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Paper Tiger - Development vehicle E-10 by Trumpeter |
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built by Wolfram Bradac (1:35) |
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What has been the case with aircraft models for years is now happening to armor models-never completed projects as injection molded kits. Like Luftwaffe 46, Armor 46 will find criticism with at least part of the modeling fraternity. Let us look at the positive side however-finally something else than version 100 of the Tiger and Sherman & Co. There is also little danger of nuts and bolts in the wrong place and as far as camouflage is concerned the sky is the limit.
The E-10 (10-15 ton class) was one of five planned fully tracked vehicles. The organization responsible was the” department research” of the Heereswaffenamt. The experiences that had been gained by the Wehrmacht during the early part of the war were to be evaluated. The most important innovations were to be the rear motor and transmission, designed to facilitate maintenance. The torsion bar springs were left off to save space and parts were more interchangeable to simplify production and save costs. This series of vehicles is better described in Walter Spielberger’s Military Vehicles, Volume 8 published by Motorbuch Verlag.
 The kit
Kit (00385) was my first Trumpeter model and I was curious about the number and quality of the parts. For 27 Euros one gets about 500 plastic parts, vinyl and plastic individual track links (an early and a late version) a small decal sheet and a color marking and painting guide. Some other manufacturers can take note that Trumpeter provides vinyl as well as individual plastic tracks. I know of modelers who will buy Trumpeter kits only because of the vinyl track because they do not want to mess with individual track links. The kit is well detailed for a vehicle for which there is so little documentation. I only added a few missing welding joints on the left and the right side of the front end. I had to improve the area around the spring housing a little bit but after installing the drive wheels it is hard to see this area anyway especially after the model is bit dirtied up.
There are photo etched ventilation screens, the MG shield and the Schürzen. The screens do not have the quality of Aber parts and reminded me of early Dragon parts. There are Voyager parts available for this kit but I used my spare box. The tools provided by Trumpeter are not very convincing and I replaced them with tools from the Tamiya Panzer IV kit. I attached the tools with photo etch. Since I could not warm up to the tracks provided, I used Friul tracks. This vehicle was supposed to sport a late Panzer IV track (40 cm) and since the vehicle was never built I used the most appropriate track I had. The handles of the various hatches were fashioned from copper wire. |
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Painting and weathering
I use Gunze paint almost exclusively because of its fine pigmentation. I used Mr.Surfacer 1000 as my primer coat, thinned to 2 parts thinner and 1 part Mr.Surfacer. Try this mixture on an old model first. If you do not use enough thinner you get fine stringy areas in corners and angled parts. Then the E-10 was covered with Panzer yellow. I followed a camouflage scheme introduced by Tony Greenland as a late war Wehrmacht example. The green and red brown splotches are applied, free hand with an airbrush. Then the interesting part was added- the semicircular patterns. The stencil was made with a hole punch bought at Baumarkt (2mm) I cut the thin plastic sheet to about 2x2 cm and added a thin spacer at the bottom. This size was large enough to prevent over spray.
After enough drying time I sprayed the whole model with Model Master Acryl Clear to give the model an even sheen and to protect the Gunze colors from the effect of the turpentine used with oils for weathering. Now I proceeded to the wheels and tracks. The whole wheel assembly had been sprayed black before and then were sprayed with the camouflage and masked in order to leave only the wheel surfaces black. These black surfaces were now dry brushed with gunmetal and treated with graphite. The dirt on the tracks was produced with Revell earth color, sifted dirt and a variety of pigments. The whole mixture was then applied with an old bristle brush. After drying one can remove some of the excess mixture.
The tracks I painted with a mixture of Revell earth color and black and after drying used burned sienna to highlight. I used them same paint, dirt, pigment mixture on the tracks and used turpentine to affix it. The areas that make contact with other parts are dry brushed with graphite, gunmetal and silver. The whole model is given a thin oil wash. To finsh up a little dust is simulated with pigments and finally boot prints are applied. One has to use the important boot print stamp one bought from Plus-Model after all ...
Conclusion
A kit worth the price (there only was a resin kit up to now) for beginners as well as for the experts. A kit one can really go to town on. |
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meet the modeler |
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Wolfram Bradac |
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I was born in 1962 in Vienna.
During my school time I started modelling with Airfix kits.
After a long break I restarted modelling. I used to build aircrafts of the Luftwaffe and now have changed to armor and naval subjects.
Like most other modellers I stored a lot of kits, more than
I built. Beside modelling photographing is my main subject. |
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Email:  luftwaffe@chello.at |
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This page: GALLERY: Paper Tiger - Development vehicle E-10 by Trumpeter (1:35) - built by Wolfram Bradac
was last modified on: May 01, 2011
The URL of the page is: http://www.rlm.at/cont/gal39_e.htm
Translation into English by Werner
Stocker (Ft. Myers, FL USA).
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