Jakko’s 1:35 Dragon Sd.Kfz. 251

[Guest]

It doesn’t look like it would be overly difficult: it’s just a bevelled square (a very truncated pyramid, in other words) with a rectangular raised part in front of it. My main problem in deciding whether or not to correct it, is that finding good pictures of it is proving difficult, let alone drawings that show the correct size

[Guest]

After looking at photos, I decided I can’t be bothered to correct the transmission bulge in the floor. I have a hard time working out how it’s too small, and it’s not exactly in full sight anyway, so unless someone comes up with actual dimensions, I’m going to leave it as-is,

So, the next step was to glue the sides to the lower hull:

[ATTACH]462702[/ATTACH]

To do this, I first added the rear plate and then used that to line up the sides, glueing one to the rear plate first and then to the lower hull, working from rear to front. When it was on, I did the same on the other side, then dropped in the floor and engine bulkhead (glued together) as well as the upper hull, without glueing them to the rest of the model yet. Fit was poor at the lower left front, but much better on the right. My tip would be to install the sides first, and when the glue is still wet, add the nose floor (part B9) so you can get everything to fit together.

On to the tracks, which are best tackled while building the rest of the model, IMHO. This kit comes with two types: on the wheel sprue are the early style of links, with holes through them, while it also has the later type without holes, in separate bags as a set of Dragon’s “Magic Tracks” that theoretically don’t need cleanup. Sure …

[ATTACH]462703[/ATTACH]

That’s the sprue with the older links and some of the Magic Tracks, for comparison. If you look closely at the links at upper right, you can see ejector pin marks on the flat part on each side of the link, which I filed off on the five links at lower right. This seems to be about as much work as cleaning up the sprue attachments of the other links, so there is not really much to choose between them, effort-wise. Just choose whichever style you want or need on your model.

Here’s the drive sprocket:

[ATTACH]462704[/ATTACH]

Spot the two issues …

The obvious one is that it doesn’t have any rollers. All these early German half-tracks had a complicated sprocket that didn’t have teeth, but rollers:



These are easy enough to add from some plastic rod of the right diameter — that is, slightly larger than the teeth that Dragon did mould, which are 1.15 mm wide (on the inside half anyway).

The second, and less obvious, problem is that the teeth/rollers are in the wrong position … You can’t tell from the real sprocket above because its tyre has worn down, but the teeth/rollers should be at the rear of each flat, not in the middle like this kit has them (and that makes the left and right sprockets different, not identical like here). This is not a problem unique to Dragon, say reviews: Tamiya’s kits also have this mistake, only AFV Club seems to have gotten this right.

I’m still debating how best to correct this. I’m thinking that carefully cutting off the teeth, glueing in rollers and then re-installing the teeth will be the easiest way, but stands a bit of a chance of losing some of them. I would prefer scratchbuilding them so I can make as many as needed (28 in total, there’s no point in making them for the inside half) but that half-round top makes this hard.

[Tim Marlow]

You aren’t selling me on this kit you know Jakko. Sure you’ll sort it out though……

[Guest]

TBH, I wish I had the AFV Club kit I bought this one without actually looking into if it has any problems, and to tell the truth, I’m getting put off Dragon kits because of all these small, hidden problems that they have. My recent Sd.Kfz. 7 had different issues, but on the same kind of scale, and the one before was a Sherman that is just bad compared to Asuka, RFM, etc. Back when Dragon made kitsof vehicles nobody else did, they were worth the bother. Now? Not so much.

But this kit isn’t actually bad — fit is quite good (so far ) and moulding standard is high. It’s just that it has some small mistakes that are a bit inexplicable.

[Jim R]

On my Trumpeter kit the rollers are correct but also incorrectly centred on the flats. A few reviews point this out. I have built a short section of track and it fits ok and seems to sit nicely against the tyre. Moving the rollers will be a major job and if I'm honest perhaps beyond me so I'll leave well alone. You have more experience of this kind of thing so I look forward to seeing how you go about it

[The Smythe Meister]

BLIMEY ..
So much information going on here my tiny mind can't take it all in....
.... In fact I almost forgot what you're building Jakko!!
Nonetheless I've regained my senses and will be following along all the way

[Guest]

On my Trumpeter kit the rollers are correct but also incorrectly centred on the flats.

Oddly, Dragon did get that right with their Sd.Kfz. 7.

