15 January 2004

Hasegawa Crusader with Airfix Turret

Hasegawa Crusader with Airfix Turret - Jorit Wintjes (original article formerly on the miniaturezone.co.uk website)

The Crusader was built by mating a Hasegawa hull and an Airfix turret.

While the Airfix hull has some dimensional problems - it's too short - the Hasegawa turret looks like anything but a Crusader one.

I scratchbuilt a new turret roof to get the angles and the hatch correct, and spent some time getting the opening mechanism right - only to hide the latter from view with a poorly painted crew figure. Kinda unsmart... Getting the scratchbuilt sideskirts look right (they should bend slightly outwards) was very difficult.

In the end they still look rather flattish, but you have to be rather close to the model to see that (and if you're that close, your attention will be drawn to a number of other shortcomings :) ).





I also tried to improve the look of the tracks by cutting them into small sections to get some sagging effect, but this didn't work out as intended - actually, around the sprocket, it worked just the other way round!

To get an accurate representation I should also have reworked the engine deck, the side stowage bins and the air filters, but I decided to call it a day and simply load it up with stowage stuff (scratchbuilt or from the spares box).

© Jorit Wintjes - Würzburg, Germany (2004) (original article formerly on the miniaturezone.co.uk website)