Trumpeter continues to release "paper panzers," designs lifted from the drawing boards of the Wehrmacht. Such is the "Entwicklungsfahrzeug E 10" (development vehicle E 10).
Included in the kit is a nice photoetched-metal fret with engine screens, optional brass side skirts, and machine-gun shields. Some of the parts have excellent detail; other areas are a little thick.
There are ejector-pin marks to be filled. The hatches are molded separately with some minor interior detail, but this is poorly molded and marred by imperfections. Two styles of drive sprockets (early and late) can be achieved with either vinyl or individual plastic links for both options.
The vinyl tracks have small imperfections that need to be removed. Also, they are meant to be glued together - but no liquid glue I tried worked. So, I stitched them together. I chose the vinyl track to make my deadline, but the individual plastic links are the way to go, requiring only minor work to remove knock-out marks on the insides of the links.
I glued the lower hull to the upper hull before adding any of the smaller parts. Make sure vision blocks (parts B17 and C22) are glued in place before gluing the hull halves together. Slight trimming is needed to get these parts to fit right. If you want a movable gunsight, Part C6 also needs to be glued before closing the hull.
The overall fit of the parts is good. Styrene strip filled a small gap between the halves of the hinges formed in gluing Part C4 to the lower hull.
The gun mantlet has a cast texture that looks good painted and weathered. The main gun is molded in halves that require extra care to get the alignment right when they are glued together.
When you do mount the gun, glue it in place; it's too loose to stay elevated.
I used the photoetched-metal side skirts. The skirt hangers (parts PE6) are about 2mm short when bent according to the directions. The plastic alternatives look good but need sanding to scale.
Since these vehicles never saw the battlefield, you can use your imagination when painting your E 10. Trumpeter includes a color sheet showing five views of two paint schemes, but the different colors do not always line up between the five views. I painted with Tamiya acrylics.
Decals supply German crosses and two sets of numbers 1-9. The directions don't show them, so I didn't use them.
It's a kit that can easily be built in a weekend, with most of the time reserved for assembling the individual track links and painting. It took me about 20 hours.
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