The Little World

I endured such a razzing from my scale model club mates when I built the tiny Polish TKS tankette that I have decided to get my revenge.

And who better to provide it than the Russians. They provide excess misery for everyone else, why not harness it to my purposes. So here is a Josef Stalin-2 tank from Zvezda to occupy a few mornings.

The box came a little damaged, but with Zvezda the outer case is somewhat superfluous – there is a very sturdy inner box to encase the sprue trees. These fold-top boxes are good enough to save for other storage needs around the house. I would be willing to bet there is a lot of double-use of packaging in Russia.

Well the sprue trees are flashy, but complete. Two wheel and accessory ones that are identical , plus a big top and small bottom tree. The tracks are flexible vinyl of some sort – not as detailed as some I see built at the club but more than enough for what I am going to do to Uncle Joe.

The instructions are adequate, but hardly superb. Little English seen, but again, all I need is a basic structure, so this sort of drawing will probably provide it. The decals look good but are superfluous. The white numbers might turn up somewhere else on a fighter plane – White letters and numbers are valuable as my inkjet printer cannot make them.

One good thing was the hobby shop had the exact shade of paint I need to complete it when the time comes.

Note: the project nearly stalled when I saw a Trumpeter model of the same tank in the shop for over $ 109 AUS. I like to exercise my ideas, but not at that price. This Zvezda was only $ 40 AUS. I don’t like doing the Russians any favours these days, but as you’ll see, in the end I won’t be…