07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I have seen many people building the 1/12 scale Meng MP4/4. Since this car held the record for the most wins in F1 until the end of the 2023 season, when the Red Bull RB19 claimed that title, it's a car I've always been interested in building. After admiring the work of others on their models, I decided to take the plunge and purchase one myself. With over 50 years of experience building models, I couldn’t resist the urge to customize it rather than assembling it straight out of the box.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Probably this has been for many years one of the most desirable kits in 1/12 scale. This article aims at leading the reader into the building process, solving several problems of the kit due to the lack of details or wrong represented and plastic injection problems lacking of the necessary quality of a kit in this scale.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I had already started my own research and looked for reference images and information. I also joined a Facebook group and got a lot of tips. The kit was released in the UK before in the EU, so many had already started their builds and discovered inaccuracies. The objective of this tutorial is to share with the reader the work done, not only to assemble the kit, but also to get the most out of it, adding details and missing parts, painting where necessary, etc., always guided by the references. to which I had access. Hoping it is useful to others.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The kit released on 2011, as expected from a Tamiya's, has a very good parts fit and is easy to build, very accurate and requires almost no putty. Some aftermarket details slightly upgrade the overall look, but are not really necessary. It can certainly be built directly out of the box at the highest level. The only thing that seemed problematic to me were the vinyl tracks. I considered replacing them with metal ones, but after painting I decided that their level of detail was enough.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In the following tutorial I will share with the reader, many photos and explanations about the construction of the Alfa 33TT, I hope it will help and guide, for those who want to build this magnificent MFH kit, but this experience is valid for other similar kits of the same brand. This tutorial, very descriptive and with many good photos, can also serve as a general guide for other MFH kits in the same scale.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I’ve always been a fan of WWI armour and was just waiting for a decent kit to arrive on the market. The Mark IV was high on my wish list and with recent releases from Tamiya and Takom we have plenty of choice in high quality kits. But which one to choose? After reading several reviews on the internet I opted for the Takom ‘Male’ kit as its detail is slightly better than the Tamiya one. Although the latter would be easier to built.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
With this photo array I share with the reader my experience with the model adding many missing details, not all, painting parts and applying plastic modeling techniques to improve the appearance of this expensive model. In addition, solving some problems that the kit has and showing tips and tricks to improve or facilitate its assembly.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I decided to build, superdetail and customize this Tamiya kit, due to this subject beautifulness. A stunning futuristic motorcycle where great part of the engine and other structures are exposed which allow modelers show all those details we spent many hours on without the frustration that later will be hidden under the fairing. Thus, it’s possible to present the built model showing all the work made without having to separate the body to appreciate all the details added during the construction.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In this article, I want to share how I detailed the 1/20 McLaren MP4/2 as ran (and won) the 1984 F1 championship. The car I wanted to reproduce is the Lauda’s, only driver to have won the championship after a retirement and a subsequent coming back to the races (notably, Lauda is also the only driver that won a world championship after receiving the last rites, after its terrible accident in 1976).
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The Tamiya kit represents very well this icon of the 1988 season in its general shape but not regarding the mechanical parts and the cockpit area. As this is one of the F1s I like best, I decided to build it adding the superb Top Studio detail set (TS in the text) that includes resin and PE parts what makes novices to modelling feel fear. Besides, I’ve added several modifications and extra details which were necessary adding an extra effort. This article is to share my work with the hope that those who are less experienced than me, can build this model with some extra help.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The U.S. Army, after berating the South Vietnamese for flouting battle doctrine, came out with their own ACAV version. This more or less standardized ACAV kit included shields and a circular turret for the .50-caliber M2 machine gun in the track commander (TC) position, two M60 machine guns with shields for the left and right rear positions, and "belly armor"—steel armor bolted from the front bottom extending 1/2 to 2/3 of the way towards the bottom rear of the M113. The two rear machine gunners could fire their weapons while standing inside the rectangular open cargo hatch. This transformed the M113 into a fighting vehicle, but the vehicle still suffered from its lightly armored configuration, having never been designed for such a role.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The aim of this tutorial is to share with the reader the modifications made on the 1/16 T-55 from the firm Hooben, to convert it into a T-54 first. then in a Tiran 4 of the IDF (Israeli defence forces) early. The model represents a Tiran 4 as it looked in the period between 1972 and 1974. Besides to help the reader, especially to those who has never built a Hooben T-55, to solve the problems I had to deal with, alert them to several problems that appears after some use, like it happened to me with the one built in 2011 (the old kit version).
