Sd. Kfz. 123 (VK 1303) Lynx
Apr 15, 2007
 

The Kit stash is getting bigger every week. I have enough kits to build till retirement.

I've been paying attention to reviews, new releases etc etc, and one company recently released a precious kit - A Sherman Firefly. This company is Tasca, renown by the quality of it's moulds and the finesse of detail. Unfortunately is also know by the price of their kits, but no one is perfect.

The Luchs that they released in 2003 is an absolute beauty. I dare to say that it's one of the most delicate works I've seen in injected plastic. While waiting for the Sherman to be available, I ordered one of these and in spite of the high price I don't regret it a bit. The kit is outstanding.

Tasca includes a small fret of Photo Etch parts that I'll complement with the set from Eduard.

The working suspension of the kit is only spoiled by the vinyl tracks. However Modelkasten and Friul make a workable sets.

This time I'll go with the Friul option. The fragility of Modelkasten tracks was fully evident on the Hetzer and I won't go that route again. Metal is better hands down.

The kit looks very simple to assemble with much less fuss than the current Dragon  offerings but will produce an excellent final result. After all the detail on the surface of the plastic parts beats the Dragon offerings quite easily.

There are not many companies producing this kit in plastic, and I saw a 1/48 version in resin in Steel Masters magazine. That's what started it all. I loved that little tank and it's harmony.

Building starts
22-03-2007

This little tank was a surprise to me.

A little "Tiger" with interleaved road wheels and nice proportions. Not very similar with previous variants of the Pz. II that were more typical of the period between WWI and WWII. This tank looked more modern, agile and very appealing.

As I said before, after reading one issue of a French magazine (Steel Masters) where they featured the Luchs in 1/48 scale I decided to look for a 1/35 version hoping that Dragon had one.

I found the Tasca kits (they have 2) and reluctantly decided to pay the high price it had.

I did this after reading several positive reviews I found around the Net. Everybody said that it was excellent but pricey. And both things are true, but the quality is in fact awesome. I don't regret the +50 Euros I spent on this kit.

The plastic is rigid to the exact amount of being able to have excellent detail but not to the point that it's brittle. The small parts that this has makes one wonder why PE is needed in some cases.

The only thing I decided to change is the tracks. I've become a fan of Friul metal tracks and that's what I'm going to use.

I'll be posting the build log and the reference pictures I can find, with a nice selection already from the Steel Masters magazine.

To the copyright police I inform that I have the magazine and I have a subscription of both the regular monthly issues and the by monthly Hors Serie issues.

I'm not going to put here the full image scanned pictures, but at least you know where the references came from.

However, I found one thing that does not match with my references. Tank 4121 from Abteilung 9, Normandy 1944 uses 3 colors (Yellow, Green and Red Brown) but in this profile it has only 2. I wonder if I can find why this discrepancy exists, but from what I have, they are the very same tank. B&W photos are inconclusive. I can't see if there are 1 or 2 colors on the camouflage. I can see that it has soft edges but not the colors. Oh well, I'll find that eventually.

Work in Progress
25-03-2007

The work is well under way. The lower hull and suspension is almost complete. I was assembling the workable suspension and thinking I had to glue everything in place.

However, it seems to hold quite well and the suspension works perfectly. The detail is wonderful and all the parts fit like a piece of clockwork. Truly amazing and a pleasure to build.

To test fit everything I had to assemble the tracks and I did one in about two hours. I'm getting very experienced in assembling these Friul tracks and I must say that they are way better to assemble than those flimsy Modelkasten tracks. The sag is "natural" because of their weight and they are sturdy enough to handle.

If they were MK's I would had broken a couple of pins by now. Of course, the detail is a bit rougher when compared with the MK's but it's the only thing were they may loose. Not enough to turn the table in favor of the plastic MK's.

The lower hull consists of 4 pieces. The bottom, the side sections a plate in the front and a bigger one in the rear. The assembly gives 0 problems and the final result is as good as it can bee. I tried test fitting the upper section and all seems perfectly aligned.

If this continues like this, I know which kit I'll build next. The Tasca Firefly.

