This is my second completed Dragon armour kit, and
ironically another on the Pz. IV running gear. The last was their Brummbar,
Series II, a few years back. I’ve always fancied the “Ball Lightning/Fireball”
antiaircraft tank from the very end of the war, the futuristic dome-like turret
catches the attention, so unlike the suicidally open fighting compartments of
earlier designs. I was delighted to snag Dragon’s kit on eBay a few years back,
as I didn’t fancy trying to scratch-build the turret on a standard Pz. IV
chassis (ala Tony Greenland).
The kit is built out of the box with the exception of
replacing the indie-link tracks with Tamiya vinyls – my ability to handle
indie-link tracks is a matter of record. I’m giving it a go on a kit for which no
substitute is available, but it’s very experimental, and changing out the
plastic for vinyl makes the current project possible for me. Okay, the tracks
are a tiny bit tight, resulting in some toe-in on the idler wheels, but that’s
it.
This is a 2018 build which got as far as the base coast of
the camo before New Year. The paint scheme is based loosely on that created by
Tony Greenland for his conversion/scratch project many years ago, but developed
into something fairly original as I went. The paintwork features Tamiya
acrylics, with the base coat faded for a scale effect, then oversprayed with
XF-11 for the dark green and XF-64 rotbraun, both thinned over the odds and
delivered at higher than usual pressure to achieve a reasonably tight pattern.
The yellow was retouched to fix overspray and better define the balance between
the shades, then a 5% dark yellow glaze was added over the upper surfaces to
tie the camo together. The lower surfaces received a similar glaze of
brown/black to create a road grime base.
One new technique I worked with here, I wanted a fairly
fresh vehicle with some subtle lustre on the paint, more subtle than
Microscale’s Flat would provide, so I used a couple of coats of straight X-20A
acrylic thinner over the paintwork. It seemed to do the trick, evening the
surface at a fine scale so it picked up a low sheen. Conversely, the underside
gave issues of excess luminosity – after the oil wash was done to create dirt,
oil and rust streaking, the mineral thinners left the whole undercarriage
shining with a high satin look, so I sprayed Tamiya XF-86 Clear Flat – which
did not in fact pull the shine down as far as I would have liked. The overall
upper paintjob is fresh and chipping is minimal but there’s a good build-up of
road grime behind the running gear, plus exhaust carbon from intensive work-up
on the firing ranges. I profiled all edges with pale yellow oils, but did no topside
rust streaking and only minimal dirt spotting.
Dragon’s over-complicated approach was not very apparent in
this kit, the assembly seemed quite logical, but the on-vehicle tools were a
headache, just as they were on the Brummbar. The plethora of variants the
company squeezes from the same molds necessitates a constellation of holes and
slots on the underside of the sponsons which you drill out as appropriate to
the subject, to receive the tool pins. This is fine in theory but not in
practice – when you have holes for parts with no pins and pins with no
corresponding holes at all, or a tool with two locator pins, one on each side, it really smacks of
amateurishness, or overambitiousness at best. The tools also interfered with
each other here and there – the tolerances are too fine.
The decals were not up to much. As the real thing never got
beyond prototype stage, the idea here was to represent a trials vehicle, so no
divisional markings were required (national insignia only). I raided the
brilliant decal sheet from the Brumbar for balkenkreutzers, which went on
without a hitch.
The finished model looks good, with minimal pigment work,
and the Dragon indie tracks will provide Pz. IV links for other projects for
years to come – I have a StuG IV to do featuring lots of extra track lengths as
appliqué armour and I expect many will be assembled from this kit. My next
Dragon? Not sure, but possibly a Nashorn, another chance to do the track
switch-out. Yes, the new Tammy kit is fantastic, but the Dragon is already in
the stash.
Cheers, Mike Adamson
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