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Dragon Jagdpanther (Late Production).


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Wow, this kit has got some bits! I've started sticking wheels together and doing the lower hull. Torsion bars are in. I'll post a pic tomorrow, to get the ball rolling, then ya'll can laugh at me as I serve up another multi-aborted disaster on tracks that might be half saved at the last minute. :D

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Oh, so the rumours of your demise have been premature, eh? Where've you been? :hmmm:

I'm not sure, probably la-la land. :hypnotised:

Fit's a tad ropey on this Dragon but the plastic is soft, so it welds very well.

jagd01.jpg

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I've finished putting it together. The fit overall isn't much worse than a typical Tamiya, maybe a bit more of it is all. The level of detail however...woo...blows Tamiya out of the water. All the times with Tamiya, where I've thought "wish they'd modelled these bits seperately", with the Dragon they have. And then some. No need for PE really.

The engine-deck PE Dragon supplied was tried and found wanting, the mesh was too tight and didn't look right so I took it off.

Oh yeah...my Dremel drill, I was using it to batter the stowage boxes when it started spewing sparks. I've had it for maybe two years and I don't exagerate when I say it's had a handful (one handful) of hours of use. POS. I've taken it apart a number of times, trying to fix it. Looks like the carbon brushes don't like the copper ring thingy anymore. £99 down the crapper, won't ever go Dremel again. My tiny Minicraft however, that took over the job and sailed through as usual. :)

Anyway, enough of my hardware woes, some more pics...

jagd04.jpg

jagd03.jpg

jagd02.jpg

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Coat of matt varnish to seal the oil, salt and Humbrol Matt-88 (kind of panzer yellow). Coat of future, then a wash of oil burned umber, which is where it's at in the following pics.

It needs a matt coat, numbers and something else to pull it around from mediocre to worth looking at. I think I got the tone of the rust ever so slightly out of whack because it's bordering on looking more like hull red primer than rust. Oh well, I'm reasonably pleased with it but it's not a boat-rocker so far.

jagd08.jpg

jagd07.jpg

jagd06.jpg

Edited by Siggi
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Coat of matt varnish to seal the oil, salt and Humbrol Matt-88 (kind of panzer yellow). Coat of future, then a wash of oil burned umber, which is where it's at in the following pics.

It needs a matt coat, numbers and something else to pull it around from mediocre to worth looking at. I think I got the tone of the rust ever so slightly out of whack because it's bordering on looking more like hull red primer than rust. Oh well, I'm reasonably pleased with it but it's not a boat-rocker so far.

jagd08.jpg

jagd07.jpg

jagd06.jpg

What sort of vehicle are you portraying? By the description of rust something that has been left in the open or something like the factory photos showing part finished vehicles.

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I'm doing a series of 'Lost Panzers', old wrecks laying un-recovered some time after the war. This is the third, I've completed a Hetzer and Panther (recorded elsewhere on this forum).

Magic Tracks! Hmm. I rather stupidly didn't give much thought to using them originally but started messing around with them, wondering what made them 'magic'. It appears to be that they can be glued but still manipulated for some time after the gluing. I say "stupidly" because fitting these after fully building and painting the rest of the tank isn't the cleverest of procedures. But I've managed to get them into place, in sections, so that they can dry to the correct shape and then be removed for painting. There are eight separate links for each sprocket that are different to the rest, they have bigger holes to allow for the sprocket-teeth to properly engage and lay further apart from each other too (about 0.25mm). And their horns are separate too, not sure why. The detail on them all is superb though and while they don't sit as well as Fruils they will be much easier to paint and weather etc, also avoiding all the faff with bleach and vinegar required by the Fruils. Not to mention the expense saved.

jagd09.jpg

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I'm doing a series of 'Lost Panzers', old wrecks laying un-recovered some time after the war. This is the third, I've completed a Hetzer and Panther (recorded elsewhere on this forum).

Crackin idea, you do good work there Siggi, one wee critique is the tracks, on real vehicles the tracks are always tensioned by weight and then the idler wheel and you don't get kinks in the tracks. Although the tracks are different (dry as opposed to rubber bushed) but one of the ugly jobs on 432s would see the rubber bushes needing replaced and with the originals being inserted by an 8ton press and we having an Irish Screwdriver (Heavy), so it was a case of getting the bushes in anyhow. Once joined the track invariably you had a kink where joined, but when run for a couple of 100yds the kink had gone.

Of course after saying all this someone will probably list a picture proving me wrong.......... :banghead::suicide:

Speaking of tracks I'll have to see if I can find the pic of a REME 434 with a thrown track in bks!!!!! Now that was embarassing...... :hypnotised:

I also had pics of the JagdPanther on the Pirbright ranges that is now alive, well and part of the SDKFZ Foundation, back then there were almost 2 doz tracks rusting away including 5 or 6 Canadian Rams one of which had a tree growing through the commanders hatch....

Pity I wasn't here earlier I could have given you a lot of pics of the VIIC at Laboe.

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I'm having murders with the tracks, never mind the bloody kinks. :lol: Their fate is uncertain at this point, though saving the £30 on Fruils is a strong motivator.

Yes, I've only recently seen pictures of a Jagdpanther on a range, with a squaddie leaning up against it. I did wonder if it had been saved, thanks for confirming that. God, they turned that into a running vehicle?!

