Amusing Hobby T-72 ‘Ural’ (35A052) 1:35

[Mike]

T-72 ‘Ural’ (35A052)

1:35 Amusing Hobby via

 

 

The T-72 was the successor to the T-55 and T-64, having a larger 125mm main gun and a more reliable auto-loader that gave it an advantage over its predecessor.  It was improved further by fixing some niggling problems that were initially present, and was given the name T-72 Ural. The earlier T-72s can be differentiated from the later models by their side-skirts, which are in sections with rubber between them, and they can be swung outward, leading to the nickname ‘Flipper’ side-skirts.  Production began in 1973, making examples for Soviet use, as well as for export, with over a 1,000 in service with the Iraqi army for future target practice by the Allies during the Gulf War.  Syria also had an eclectic batch of T-72s, some of which were the initial Ural variant and its successors.  Unfortunately, back at the factory, problems with production led to delays that required substantial investments in the facilities before full volume could be reached, continuing with modifications until the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 90s.  The type continued with development following the reformation of Russia as a state, and a T-72 was the basis of the much-vaunted but combustible T-90, as well as a number of other subsequent and less costly developments, with over 25,000 and counting produced, the numbers sometimes going up, sometimes going down.

 

It's a difficult time to review a Russian tank, but we’re not going to go down that route, based on the fact that it was tooled by a Japanese company, made in China with a British Distributor, plus Czech, DDR, Syrian and Iraqi decal options.

 

 

The Kit

This is an additive re-tooling of a recent new tool from Amusing Hobby, and is of the full-interior variety, so the box is deep and packed with plastic, grey for the interior, green for the exterior, which is fun – if you were a beginner and wanted to build your kit without paint, you could do so, especially as the tracks are moulded in brown styrene.  The box is a top-opener with a nice painting of the kit on the front, and inside are twenty-two sprues in grey, green and brown, twenty-eight ladders of track links in brown, a clear sprue, lower hull and turret top in green, plus a sheet of Photo-Etch (PE), decal sheet, a length of wire, a long coiled spring that looks like a tube from a distance, instruction booklet that has the colour painting guide in the front and rear covers that has been penned for them by the artists at AMMO.  The detail is excellent, especially the interior sprues, which have some lovely textures and shapes moulded-in, such as the anti-spall lining in the turret roof, a small impeller inside the hull amongst many others, with judicious use of slide-moulding across the sprues.  The tracks are also impressive, having individual links and separate track pins that can leave you with a very fancy workable track run that you don’t need to glue, thanks to its friction-fit nature.  The lower hull is separate from the sprues, and has detail moulded into both sides, so there are necessarily some ejector-pin marks on the interior face, which might possibly need filling, but check the instructions to ensure you’re not wasting your time filling things that will be covered by equipment later – I suspect most if not all of them will.  Like anyone else, I hate wasting precious modelling time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the lower hull, to which you add various suspension parts, bearings and return-rollers, plus idler-wheel axles and a three-part drive-sprocket that is held in place on the final drive housing by a long thick pin.  Under the front glacis is an appliqué armour panel with fittings for the self-entrenching tool or a mine-plough.  These are overlaid with hinge-points and rams in a scrap diagram, with the main drawing showing them already in-place, then it’s time to deal with the rear bulkhead.  This begins as a flat panel, and has four curved brackets, some spare track-links and an unditching log, before it is attached by two lugs on the moulded-in aft bulkhead.  The road wheels are made up from pairs of wheels with a central hub, as are the idlers, with twelve of the former and two of the latter.  At this point two additional fuel tanks are built from a slide-moulded tubes that has the strapping moulded-in with separate end-caps.  These are set to the side until the wheels are dealt with, beginning with the long torsion-bar suspension units with swing-arms and axles at the tip slid into the hull slots, plus a couple of smaller dampers toward the front, following which the idlers and road wheels are glued to the stub axles.  There is a scrap diagram showing the correct orientation of the damper arms in relation to the main swing-arms, which should help a lot.  Inserts are added at the sides of the turret ring, and also the first interior parts at the front of the lower glacis plate, which includes the initial driver controls handling the gear shifter in a quadrant with two PE gates.  The next step sees the foot pedals and a detailed seat for the driver’s comfort.  We’re deep into the interior now, with more controls, what looks like a drinks cooler (it isn’t) with stencil decals just behind and to the left of the driver’s station, then the hull interior sides are made up by decking out the two panels with a host of detail parts, including an instrument panel that has some decals on the sheet, and a few small PE parts, plus some ready-rounds for the big auto-feeder that’s coming soon.  More ready-rounds are fitted along with some other equipment boxes, then the crew compartment skin is dropped into the lower hull along with a firewall and another group of rounds stored nose-down and moulded into their storage area.  A two-part cylindrical fence for the auto-loader is slotted into the floor, then it’s time to create the auto-loader from a circular base with upstands that have castor-like wheels on every third upstand, plus a photo showing the real thing.  Then you make up the shell slots, which are cylindrical, and give you a choice of HE-Frag and HEAT shells.  Six of each are made up to be placed within the 22 locations around the base, including 10 empty slots, and a few more ready-rounds.  The completed carousel is inserted into the space made for it, and there are a host of helpful colour splat icons throughout the build to assist with colour choices.  There is a short bulkhead with a fire extinguisher strapped to it inside the engine bay, plus ancillary equipment and some very nicely detailed final drive/brake cylinders that are made up from three segments for detail, plus the end-caps that slide inside an outer casing, with one each side of the vehicle.  A large circular fan and tinwork is made up around the rear bulkhead along with more ancillaries and small parts in preparation to accept the power-pack.

