Tom Cromwell provides an In-box review and partial assembly of Dragon’s new M7 Priest Mid-Production kit.

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Thanks!

This is a really strong review of what looks to be a great kit. I'm looking forward to watching your build Tom, and I may even be shadowing your build with my own.

Nice review Tom.


In early production M7's, April/May 1942, 10 50 round drums of cal. .45 ammo were stored there. Later vehicles had cal. .45 clip boxes stored there.



Well, if you really want to know, it's this one: M7. It belongs to a friend of mine along with one other M7. Dragon USA is less than an hour from his museum and they spent a long time measuring and photographing his two M7's in 2008/09. They may have used some others as well.

Chris "toadman" Hughes
Toadman's Tank Pictures

Chris,

Thanks for the link! You wouldn't have a good picture of the missing small-arms stowage I could use to scratch-build the details, by any chance? I've been all over the net, but cannot find interior shots of in-service M7s, and all the preserved ones are either modified or simply stripped-out.

Jeremy, I hope to add the next instalment of the blog this weekend - I've been tackling the gun!

Tom

I read Tom's review (although it's not my usual subject, I tend to read most reviews of new DML products as I make a fair few of their kits). Once again there is criticism of the instructions, in fact there seem to be mistakes in them that would seriously compromise the build for anyone who hadn't read this review. Now I know that Dragon sponsor this site, so presumably they also read the reviews. The fact is that their kit instructions are frequently criticised for errors and omissions and general difficulty of interpretation, moreover they appear to be getting worse! Isn't it about time something was done about it? After all no matter how good the moulding is, this doesn't help if you can't make the kit! While poor instructions are just about acceptable in a "cottage industry" kit or AM stuff, which by definition appeals to the more hard core modeller, they really aren't on in the mainstream LHS world where a lot of Dragon's kits are sold. How many DML kits don't get completed because an inexperienced modeller finds he has bitten off more than he can chew, and resolves not to buy another (expensive) DML kit again? Compare with the clarity of Tamiya instructions. Perhaps reviewers should be marking kits down for this - would this get the message across?
Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but surely it is in DMLs own interest to address this?

Steve,

You've got a point about those instructions, and frankly I'd have gone up as far as a 95% score if they hadn't been so poor. However, I don't know what we can do other than keep pointing out the shortfall. As long as the kits keep selling, Dragon doesn't have any motivation to take it seriously. And because it's such a great kit of an interesting subject I can't see many modellers boycotting it. I wish it weren't so, but I can't see what more the modelling community can do...

My own small contribution is my blog, in which I hope to show folks how to get it built right. If Dragon wants to buy it off me for use in future releases...

Tom

Excellent review - you convinced me to pick one up.

Steve,

Another factor to consider is that most of the Reviews done are In-Box which means that, unless it's followed by a build-log, the errors in the instructions don't come out right away in terms of the scoring. I've yet to build a single DML kit that didn't have at least 1 error in the instructions and whenever they use previous kits as the basis for new ones, the errors tend to get compounded due to re-use of the same instructions without checking or updating. Definitely is something that has to be taken into consideration with DML kits for sure...DML is aware of the problems in their instructions and, in some cases, has even gone so far as to correct some of those problems/errors in subsequent kits...but not always.

Great review Tom! Unfortunately I'm still waiting for my example. It must have literally gotten on a slow boat... I will also be closely watching your buildlog.

Cheers!
Stefan

One correction on the decal info: There are no Companies in Field Artillery, they are called Batteries.

Indeed Batteries they are! (But sadly not on DML's instructions...)

Tom