S and S T-55 AVLB

Well this will be my last post for a few weeks as I'm going on holidays and doubt I'll have the chance or ability to post anything - may be - you never know.

Review and Build

The S&S T-55 AVLB is one of their newer models and it shows.  The resin is clean and near 100% few of bubbles or deformities.  As always the metal is very crisp and clean.  Not much claning was required on this model at all.

Everything I have to say about this kit is essentially positive.  Not only do you get a great little T-55 AVLB with a folded bridge, but you also get a deployed bridge included.  The bridge laying mechanism can be put together so you can have it on your tabletop driving to the river (withthe bridge on top of it) but once you reach the river and deploy the bridge, you can simply take off the folded bridge, lower the bridge laying mechanism and park the AVLB next to the bridge.  Pretty cool in my opinion.

If anything left a little to be desired, its the instructions - which are fairly basic - but very, very useful no the less.  After a bit of fiddling and working out how the photos in the instructions related to the model I had no real problems.  Everything fit together very well and nothing had to be trimmed or anything like that.

I totally rate this kit and am very impressed with it.

Here's some photos of the S&S T-55 AVLB:

And the bridge:

and finally the bridge with a T-72 crossing it:

That's it.  See you ina few weeks and have fun...

Richard

Cromwell Models FV434

Sticking to the British theme - the next up is a Cromwell Models FV434 Armoured Recovery Vehicle.

You find find out a little about the real deal here on wikipedia witha selection of good photos here

Again this is a second hand model which I just had to fix a little and then paint.  It's slightly smaller than my Britannia FV432's but I can easily live with that.  I'll be using this as a HQ attachment to my FV432 mounted Mechanised Infantry Company.

Not much more to say so on with the photos:

You can see on this one I added a little bit of green stuff to look like a oily towel or something like that.  One I'd painted it I kicked myself, because if I had thought of it previously I would had tried to sculpt it into a DPM jacket, which I think would have looked a lot cooler.

There a variety of video clips on youtube - including a whole series of some guys re-fitting an FV434.  Here a couple of others:

:


Spot the FV434 in this lot



Thanks and have fun...
Richard