Kit Ref No: 03094
Review by: Graham Thompson (July 2011)
Our thanks to Revell Germany for supplying our review sample
N.B. See the Full FINISHED NOW build of this kit.
Initial Assessment
The usual Revell style end opening box contains a total of five sprues in dark green, a set of nicely moulded vinyl tracks and a length of .3mm wire taped to the instruction booklet.
Now this is a bit of a mystery as I can find no reference to this wire in the instructions! However, there is a piece on the sprue diagram, Part 130 that does not appear to exist. This is the cable that runs from the radar unit to the vehicle and looks, on paper, to be a detailed piece. I assume that the wire is to make this but if it is, it certainly isn’t explained anywhere that I could find.
Click Image to Enlarge/go back.
Accuracy
I have no drawings or scale reference of this vehicle, but from photographs I have seen this should build into a good representation of the real vehicle. The colour scheme is the standard NATO Green, Brown and Black for which I will be using Tamiya XF 67, 68 and 69 lightened to give scale colour.
Quality
The parts on the sprues are very sharply moulded with good surface detail and are virtually flash free.
There’s only a couple of very slight sink marks, which I doubt will show once painted and all the ejection pin marks appear to be hidden when assembled. This is a fairly new kit, copyright 2010 and I believe was released around the middle of November that year.
The fit of the parts will, hopefully, be good for such a new kit and there is nothing that I can see looking at the parts to give me concerns. All in all, this looks a very nicely moulded kit.
Instructions
The instruction sheet comes as a 10 page folded A4 booklet style printed in black and white.
A short description of the vehicle is on the front cover and there are a couple of pages of general modelling advice as per Revell’s normal custom. A key for the colours used for painting the model referring to Revell’s own paints is included on half a page and there is half a page of sprue diagrams.
Add to this two pages detailing the camouflage painting pattern and decal options for four vehicles. This leaves four pages of exploded view building instructions over 32 nicely detailed stages.
Decals
The decal sheet has markings, numbers and number plates for four options of German Army vehicles ranging from 2002, allowing a good choice of specific units all of which carry the same colour scheme.
I personally have had no problems with modern Revell decals and I cannot see any reason to think there will be issues with the ones supplied with this kit. They appear to be in good register and, unusually, there are a couple of partial number plates with a few sets of numbers, 0 – 9, to enable you to make custom plates for a specific vehicle. Great for the spares box too.
Conclusion
This is a fairly new kit, a very interesting subject and a nicely detailed looking vehicle used by the German Army today.
As this will ultimately be quite a small vehicle, there is definitely scope for building a diorama with the Ocelot missile vehicle as well. If you feel brave, a ‘convoy’ consists of five Ocelots and one AFF, one third of a Battery. Go on, you know you want to do a Convoy!
I am really looking forward to starting this build; there is nothing I have seen as yet to make me think this will not be a great little build.
Highly Recommended.
Graham T.
And now check out how that Build has started – it’s in Build Now already!
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