I have built a short section of track and it fits ok and seems to sit nicely against the tyre. Moving the rollers will be a major job

I’m debating whether to just leave them in place too. I will certainly add the rollers (I’ve had to order some rod of about the right diameter, though), but like I said, I haven’t found a good way yet to make the teeth that the rollers go between. If I can’t find one I’ll probably just add the rollers and leave it at that

.... In fact I almost forgot what you're building Jakko!!

The only non-German, non-American halftrack in this GB, I think

[Guest]

This kit is not endearing itself to me.

[ATTACH]462772[/ATTACH]

That is the floor with the seat frames installed, but no seats yet because I want to paint underneath first. I cleaned up and glued those frames in place yesterday, and when I went on today, I discovered something rather important that the instructions make not clear at all:

[ATTACH]462773[/ATTACH]

Yes, for the wooden slat seats, you don’t need those frames at all … but that’s not how it looks from the drawings. They give me the impression that the wooden seats go on top of the frames just like the leather ones did.

[ATTACH]462774[/ATTACH]

So I duly cut them off again, and cleaned up the area after taking that photo. The instructions make another mistake about the wooden seats, namely that they show parts B12 and B13 without their legs, which go into the holes in the lockers under the seats. I had to trim down those legs, except the ones on the corners, because the other frames had filled the holes for them.

Also, those same parts don’t sit completely underneath the seats: instead, the seats sit inside the L-shape you can see in the top half of the wooden seats drawing. If you do glue B12/B13 fully under the seats, the rears will sit far too high and the inboard sides will be outboard of the locker edge — guess how I discovered all of this.

Those little parts also all come with a ton of ejector pin nodules that you have to remove, so these seats, of either type, are not a quick job at all. But this is them in place:

[ATTACH]462775[/ATTACH]

Still loose, because like I said, I want to paint underneath first.

Oh, yeah, and I filled the holes for the driver’s gas mask container on the left side of the firewall, as I doubt the French would have kept that in.

[minitnkr]

......fun, fun, fun,........

[Jim R]

This kit is not endearing itself to me.

I can perfectly understand why. Dragon are not helping their reputation with this kit.

[Guest]

......fun, fun, fun,........

… in the sun, sun, sun …

Well, actually in the attic room with the sunshade on the window down, but hey, it was sunny

[Guest]

I glued the floor into the lower hull and added more parts to the interior:

[ATTACH]463002[/ATTACH]

It’s not complete yet, of course. After that I added the driver’s visors:

[ATTACH]463003[/ATTACH][ATTACH]463004[/ATTACH]

Why these are moulded in clear plastic, I have no idea, but I do know it makes the job harder because it’s not that easy to tell if you’ve cleaned them up enough or not. Two parts are still missing, the armoured glass blocks, which I’ll install after painting. Those are the only bits that do benefit from being in clear plastic, but oddly, Dragon only provided them for the front ports, and not for the sides or the spare blocks you can see in the lower hull. This is a missed opportunity, IMHO.

Also, don’t make the mistake I did and fit the visors’ plate into the upper hull before installing the visors themselves. It’s hard to get them in place like that, and it would probably have been easier when the plate was still loose (as the instructions tell you to do it, BTW).

There are two sets of engine deck hatches, so make sure you use the ones on sprue A, not sprue C. I didn’t pay attention to the letters and just looked for the right shape of part, so I cleaned up the wrong ones and found they wouldn’t fit in the hinges moulded to the upper hull. The other set does

Another small point is the curved bullet splash guard on the roof (part C31). This has a ridge on one side that is supposed to fit into a curved track in the roof plate, but it’s so tight a fit that I cut about half a millimetre off the ends of that ridge and even then it only just wanted to go in. What’s more: the instructions show it upside-down, with the locating ridge upward, in step 12 of the instructions for the basic APC — but not in step 11 for the IR-equipped variant (to add to the confusion, only steps 1 through 4 are common to the three variants; each then gets its own steps 5 through 12 to build the rest of the model).

With the rear doors and a few more parts added, and the upper hull still loose on the lower:

[ATTACH]463005[/ATTACH]

There is another thing to watch out here: the grab rails, D24, have an angled surface so that they sit horizontal against the sloped hull sides. If you’re not careful, you can easily glue them upside-down so they angle down instead — I only found out when adding the second one …

[Tim Marlow]

Starting to look the part Jakko, despite Dragon’s best effort to fox you

[Guest]

It’s not doing my regard for Dragon any good, no. And to think I just bought a Dragon M2 halftrack kit (like the M3 Dave Ward is building, but slightly shorter) from someone today …

[Jim R]

You're taming the Dragon but it is frustrating. Looking good though.