Originally I was going to built my Trumpeter IS-3m I previously posted here, but in the meantime something else caught my attention:
You might have seen this photo before...a genuine WW2-era SU-100 still in active service in 2015 in the Yemeni Civil War. No idea how many if any still remain today, this war didn't exactly cause much media attention in the western world.
You can read a lot about the SU-100 in postwar service in the Middle East on this very informative website: https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com/201 ... ddle-east/
At the very end of the page is a short section on the Yemeni SU-100. Note that most vehicles in the region were actually postwar SD-100 produced in Czechoslovakia - you can easily recognize them by the stowage box on the front right corner and the commander's cupola with a one-piece hatch lid.
I'm using the Zvezda kit, which I bought long before the current geopolitical mess started:
Normally I'd show you the box contents, but I got a little carried away and started building before I took any photos. But here's a good review of the kit.
And after 3-4 lazy summer evenings at the bench this is where I'm currently at:
I know, it looks almost done, but knowing myself, I'd say I'll spend much more time improving kit details
Since the tank on the photo has the postwar "starfish" wheels (similar but not identical to those on the T-54/55), I swapped them out with those from a Miniart T-34 Model 1960 I found cheap on Ebay. Miniart also sells them separately, if you happen to need some. I've also added a metal barrel by RB Model. The kit comes with a single-piece barrel with separate hollow end cap, which isn't really bad at all.
So far, it went together smoothly. If you want to omit the front fenders, be prepared for a bit of surgery to recreate the contours of the armour plates and to close the resulting gap at the hull front:
There's still a considerable gap on the underside, which would also happen on an OOTB build. I might yet add some bits of styrene sheet to close them up. Also note the gap between the fenders and sponsons, I'm not sure if this is due to warping or a substantial engineering error by Zvezda.
Fitting the Miniart wheels required some drilling and the addition of 2mm spacers, after failing repeatedly to cut styrene tube to the proper lenght I resorted to punching out disks from sheet styrene.
A nice surprise was the inclusion of clear plastic parts. Not sure if that is all what's going on inside the cupola. I'll leave the hatches off until I've decided on figure placement. By the way, the cast texture was made with Vallejo putty stippled on with an old brush, I'm curious how it'll look under some paint. Since it's water-based, you can scrape it off again if you're not satisfied. I've used it for Zimmerit before and there it yielded good results.
Some of the mouled on details which I'm going to replace with photoetch. I don't have a set for the SU-100, but a few T-34 sets by Eduard that should have most of what I need.
Thanks for looking, I'm afraid further progress will have to wait for two weeks until I'm back from a long-awaited vacation
Philipp