Edited by Siggi
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I'm having murders with the tracks, never mind the bloody kinks. :lol: Their fate is uncertain at this point, though saving the £30 on Fruils is a strong motivator.

Yes, I've only recently seen pictures of a Jagdpanther on a range, with a squaddie leaning up against it. I did wonder if it had been saved, thanks for confirming that. God, they turned that into a running vehicle?!

:hypnotised:

Know how you feel, you should have tried working on the real ones!!! I finished as 2 i/c a 55+ vehicle track fleet and one job was supervising the junior drivers. That said FV tracks tended to come in short sections (10s) and you had a crew (or in the case of comd vehicles the other drivers) to help you. But model tracks are strangely thereputic to put together, although I might change my mind in the next week as i convert 1600 componants into 2x 1/16th Leo 1 tracks........ :deadhorse:

I've had a look for the Jagdpanther and the Sdkfz foundation has changed name and the new name hasnt' a website, but in a masterful piece of vanndelism the eod bods cleaned the range and put all the blinds inside the hull of the Jagdpanther and retired......... The resulting bang blew the roof off the tank!!! Some of the plate is mild-steel as opposed to RHA, the latter being too expensive apparently. Still cant' find an easily downloadable pic, but the link will take you eventually to a pic, just look for Panther & Variants.

http://the.shadock.free.fr/Surviving_Panzers.html

Surviving Tanks

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Brilliant stuff! The .pdf on the Panthers and Jagdpanthers is superb, thanks. :cheers:

I'm working on getting into the Jagdpanther, but from what I've seen/heard she is "Bombed-up" with either real or dummy KwK 43s, certainly the gun is live and at one military show she fired a blank and the noise was reported as being quite impresive....... Certainly the gun was reportedly a dig-up where the previous owner having used them in an Anti-Tank role burried them to prevent them being captured, perhaps PAK 43/3 mit Behelfslafettes.

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I've had to admit defeat with the Magic tracks, too magic for me. :lol: The project is on hold until I can get some...*sigh*...Fruils.

Have you spoken to your mortgage adviser about a further advance? :bling:

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I found the tracks to be OK personally. The way I do it is to dry fit the wheels to the axles then make up the tracks and glue them to the road wheels, when completely dry you can remove them as a complete sub assembly. It makes painting a bit awkward but at least you get the tracks to fit OK.

Jagdpanther-63600x400.jpg

By the way thanks for the heads up about the other track links that fit the sprocket. I did'nt figure that one out. D'OH! :D

Edited by Andy K
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I found the tracks to be OK personally. The way I do it is to dry fit the wheels to the axles then make up the tracks and glue them to the road wheels, when completely dry you can remove them as a complete sub assembly. It makes painting a bit awkward but at least you get the tracks to fit OK.

Jagdpanther-63600x400.jpg

By the way thanks for the heads up about the other track links that fit the sprocket. I did'nt figure that one out. D'OH! :D

I couldn't be dealing with painting the wheels and tracks like that, I'd end up sectioned. :lol: I reckon the tracks could be tack-glued to the wheels though and removed after they'd dried. Not an option for this time though.

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I found the tracks to be OK personally. The way I do it is to dry fit the wheels to the axles then make up the tracks and glue them to the road wheels, when completely dry you can remove them as a complete sub assembly. It makes painting a bit awkward but at least you get the tracks to fit OK.

Jagdpanther-63600x400.jpg

By the way thanks for the heads up about the other track links that fit the sprocket. I did'nt figure that one out. D'OH! :D

Good paint job, you've worked the dirt demarkation really well!! Very true to life!!

You can see the demarcation lines here, the result of pounding around Soltau training area for a couple of weeks.

Soltau-01.jpg

Another pic to help people get those wanting to get their tracks right, if you look at the shine on the visable portions of the tracks, this appeared after a matter of hours and was actually reflective at distance. The area of the tracks contacted by road-wheels, idlers etc got particularly shiny, almost to the degree of mirror shine, once static the tracks very quickly got a rust coating, in wet conditions rusting in 24hrs or less, but being high quality steel they never got really rusty, if you know what I mean.

Soltau-03.jpg

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I'm working on getting into the Jagdpanther, but from what I've seen/heard she is "Bombed-up" with either real or dummy KwK 43s, certainly the gun is live and at one military show she fired a blank and the noise was reported as being quite impresive....... Certainly the gun was reportedly a dig-up where the previous owner having used them in an Anti-Tank role burried them to prevent them being captured, perhaps PAK 43/3 mit Behelfslafettes.

Here are a couple of clips of the Jagdpanther you mention if its of interest.

first up is it running, with the second clip of it firing.

Alan

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Another pic to help people get those wanting to get their tracks right, if you look at the shine on the visable portions of the tracks, this appeared after a matter of hours and was actually reflective at distance. The area of the tracks contacted by road-wheels, idlers etc got particularly shiny, almost to the degree of mirror shine, once static the tracks very quickly got a rust coating, in wet conditions rusting in 24hrs or less, but being high quality steel they never got really rusty, if you know what I mean.

That's some very usefull information there, thanks.

Back on topic, looking very nice.

I know Dragon models are starting to overtake Tamiya in terms of quality of detail (if they haven't already!), but how do they compare in terms of prices?

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