Now this is a long story ….a very long story so if you want to go ahead
and just skip to the pics please feel free.
I was wandering around Dominoes in Heuvelland, Belgium gob
smacked as usual by the sheer number of kits when I spotted the Vespid
Leopard 2. Now I don't do modern stuff at all but after my recent expe-
rience with the Vespid Panther which vexed me considerably I thought
this was an opportunity to mend our ‘relationship. Always liked the
Leopard 2.
At the same time as this was going on I was finishing a Citroen Avant
as a German staff car and fascinated by the AK lenses I decided to try
them out for its headlights as I was considering them for a 35th scale
project. When I bought those I saw the red ones and thought they
looked really cool and remembered that some modern tanks had red
infra red lights fitted. Couldn't resist all I needed was a vehicle to fit
them to.
Looked around and came up with the Russian T90 at this time the
Ukrainians were begriming to get some Leopard 2's so I thought Id
combine to two things.
I worked up the T90 and then made a complete hash of the paint job. I
was planning the T90 to be fire damaged and to try out something new
to me by using a chipping fluid. Oh dear it did not work out at all well
one problem after another including losing one of the turret hatches!
That situation was recovered by the kindness of a fellow Braille scaler
on here, thank you Tim.
I short I ruined a perfectly good Revell T90 so I decided to just scrap it
and get a new one…………little did I know it was now OOP.
I looked and looked and eventually with some trepidation resorted to a
Zvezda kit. I'm used to Zvezda as being fast build kits but this T90 is a
real kit, beautiful moulding , detailed and well engineered. The only
problem I found in reviews was that the road wheels had low profile
tyres unlike all the pics I've seen.
Having already done a lot of work on the Revell T90 running gear I
ended up mating the Zvezda upper hull and turret to the Revell running
gear.
So now I had the T90 sorted I turned to the Leopard 2………..some of
you are ahead of me here, yep the Ukrainians are getting the A5/6 vari-
ants not the A7 depicted by the Vespid kit.
Now this is a long story ….a very long story so if you want to go ahead
and just skip to the pics please feel free.
I was wandering around Dominoes in Heuvelland, Belgium gob
smacked as usual by the sheer number of kits when I spotted the Vespid
Leopard 2. Now I don't do modern stuff at all but after my recent expe-
rience with the Vespid Panther which vexed me considerably I thought
this was an opportunity to mend our ‘relationship. Always liked the
Leopard 2.
At the same time as this was going on I was finishing a Citroen Avant
as a German staff car and fascinated by the AK lenses I decided to try
them out for its headlights as I was considering them for a 35th scale
project. When I bought those I saw the red ones and thought they
looked really cool and remembered that some modern tanks had red
infra red lights fitted. Couldn't resist all I needed was a vehicle to fit
them to.
Looked around and came up with the Russian T90 at this time the
Ukrainians were begriming to get some Leopard 2's so I thought Id
combine to two things.
I worked up the T90 and then made a complete hash of the paint job. I
was planning the T90 to be fire damaged and to try out something new
to me by using a chipping fluid. Oh dear it did not work out at all well
one problem after another including losing one of the turret hatches!
That situation was recovered by the kindness of a fellow Braille scaler
on here, thank you Tim.
I short I ruined a perfectly good Revell T90 so I decided to just scrap it
and get a new one…………little did I know it was now OOP.
I looked and looked and eventually with some trepidation resorted to a
Zvezda kit. I'm used to Zvezda as being fast build kits but this T90 is a
real kit, beautiful moulding , detailed and well engineered. The only
problem I found in reviews was that the road wheels had low profile
tyres unlike all the pics I've seen.
Having already done a lot of work on the Revell T90 running gear I
ended up mating the Zvezda upper hull and turret to the Revell running
gear.
So now I had the T90 sorted I turned to the Leopard 2………..some of
you are ahead of me here, yep the Ukrainians are getting the A5/6 vari-
ants not the A7 depicted by the Vespid kit.
Fortunately Border Models ( a brand new to me in this scale) came to
the rescue with an A5/6 variant.Of this kit more later.
So this all started with a misspent afternoon in Dominos models and
wanting to try out AK lenses.
I hope you find the end result worth while.
L
