Breaking Your Dragon Virginity – Take Two

Several years ago I posted a piece on my first Dragon kit, an Imperial (?) or 39/45 Series StuG III/F.8. I thought I was really going to break it that time, but after a fair bit of work that kit was part of a batch sold on…

I have in fact built some early Dragon kits reissued by Zvezda, their T-72B w/ERA and BTR-70 in Afghanistan trim, so I suppose I’ve not been a Dragon virgin in many years, but for a more sophisticated, more up-to-date outing, and perhaps one actually in a Dragon box, I have so far no real track record.

I broke that recently, with Dragon’s #6500, Brummbar Mid-Production w/Zimmerit. I have often observed that Dragon’s operating philosophy is never use one part if five will do, and this one is no exception, but construction was surprisingly straight forward. The notorious omissions and inaccuracies in the plans were not much in evidence, but the sheer complexity of what’s happening on paper means you can miss things. The driver’s periscope, for instance, can only be installed, pre-masked, from underneath, so, obviously, you need to have done this before installing the compartment to the main superstructure or the superstructure to the hull. If this was a Tamiya kit there would be a cartoon alongside the step with their sergeant-major character pointing at the parts and informing you of the assembly sequence…  Ah well, mine is shown with the periscope “in the down position,” right…

Moulding was crisp and sharp, plastic responded well to cements of various types, and as usual with Dragon kits, you get copious bits for your spares box. The decals were a nice surprise, very thin, quite matt in finish (obviating the need to mess about with clear coats if you prefer a flat finish straight from the airbrush), they freed off readily and snugged down over zimmerit with Microscale chemistry – pulling into the roughness even before the red label solution was applied. Some crosses were a tad out of register, though. You also get etched schurtzen, which, somewhat perversely, in this case might just end up applied to Stugs and the older Brummbar by Tamiya. Woven wire for the tow cables is another very nice touch, however instructions as to exactly how you’re meant to install the cable holders, when there is perhaps 1.5mm clearance under the intake assembly, a 1mm attachment hole for glue to grip on and the wire is spring steel that does not readily accept a kink, are another matter. After a great deal of fiddling and superglue I threw the cables back in the box – there is such a thing as overthinking the details.

On the downside, there were overcomplicated assembly sequences and extreme “fiddlyness” resulting in many parts being simply knocked off as one tried to pursue later assemblies. If they even had sturdier attachment points it would help, but at times Dragon seems to rely on “superglue and prayer” like some limited-run or amateur outfits, which is hardly reasonable. There are instances of pegs with no holes to go into… The jack block, for instance, and one of the tools. When Hobbycraft does this they come in for a tongue-lashing, and I see no reason why Dragon should be immune.

Overall, I think what took so long for me to finish this one were the etched parts (what a surprise) and of course the “Dragon Styrene” tracks… Much has been written about them and all of it is true. The material captures detail wonderfully, accepts paint beautifully and bonds tightly with superglue or other styrene cements, but… They’re too long. Almost everyone bemoaning DS tracks online says the same thing. It goes back to my post some years ago, why oh why do kit companies have such dire problems with tracks? If it’s not Trumpeter with their three-links-short tracks for the Type 89 family, it’s Tamiya’s inexplicably saggy yinyls for their Sherman… Perhaps the DS tracks are too long so you can distort them to create German dead-track sag – a nice theory, except their DS Sherman (live) tracks are way too long as well. The number of links on the Brummbar tracks was correct, 98 per side, but they are two or three links long to sit snugly (meaning a fresh, pre-stretched track, which incidentally is what is depicted in both the box art and the instructions). Of course, you don’t know any of this until you come to install them almost at the very end of the project, meaning everything is already painted and they’re joined up, so fancy rigging to force sag was not planned for from the get-go. Maybe I should be more cynical where tracks are concerned, expect problems, but for the price Dragon charges and its fancy-schmancy DS patented stuff, and the sweet detail they capture, you’re lulled by all the big-buck quality and actually expect them to just tension neatly into place.

No such luck. As I’ve said before, there’s a bone in my head that will not spend more for an accessory than for the kit itself, so Friuls were not an option. I’ll need to be a lot richer and have a lot more time on my hands before I go that road. Bronco’s and AFV Club’s styrene indie/workable tracks look good but are so fragile they fall apart if you breathe on them, and the fact is I have other projects to get on with, this one has had its fiddling time already. My solution was to cut the tracks apart, excise two or three links (two was plenty) and join them up again with superglue, plus drill through adjacent links and tightly bind them with black thread. I’ve done this before, on a project many years ago, so I know it works, I just hate the necessity of doing so; the fact is the DS material bonds so well that the track rejoined surprisingly well. It doesn’t cut so cleanly, so a sharp blade is recommended, and I hid the join up under the sponsons so the thread was unlikely to be seen by any who didn’t already know it was there. If you were so inclined, you could hide such a join with a dollop of mud. The real irony is that while the port side track needed shortening, the starboard was close enough to get by with and just ignore the slackness at the idler for the moment. If it gets to me, I’ll take out a link at a later date. In future I know to shorten the four-link mating tongues by two links, which will be much simpler and neater. Yes, I guess that means I’ll be building more Dragons and using more DS tracks…

The sprues for the individual spare track links did not seem to be in the box so I used links from an Academy set; they actually needed more cleanup than they got, it was not until I enlarged photographs that I saw the ejector pin marks… Blame eyesight for that one!

The model certainly looks good on the shelf, despite having shed bits of etch and been repaired several times as handling messed up over-fragile details. I used the sprayed-on road grime technique again and it has a convincing visual “feel” to my eye. It was a good kit to build, a challenge in its own way, but most kits are in one sense or another, and I’m very happy to say that my Dragon cherry has finally been popped.