Dragon 1/35 Type 2 Ka-Mi

[Minsk94]

Finally decided what to join this GB with. Will be building the Type 2 Ka-mi. I will be building the version with pontoons. It is an interesting subject and the model has lots of interesting detailing opportunities. With the photos I had already and the scans from the Panzer magazine (thanks to Steve Osfield!) I should have enough to build this thing.


Couldn't find any aftermarket, and with the off the scale thickness of some of the parts I will have to probably rebuild them from scratch.

[Brawler3_2]

Nice choice: the Ka Mi is an awesome little tank, albeit (and unfortunately) still relatively poorly supported by the aftermarket. Looking forward to seeing some of that grey plastic

[chippybomber]

Good luck with that one Alex: a good friend of mine is building one and he was not impressed by the kit. Have some inspiration: http://panzer35.ru/forum/58-8586-1
Cheers,
Dierk

[Minsk94]

Finally there is some progress to show

The build obviously started with the running gear; the assembly was pretty much straight forward. Details are nice, clean and crisp which is already expected from Dragon.



Suspensions didn't cause much problems either.
As far as the idlers' suspension the instructions didn't specify not to glue the parts A11 and A23(A24) together; but if you try to dry fit it before the actual gluing it is easy to notice that the suspension can be made movable. A11 gets glued to A25(A26) while A23(A24) [after the suspension is assembled and dried] left moving freely around A11. When it is attached to the hull A23(A24)is the only part that gets glued to the bottom of a hull. That way it will be movable.



It may seems like there is no much point to it unless you have workable tracks, but you need it to move in order to adjust the idler to make sure all wheels are lined up.



After that it could be glued permanently.

Before working on the upper part of the hull I will need to glue the propellers, but they have to be thinned out first. Way to thick for the scale.

[Minsk94]

Slowly progressing in my build. Lots of work needs to be done, but eventually it will get there.
Because I am building a version with pontoons, I can skip on some of the external detail, but some weld beads will definitely need to be added.

[Brawler3_2]

The Type 2 is one of the few DML kits still on my list. How does it build? Looking forward to the progress you've made.