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
A true masterpiece, an automotive treasure that, when it was first unveiled six decades ago in 1960 at the Geneva Motor Show, prompted Enzo Ferrari to declare it the most beautiful car in the world, takes the spotlight in the following article. With over 70,000 units of the E-Type produced, it graced the Coventry factory floor in three distinct phases: Series 1 (1961-1968), Series 2 (1969-1971), and Series 3 (1971-1974).
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Eduard has recently released a new tooled Hawker Tempest Mk.V family in 1:48 scale. I have the Mk.V Series 1 ProfiPACK (82121) kit as well as the Big SIN (64856) set which includes a full Brassin Cockpit, Exhausts, Wheels and Landing Flaps. I also have some of the Barracuda Studios correction sets including the spinner and radiator intake. I'll highlight all these goodies (and compare them to the kits parts) as I progress through the build
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In 1977, as a Christmas gift from my brother, I got a model kit of a 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray in 1/8 scale. The kit was made by Monogram, but the same kit was later also released by Revell. There were editions with the body in both red and blue plastic. I noticed quite immediately that the detail level was low, lower than many models in 1/25 scale. Not even the doors were operable and the chrome-plating quality was really poor. Comparing with the French Heller's super detailed 1/8 model kit of the Citroen B15, which I built earlier, the Corvette was toyish and a real disappointment for an experienced modeller. But I decided to take it on anyway.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
When I saw this Tamiya kit, I felt like I could do something special by adding aftermarket detail sets and doing a bit of scratch-building. My goal in writing this tutorial is to share with the reader the work I've done, not only in assembling and super-detailing the model but also in showcasing a customization by changing the look proposed by Tamiya.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Once again, Tamiya delights us with the flawless engineering quality of their scale model, the Mercedes-AMG GT3, which was launched in 2017... or was it? In this tutorial, we will explore the pros and cons of this remarkable replica of the Mercedes-Benz vehicle, created in collaboration with their performance brand, AMG, for various FIA GT3 championships. Customizing it for the 2019 GT World Challenge America Crowdstrike team.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Starting a Hiro kit build is essentially starting a game of chess. Each move affects the next and the slightest mistake may cost in fitting or detailing issues. In addition, as in the famous board game, the more moves (test fits) you are ahead the better you can predict the way they will interact with each other and the less likely it is to be checkmated during the final assembly.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
To any follower of motor racing history the Porsche 917 needs no introduction. The kit is available in several different versions including the 1970 Le Mans number 20 Gulf car that I have used. For this build I also used Studio 27 photo etch (PE) set, Renaissance Gulf decals (the Fujimi decals are notoriously translucent) and Renaissance PE. With both PE sets nowhere near all of the parts were used, the Renaissance set in particular was mainly left on the fret....
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
There are lots of reviews of this Academy new kit and many of them include construction details, so I’ll focus myself on the paint and the weathering as aim for this tutorial, using images as visual guide.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
No sooner had I finished the Wingnut Wings Roland , than the Hansa Brandenberg out of its box, same day actually, and it is big. There is something about the Hansa that set it apart from other aircraft, even from a distance there is no mistaking it . Several other manufactures have produced it in smaller scales versions , but a combination of modern moulding techniques and Wingnuts reputation will set this one apart from the rest.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
This article aims at providing the beginner a complementary guideline, apart from the Tamiya instruction's manual, including photos of a detailed and quality enough model to encourage him/her in what we could call a hard and laborious work.... facing for the first time with a Tamiya's box.....with a 1/12th inside.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
This tutorial is based on showcasing and explaining the main modifications to convert the Hasegawa Miura P400 SV kit into the Miura P400 Roadster, as well as the added details. I won't delve into the assembly of basic components since the purpose is to share with the reader the more complex tasks. The rest is well-known as the Hasegawa kit has been around for several years. This model is dedicated to my wife Lyska, who supported me with patience and love throughout the process.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
This is an excellent kit from AVF. I built it almost out of the box, and concentrated on the painting. Being a tank that operated in the desert, the weathering is based on natural wear and tear from use and pigments to represent the sand.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The kit was manufactured by the Ukrainian company, Roden and without doubt is the best Fokker Dr.1 kit in 1/32. Regrettably, it perpetuates some mistakes common to previous models of the Fokker Dr.1 because all of them have been based on Ian Stair's scale drawings published in the Fokker Dr.1 Special by Albatros Publications. These scale drawings, although are correct in dimensions, have some mistakes like the absence of the opening for the oil filling on the starboard side of the front decking and the lower panel where is located an access hatch to the engine and the incorporation of a detachable axle wing, correct for some versions of the Fokker D.VII, but not for the Dr.1 which its axle wing was fixed.....
