, and backrest mat at the rear of the car bring a little color change, which is nice.
After the basic painting, I lightly washed, chipped, and dry brushed the AFV to express the feeling of use. I dirty the tires a little too much, but when I look at the wheels of vehicles in the recent war in Ukraine, they are very muddy, so I feel that the models I usually make are more beautiful.
Self-propelled gun with 7.5 cm gun on half track, very interesting vehicle. As a half-track with anti-tank capabilities, the vehicle provided critical support to German mechanized infantry units in the battle against tanks. When I first made the 251 half-track, I didn’t really like making it because it was such a difficult shape. These days, I fill a few gaps with putty and make it smooth, so it doesn’t bother me so much. I like the 251 half-track quite a lot.
(2024/01/10)
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