1/35 Steyr Raupenschlepper Ost (RSO) ProgressDecember 20, 2009: I picked up this kit several years ago when I saw one on display at a local model contest. Looking far and wide, I found a 1/35 Italeri kit. I also ordered fruli tracks for the kit as the original vinyl/rubber tracks were just awful. A few years ago, I had gotten one of the linked tracks completed and had glued the main chassis together as well as a few other two part pieces, then shelved the kit for the next few years.
After building the sniper custom, I decided to crack the kit open again as I had an idea I wanted to try out for weathering purposes and this would be the perfect kit for such tests. I spent most of my building time at this past weekend's build gathering sanding the small parts and getting the kit together. I haven't built an armor kit in well over 20 years, so this will be interesting.
Below are some quick pictures I took earlier in the week with some rough sanding to rid mold lines, seamlines, and random pieces of flash. This is completely different from being utterly spoiled by Bandai MGs. But it's just plastic, anything can be built to look half way decent.
Next up is the building up of the second track. The fruli tracks are individual pewter or dicast track links that need to be connected to each other with metal wires. Good thing I had some thin metal stem wires that I used to use for pinning figures. The process is a little on the tedious side, this whole track took a few hours to complete.
Once the tracks were completed, they were measured out and placed on the kit. These tracks in comparison to the set that come with the kit are amazing and almost worth the cost of the damn things. If I remember correctly, the tracks costed as much or more than the actual kit.
And a quick mock up of the main cab and the trailer side. This is such a cool little tracked vehicle. I'm going to really enjoy building this sucker. And for continuity sake, a size comparison picture with Mr Keroro G3
December 20, 2009: Work on RSO kit begins.