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I wanted to build the Revell 1/12 Ferrari F2002 for a long time, but I waited until I got extra detail parts, to somehow superdetail it. So in addition to the kit, I procured the Brain Fawcett correction kit, Marlboro decals and the Scale Motorsports super detail kit. The Brian Fawcett correction kit has accurate resin brakes, wheels, spindles, valve covers, additional engine parts, a new transmission and suspension parts all in Resin.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In May 2001 I wrote a brief preview on the Protar's 1/12 Alfa Romeo 179. This wonderful Formula One was one of the few cars in modern F1 history which chassis and engine were the same brand. Is this model really difficult? This is the key question for this model, and the answer is NO. If it were a Tamiya model, that is to say the same matrix but injected with Tamiya plastic and having the quality control of this huge Japanese company, I would say that this is one of the most delicious models I have ever built. Unfortunately, it has some flaws, mainly due to its poor quality than to the work of the Protar craftsmen.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
This is an outstanding work from our friend Omoto Kouzi. We hope you enjoy the pictures and encourage you to build a Tamiya Williams. We have a tutorials about the kit, not so detailed but good guide enough for newcomers.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
For this article Ebbro provided me a test-shoot that’s to say a test of an injection mold, and there were no references about the year this DS model represented belonged to, so I started to look around the net for pictures that could help me. Looking at the body carefully and comparing with several photos, it was obvious that I had to make sure about certain points.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The glorious Tamiya P-51D in 1/32. This model was started immediately after I finished my battle with the Dragon P-51D. As you would expect there is no comparison between the two as this kit from Tamiya almost builds itself. Having said that, this is not a simple kit to build. It is overly complex in my opinion but I applaud Tamiya for giving us what will be for a long time to come the ultimate P-51 in any scale. The pilot figures are from Ultracast and Verlinden.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I got this model back in the 90s for less than 100 US dollars. Although I do not have the “Perfect Parts” detail set for this model, I purchased the Thunder Valley Essentials detail set, which is two photo etched frets, a resin airbox, aluminum funnels, a pack of different pieces of aluminum, clear tubing and shrink tubing....
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The aim of this tutorial is to share with the reader the modifications made on the 1/16 T-55 from the firm Hooben, to convert it into a Tiran 5 of the IDF (Israeli defence forces), a small modelling project that I wanted to do since several years ago. Besides to help the reader, especially to those who has never built a Hooben T55, to solve the problems I had to deal with, alert them to several problems that appears after some use, like it happened to me with the one built in 2011 (the old kit version). As I said before, I built a regular T-55 of the Russian army and the IDF Tiran 5, but in the basic assembly steps, I’ll concentrate in the general points. So here you will see pictures of different models, about the same topic.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In this tutorial I’ve made a road vehicle version with own elements of a rally car, and decorated with the Gulf emblems and colors. The kit used to build this model is the Tamiya 1/24 that ran in Monte Carlo rally 1967 (#24048). It’s cheap and is being manufacturing from time to time and can be easily purchased in many online shops
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Chevron presented us some time ago a conversion kit, that allows us to transform the Tamiya's 1/12 Tyrrell P34 1/12 scale in its 1977 homonym. In this note I will describe which were the problems I found in building this complicated and compound kit, and the way I solved them.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The model I wanted to build was the version that ran on the Tour de Corse in 1984 season, driven by Attilio Bettega (who lost its life in the same car during the 1985 season) with Cresto as a co driver. The Martini livery makes this car absolutely stunning, but also quite demanding for the modeler. Moreover, the only plastic kit available on the market is the not so recent Hasegawa kit. In my opinion It’s quite well designed, easy to assemble parts, good general fitting, good materials quality. However...