 

The engine is a V-46 V12-cylinder diesel that pumps out a lot of motive power to the drivetrain, which has another photo of a real one to guide you as to how it should look in the end.  The cylinder banks are each made up from four sides and the rocker cover plus a couple of small PE lifting eyes and exhaust manifold attached to each one in mirror-image.  The engine block is built next with a gaggle of ancillaries at one end, then the cylinder banks are fitted into the top and joined in the central valley by the intake manifold with more ancillaries at the busy end, then a new detail insert for the blank end of the engine is constructed and joined with the main assembly.  The rectangular air box has PE intake grilles added around the three-part box, and the sub-assembly is joined to the engine via its thick input trunk, and two longer hoses that run down the side of the engine and attach to new components at the front of the engine.  A scrap diagram of the engine shows how it looks from the side for you to ensure that yours is set up correctly.  The next assembly is a gearbox with drive-shaft that plugs into some pegs in the floor, then the engine is inserted into the bay, with a stiffening bar across the top, a couple of pots for fluids attached, and more gear added too.

 

 

Each track run has 95 links, and the individual links are moulded in a tree of eight links, with three sprue gates on each one.  They’re easy to nip off and clean up as they are situated on the curved edges of the link, and were very easy to remove thanks to the slightly soft plastic.  The jig that you can find on each of the pin sprues has a pair of tabs that allow you to build a much longer jig from it if you like, or you can build them up in runs of eight.  With the flat side up, you drop the links into the jig with the guide-horns sliding through the holes, then you cut a set of four track-pins still fixed to their sprue (imagine a four-pronged pitchfork), and push them into the pin holes in the sides of the links.  These push home snugly and you can see some of the receivers discolouring with stress-marks as this happens.  After they are inserted, you simply cut them off neatly, and that’s your lot.  I made up a test-run of sixteen links in a few minutes using just a pair of side-cutters, a thin sanding stick and some patience (I borrowed that), and was very impressed with how easy it was to do.  It makes sense to leave the sprue on the pins long to give you some room for handling them without pinging them off into the ravening maw of the evil carpet monster.  It’s going to take a little time, but they’re among the best, most robust, flexible and easiest styrene tracks I’ve built.

 

The glacis plate is a two-layer lamination with detail moulded into the inside plus a pair of fire extinguishers and other small parts added, then it’s a case of flipping it over and adding the light clusters with clear lenses and two-part cages, as well as the V-shaped bow-wash deflector.

 

A tow cable is created from a section of the thread 8.5cm long and two styrene eyes, which is clipped to the deck on the glacis plate while the two front mudguards are being attached to the front of the fenders with styrene springs added along the way, then a pair of triangular webs are fitted between the guards and the front lip of the glacis and a series of stiffeners in styrene and PE are fixed along the length of the fenders in preparation for the additional fuel tanks, exhaust and stowage laid over it.  The rear ends are finished off with more detail parts to close them over.

