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This won't be a full WIP, more of a 'mostly built and painting in progress'. When I first started model-making in my early teens (late 70's) I was purely into Tamiya. There really was no better. Then life got in the way and model-making ceased for 35yrs. So imagine my surprise when I took to model-making again, joined this site, and found that Tamiya were no longer the be-all-and-end-all in model-making. I nevertheless stuck with what I knew and proceeded to get back into the swing of things with several Tamiya kits, all of which were around back in the day. So, it was with some trepidation that I made my first foray into kits other than Tamiya. I had in fact been tempted to part with my cash by Dragon's StuG III ausf G. I'd seen some Dragon kits on BM and they looked quite good to me. Still, it felt like a gamble. And so it proved to be. What I HADN'T realised until I got home and opened the box, was that this particular kit had been sitting on the shop shelf (requiring a step ladder to reach) for 21 yrs. (Dragon's 'Imperial Series'...1995) To say that some of the tooling was poor is an understatement. Locating pins on wheel inners and outers don't actually locate the parts correctly and so had to be removed. This stood for ALL wheels, idlers, drive and road wheels. Not a good start. Worse still, the inner and outer wheels (for the idlers and drives) do not actually mate up correctly at all. Line up one inner tooth with an outer on the drive wheel and the rest gradually go out of synch, and similar occurs with the spokes on the idler wheels. I managed a kind of compromise with the drive wheels, where there is only the slightest disparity where it matters.. but with the idler wheels this was not possible as the spokes are in plain sight. I basically had to glue them into 'the best of the worst' positions and then file down the spokes to hide the misalignments as best I could. They are therefore a bit messy and noticeably thinner than would otherwise be. More problems were encountered, again with locating pins/slots etc not lining up properly or being absent. The right pain in the whatsit though were the sprues. I'm used to individual sprues being marked 'a' 'b' 'c' etc. What I'm not used to though are single sprues marked with 'a' AND 'i', meaning that there were 'a' and 'i' parts on the same sprue! The same was true for 'h' and 'e' parts. I was also confused by the three 'b' sprues, one of which was completely different from the other two. And the instruction sheet... if a bunch of very ambiguous drawings can be called such, sometimes confused matters further. I find it really helpful to see the part to be fixed IN SITU. An arrow pointing vaguely to an area of the model is NOT very helpful. At least show the newly added part in the next panel? Nooooo, you'll maybe have to refer to the very final plan and side views on the last page. Oh, and some of the sprues were warped, probably with age and gravity. ANYHOOOOOOOOOOO... moan over. Here's a few pics....There are some earlier pics to add, but it's way past my bedtime so I will post them later. Above... pig's head roughened up with stippled poly cement and everything primed. Above... pre-primed...replace the kit's debris grill with fine mesh material... adding damage to the debris grill... ooh and let's get rid of those mould lines on the brackets while we are at it. Above.... replace lost tiny part with white plasticard. Notice that the rearmost arm for holding the side skirts has a distinct bend in it (moulded that way, not damage) and that this differs from its counterpart on the other side, AND from the instruction sheet/parts diagram/photos of finished model. Soak with poly and gradually bend into a straighter shape. Above.. skipped a few photos here, but I will find them. Base coat Dark Yellow. Camo added, Red-Brown and Dark Green. Overspray with chipping fluid, overspray with White. Rub back white with wet brush. Overspray with gloss acrylic varnish, add decals. Apply washes and pin-washes of dark brown, red brown. TFL Badder