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
When I built my first Tamiya's McLaren MP4/6 in 1992, I thought it was the most advanced kit of its time, with an amazing level of details which I could barely follow, and very complex in its building process. Today, after not many years, we have a great realm of information on this car through a lot of pictures, and the Internet. All this pictures shows us that the kit is very well engineered and it has a high quality; but, if you are looking for realism, then there are some missing details, which are very noticeable in the pictures.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The model nicely reproduces the shape of the car, but most of the details are missing, or oversimplified due to production and technology issues. On this basis, I decided to build this model adding as much detail as possible for my skills. As an additional difficulty, there are nearly no detail sets for this kit, so it would be necessary to add them from scratch. In particular, I used a large number of resin rivets and bolts, some turned bolts, leftover photoetched from my spare box and a lot of scratch-building. In this tutorial I’ll describe all the building process in detail. I hope you’ll enjoy building this model as I did.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Basically this kit has been built straight out of the box, using almost all of the parts included in the kit, and small details such as generic photo-etched screw heads have been added. The objective of this tutorial is to share with the reader the steps that I followed to build this model.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In the 1970s, the IDF equipped itself with a large amount of M-113 APCs, and since then they served in all of Israel's wars and operations, including the Yom Kippur War, Operation Peace for the Galilee, the First Intifada, the Second Intifada, the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge. This article goals to share with the reader the steps I followed to build a IDF M-113 Medivac from the Tamiya M-113 kit.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Nowadays, There are not a great many 1/12 car model kits available. Perhaps, you may find some, from Doyusha, Fujimi, Tamiya, Monogram, Revell, around the Internet. From my point of view, the 1/12 scale has some disadvantages with respect to the 1/24 scale, these models size and the apace they take at the time of being displayed either in your house or at exhibitions; besides one must be extremely careful with the details, since they will be more visible.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
This article will be useful to anybody who wants to pursue this project, I decided to write it in the form of an instruction manual, following the steps set forth in the Tamiya's instruction manual, but also indicating all modifications to be made in order to insert the "Perfect Parts" metal parts, along with suggestions and advice on my experience with this model on every stage of the construction. All general recommendations on the use of CA and handling of metal and photoetched parts can be found in the previous articles.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
When I was asked to build the Italeri Mirage, I was really excited. I had dreamed since long ago with building and representing the weathering using new technologies on an aircraft. As some friends know, I’m colorblind and never could realize about the colors of an aircraft weathering. I used to build a lot of 1/72 Matchbox kits (some military vehicles) as a child , sometimes painting them. Anyway, nothing to do with the new techniques and besides, since the age of twelve, I’ve not touched a military kit.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
The Ducatti Panigale is to my liking one of the most spectacular motorcycles of the past decade. Thanks to Tamiya we can have a model of it, both were the reasons why I decided to build it trying to get the most detailed model I could , taking advantage of the fact that as it was a mass production model, it would be possible for me to get a lot of references. Not only I built and superdetailed the model, but also made a slightly and own customized version, a real Panigale, as I would like to have. The aim of this article, is to show with pictures and their comments the work accomplished as a guide and to give ideas of the details that can be added or showing in some cases how to do the different tasks.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Building step by step….day by day. As soon as I looked inside this beautiful kit, I could not hold my horse. I had to stop other projects (1/35 Hetzer, 1/32 F-15J). I decided to build this kit straight from the box because I really wanted to see the completion as soon as possible. Also this time, I will update these pages while building the kit. So let's build this wonderful giant kit!!
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Nowadays it can be a bit reiterative to write an article about the Panzer III history as there is one in every model magazine from time to time, and the web is saturated with them in every language for everyone who desires to read them. So I will concentrate in telling how I built and painted the model.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
In this article I describe the work to superdetail the Tamiya Ferrari F1-2000, the car that brought back the driver championship in Maranello with Michael Schumacher, after 21 years from the last championship. The Tamiya kit is good, but the aim is to add as much details as possible, by using the Top Studio; super detail set, and antenna set, and other aftermarket details (photo-etched bolts, rivets and so on).
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
Tamiya offer an excellent model for Ferrari lovers, that can’t be missing in a collection. In my opinion, it’s a very complex kit so not recommended for novices or those who want to spend some time distracted and relaxed with a simple model. Its complexity obliges you to study very carefully the instructions preparing a building plan, altering the instruction steps to get a good result. This article aims at sharing with the reader the work achieved during several months to superdetail this beautiful model, providing lots of images.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I have been collecting all the 1:20 Tamiya F1 kits since Tamiya started producing them back in 1978, but the McLaren M23 was missing from my collection because I had the clever idea to trade the finished model for a bow and arrows once I finished it. So I have been looking for it since ages, until I discovered Ebay some 25 years later. I paid quite a high price to complete my collection with the one missing kit, but it was the very last that I needed, so what the heck.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM
I have always been completely captivated by this fantastic aircraft, and in late 2006, when I decided to assemble it, the only model available was the 1/48 Monogram's kit ( still the Kinetic and Italeri didn't have been issued). It's an old kit that shares parts with the A-6 Intruder, Monogram modified some parts and other were discarded. The raised panel lines the lack of details makes this kit as obsolete comparing with nowadays the industry offers. I had to deal with endless amount of errors I will talk about later in the article.
07/27/2024 03:51 AM