Revell Soviet Battle Tank T-80BV 1:72 - Page 2 of 2

The package

Sprues are moulded in a greeny-coloured plastic, a set of instructions, and small decal sheet make up the package.

Initial impressions

Mould quality looks good as I’ve said and the level of detail is excellent given the small scale. The turret moulding and overall surface looks good – especially that cast-texture; the look and feel of the model is very clean.

Other highlights include

The detail on the hull top, track links and one-piece gun barrel – the latter being easy to drill out with a pin vice hand held drill and bit. The crew hatches are designed to be set open or closed and the external detail in exceptional for 1:72 scale – a real highlight for me.

Another strength is the way the ‘rubberised side skirts’ (that’s what they look like to me) are moulded in a slightly irregular way so that you can make them look much more realistic than pure flat surfaces – check out photos of the real thing and you’ll see how these side skirts move and sit on the real tank – although mostly they are hidden along the top section.

The tracks are broken down into small plastic sections that should allow you to pose them fairly naturally. In fact, if you add the side skirts then much of the track section along the upper run will be invisible, so what’s provided looks to be just fine in 1:72 scale. These sections can be a little fiddly as I discovered when building the Revell MsA2 Bradley in 1:72.
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Decals

There’s a small sheet with the respective number plates and unit badges for the options contained in the kit. Quality looks fine and colour definition also good.

Versions are:

• Westgruppe der sowj. Streitkräfte, Letzlinger Heide, DDR, 1985
• Rückverlegung nach Russland, Berlin-Lichtenberg, DDR, 1994
• Parade, Moskau, 2005
• Parade, Khabarovsk, Russland, 2014

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Instructions

These follow the usual Revell format with Revel colour references, parts and sprue layout diagrams followed by a 23-Stage build and finishing sequence. The sequence looks to be logical to me but of course you will want to leave off all the small, delicate parts like the aerial until near the end of the build to avoid damage.