
Review
This offering from MiniArt arrives in a cardboard tray with a separate card lid. Inside the contents are provided in a single plastic bag, which contains further bags for the decals, photo etch and clear parts. The instruction booklet is loose within the box. First the usual concern, which is the damage to small parts during transit, removal or use. The other one the MiniArt has re-introduced to itself by placing the photo etched frets with clear sprues inside the original bag with all the other sprues, which could very easily result in damage.
MiniArt has released a very large number of this vehicle type now, and so I will keep this short. This release does not have a full interior, but it does have the interior aspects that matter. One thing I learnt from experience are parts A1 and 2 which are the angled lower hull panels which have the doors in them do not have a great mating surface, and the result of this is that it is very easy to have them out of alignment which causes you all sorts of problems later in the build. However, otherwise, other than being parts heavy the details go together very well and if carefully painted provide the modeller with a very pleasing interior, which is mated with a high degree of accuracy.
I will say that there were times when I could have done with 4 hands, but there are many models that have that issue. Another nice aspect of the release are the inclusion of the tyres using the slices methodology, which only means that you need to make sure that you clean up all of the parts as well as possible before putting the various panels together, which results in very pleasing tyre tread with especially nice detail.
The 2cm gun included in the kit has the option of a one piece barrel, with a photo etched muzzle flash guard. For those who are not comfortable with this method a one piece barrel with flash guard moulded as part of it has been provided. One area that I found difficult on previous releases, are the aerials - as as soon as I removed them they broke into 3 pieces and to make things that little bit harder some of the finishing options here have the star antennae. MiniArt has provided 6 finishing options:
Unidentified Unit, Wehrmacht, Early 1945
Panzer Aufklarungs-Abteilung 4- 4th Panzer Division, Danzig Area, February/March 1945
Panzer Aufklarungs-Abteilung 125, 25th Panzergrenadier-Division, Germany 1945
Unidentified Unit, Wehrmacht, Elbe River Area, April/May 1945
Unidentified Unit, Early 1945
Unidentified Unit, Spring 1945



























