sWS 60cm Infrared Searchlight Carrier "UHU", 1:35 Great Wall Hobby Options

[Mike]

This kit is a new release from the relatively new (to me at least) Great Wall Hobby company, which is a division of the more well known Lion Roar, who are respected for their Photo Etched updates and specialist sets for the discerning armour modeller. The Airbrush Company are the UK importers of both companies, and with their proactive approach to marketing, we're going to see more from Great Wall Hobby (GWH) in the future.

The basic kit shares some sprues with their Schwere Wermachtschleper (thankfully abbreviated to sWS), upon which this unusual piece of military hardware is based. For those that are unaware of the innovative designs of the late stages of WWII, the German scientists were experimenting with Infrared sights, to allow both their armoured vehicles and troops to gain an advantage over the advancing allies, and permit them to wage accurately targeted attacks on them during the hours of darkness.

The 60cm searchlight mounted sWS was to stand off the edge of the battlefield providing illumination for the infrared equipped battle tanks and troops with rudimentary night sights on their personal weapons. The design was simple to conserve resources, and there was a lot of commonality between the various versions, which explains the common sprues between the two kits.



The Kit

The kit is contained in a top opening glossy box, reminiscent of a Dragon AFV box, and has an excellent painting on the front, which is replicated on the backside of the painting instructions, in case you want to collect the artwork, or frame it... some do! There are 7 full sprues of sand colored styrene, plus one amalgamation of sub-sprues containing various detail parts that are used in the build.

There is also a small sprue of clear parts, including two different lenses for the searchlight, and all the vehicle lights. Two small sheets of photo-etched brass conclude the model parts, with a postage-stamp sized decal sheet providing the national insignia, number plates, instrument dials and a few data plates. The instruction booklet gives a few paragraphs of background to the vehicle and comprises 18 stages of line drawn diagrams with part numbers and icons representing special instructions.





Two of the sand colored sprues consist completely of the individual track links, which assemble from two distinct parts into a realistic looking track. This might have you groaning initially, but the sprue attachment points are small and on the interlinking parts, and there are no sink marks evident. The detail is impressive, showing the small ridges along the contact patchs, and there is only one raised ejector pin mark, which can be sanded off with a stroke of a sanding stick, so shouldn't slow you down by much at all.

There is only one option for the markings, which is a dark yellow machine with green and brown freehand camouflage pattern. It's this option that I intend to model, as it really looks the part. As it's almost a Whermacht'46 subject though, you'd be at liberty to paint it in any scheme you fancied, so you could let your imagination run free.

Conclusion

This unusual subject appeals to my sense of the odd immensely, and I just had to begin building it immediately here. At time of writing, I'm impressed with the quality and detail of the parts, although a few diagrams leave you scratching your head over positioning some of the parts. Overall it has an air of a recent Dragon kit - very good, but with a few gotchas that might trip up the unwary. hopefully I'll point them all out during my build, so you can learn from my mistakes.

Availability

The kit is available directly from The Airbrush Company, or any of the many companies that they supply with a retail price of £43.99.

Review sample courtesy of: