So, this was supposed to start on April 15th. Anybody start building yet?
Well if you did, great! It'lll be wonderful to see pics of all this great equipment being built.
If not, then I guess I'll kick this Build off with pics of my progress (such as it is!) on my ACE 1/72 scale Tiran 5. This kit is a real BEAR to build! It took me two hours just to get the wheels cleaned off of all the excess plastic! The lower hull sides did not fit at all on the bottom hull plate; I had to do some serious carving to get them to sit right. Even then, as you can see, they don't fit well:
I had to carve still more just to get the torsion bars to fit on the hull correctly! Man, I figure I took about two more hours just getting the lower hull assembly together and ONE side of the wheels mounted! Here is the one side I managed to get done:
Now, for anyone who is thinking about getting ACE kits to build, consider this: I have the construction of more than 380 small scale tanks under my belt , so getting this far usually takes me about 20 minutes. In the case of this ACE kit, the above pics reflect four and a half hours of work due to all the cleaning, reshaping and refitting I've had to do. I had to stop after that; I couldn't motivate myself to finish the other side! I later test fit the top hull to the lower hull assembly, and I found that I will have a 2mm gap to fill at the nose of this kit because of the way the side hull pieces fit! Man, this is a BEAST!
Well, I'm going to be gone for a week helping a friend move out to Arizona. When I return next Sunday, I'll check in again to see how everybody's doing. Then I may even pick up that ACE thing and try again.
Look forward to seeing everyone's progress.