 

The upper hull is formed from the forward section with the turret ring moulded in, to which equipment and vision blocks are added inside along with the driver’s hatch, then it is dropped into the hull along with three engine deck panels, which are first fitted out with mesh from the PE sheet and optional top covers.  This completes the deck so that the flexible spring with wire run through the centre can be cut and glued into position to depict the hosing for the fuel tanks as per the accompanying diagram and a black & white photo from the engine deck.  Another tow cable is made up from 8.5cm of cord and two more towing eyes to drape over the rear, again as per the scrap diagram.  The side skirts on an early T-72 are made in part from thick flexible material and metal sections, which is depicted in the kit by new parts, with four parts per side mounted on styrene hinges.

 

Now we’re getting there, and can finally make up the 2A46(D-81) 125mm smooth bore cannon, the breech of which is shown assembled in the first drawing as reference.  It is made up from breech halves split vertically, block parts that are split horizontally and painted yellow so you can’t miss it, and a two-part sliding portion of the block, plus a myriad of smaller parts on the breech as well as the breech safety frame and coax machine gun on a mount with ammo can that fits to the right side.  The gunner’s station is then constructed with optical binocular sight in front of the gunner’s framework seat.  This attaches to the underside of the turret rim with a large T-shaped support, and a number of equipment boxes and mechanisms dotted around the rim.  Another seat is assembled and glued to the rim, then the turret upper is started.  As with most turrets, the inside is substantially smaller than the exterior because of the thickness of the armour, so the interior skin has quite a confined feel to its quilted interior, which is the comfy, insulating side of the anti-spall liner.  More equipment boxes are plastered to the walls on flat-spots, and a part of the auto-loader mechanism runs up the back wall where a curved insert is used to enclosed the wall fully.  A periscope is attached to the outer roof, then the two halves are joined, and a large equipment box is fixed to the bustle.  The exterior is festooned with spare ammo cans, search light, and the outer part of the periscope, the round commander’s cupola and the D-shaped gunner’s hatch, both of which have handles, vision blocks and even another searchlight on the commander’s more luxurious hatch.  He also gets a NSVT 12.7mm machine gun mount, which is a huge piece of equipment that is made up from a substantial number of parts, and mounts on the rear of the cupola with an ammo box, and the folding hatch.

 

There is an intermediate stage to the auto-loader that has a stepped circular platform that prevents the turret crew from getting mashed legs, and it is filled with a large number of parts that on first inspection resembles a jumble of cylinders and boxes, plus a few ready-rounds strapped to the top – a complete trip hazard!  The turret is slotted into the hull after dropping the platform on top of the lower feed mechanism of the loader, and the completed commander’s cupola with armoured upstand is also glued in place at this time.  You may wonder where the barrel is, but it’s remedied in the last instruction step, with the gun tube made from two halves split horizontally, and a separate muzzle section to give it a hollow tip, then a circular bolted PE part fitted between the shroud and the barrel.  A turned metal barrel would have been almost impossible due to the cooling jacket that is strapped around the gun tube, so take the time to align the halves well to minimise clean-up once the glue has set.

 

 

Markings

There are five decal options included in this boxing, with three at the front of the booklet and two at the rear, the latter two having more interesting camouflage options.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• USSR
• DDR
• Czech Army
• Libyan Army
• Syrian War

 

 

 

The decals are printed in China and are in good register with enough sharpness to get the job done, although you can see some very slight dithering here and there under 2.5x magnification.  It’s all but invisible to the naked eye however.  The profiles have been penned by AMMO and use their codes for the paint shades, with the names next to the swatches, and below each profile there is a suggestion list of AMMO weathering products to add a little depth and realism to the finished model if you wish.

 

 

Conclusion

The kit offers a substantial level of detail inside and outside in a sensible, straight-forward build that should keep you busy modelling for many an hour.  A choice of different operators should give people enough options to keep them happy.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

Available in the UK in all good model shops.

Review sample courtesy of