Detailing & Photo Etch
2-04-2007

This was one of my fastest builds till now. Probably because the kit is so nice to build. I've never seen this kind of detail in plastic. I even skipped a few photo etch parts because the plastic parts are so good it seemed like a sacrilege not to use them.

Look at the minute lifting hooks that have holes in them. The quality of the molds must be amazing.

The Eduard set is very good and even shows a few corrections to the Tasca instructions. The fire extinguisher the tools (shovel and axe) are located in different positions than the ones shown on the kit. An additional box over the left fender was omitted on the kit, but Eduard provides a neat one to build.

Some other parts I just didn't apply because it really didn't make sense. The interior has a lot of detailing in PE but I'm not going that route again. Unless I build an open model where we can see the interior I'll never do what I did with the Hetzer. A beautiful interior is there never to be seen again after closing the tank. Talk about wasting hours and hours of work.

From now on if I do any detail on the interior it has to be seen.

I've tried the route of soldered photo etch and I'll never go back again. The water jerry can supports are soldered and they are very solid. Of course that I handle the kit with extreme care but they are pretty solid when compared with my first tries with ciano glued photo etch.

Some welded joints were recreated with thin plastic rod, sanded almost flush with the surface and textured with an Xacto blade. These weldings exist on the front corners of the upper deck close to the front plate and on the front of the turret.

My research found some photographs where these weldings are clearly seen and they were missing on the kit for the simple reason that is the place where two plastic parts are glued together. I solved two problems in one go. Make the glued joint disappear and at the same time add some accuracy to the kit.

Painting
5-04-2007

I started the part I like the most - Painting. And I tried something that was not very successful.

Pre shading in red. Why red? you may ask. Well, because germans used a red primer before painting their tanks and I guess it's the color of the primer they still use over steel.

I used LIfecolor Dunkelgelb (very good) to coat the tank after the pre shade. And it was so diluted that I had some trouble to get rid of the excessive reddish look of the tank.

That'll teach me to dilute less and to use black or dark grey next time.

In the end the result is pretty good but from the pictures you can hardly see the result. However, it's there and it's noticeable. Pity that the camouflage will make it even less noticeable.

The method works. That's a given. The way to do it may vary with the base color, and I can't be 100% sure that we can see the red in some places of the original tanks, but at least is an option that I can defend.

n the last photo of this set you can see a darker tone close to the fenders a some of it on the turret but to the eye the effect is much more visible and quite good.

The camouflage consists of random stripes of green and brown over the Dunkelgelb base.

Fairly easy to do if the airbrush is a decent one and if the paint is correctly thinned.

I managed to do that with the Life Color paints I used for this kit, and I must say that they seemed very easy to use and very tolerant to the level of thinning I chose.

I was afraid that all the pre shading I had done would not be visible at all and I was right. Kind of useless to do with a heavily camouflaged tank.

I had to enhance the shadows and light points after painting and I did it with oils.

The time it took to do this last phase was far more than the time used on all the rest. In fact this is a crucial part of the final product. The times is takes does not matter as long as the model is OK.

I made a decision with this kit - I won't start any kit before finishing completely the one I'm building. This helps to give attention to all the details instead of letting kits almost finished waiting for that day that never arrives.

Photos taken with Canon EOS D60 and Speedlite 380 Flash

The tracks were painted with Tamiya gun metal and them a mix of pigments was applied diluted with water. The first was a dark rust pigment to wok as a color foundation and a mix of Europe earth with Russian earth. I did this because using another combination was producing a very light dust color that didn't give the pizzazz I was looking for.

The paint chipping in the places where I assume the paint would be worn were done with a pencil and little spots of oil and metallic Tamiya paints.

It's not easy to achieve a well balanced worn look and I always do this very slowly because I've seen tanks that are so miserably worn that no one would want to move around a battle field in them.

I guess that they didn't last for a long time after the invasion of Europe by the Allies. This tank took part in the battle of Normandy, so I assume it had a short life.

Well, here it is, I hope you like the final result. I like it a lot ;)

What was used in this kit

Tasca Pz II Luchs (35-001)
Eduard PE Set (35637)
Friul Tracks (ATL-36)
LifeColor, Tamiya and Vallejo paints.

Photos taken with Canon EOS 60D and Speedlite 380 Flash