Esci / Italeri 1/72 M1 Abrams tank (by Onur Uz)

Hello dear modelers,

Today there is a model from the newest member of the "miniafv" team.

His name is Onur Uz . Today he makes his first post with Abrams. Of course, I hope to share more of Onur's models.

This Italeri kit is a re-boxing Esci Abrams. An old mold and the worst part is the wheels. ESCI molded each pair of bogie wheels as a single, double-wide wheel. The good news is the side skirts hide this...Some of the Esci / Italeri's kit have this downside. (M-60, M-48, Merkava, Leopard1)

Welcome to the "miniafv" Onur,

Erhan..

Onur wrote....

Hello,  

Our New Project is 1/72 scale M1A1 Abrams model of İtaleri company. The box contains 2 colors of paint, glue and 1 brush that make up the basic colors. Friends who are just starting out and want to try the hobby can try their luck by getting a utility knife. 

A useful set in this respect. However, information such as which tank battalion and country it belongs to, the number of parts does not write the paint schemes specified in the guide. When we examine the decals, we come to the idea that we can revive the tanks belonging to the US and Canada army. We will talk about whether there is a problem with assembly or not in the following days. If we come to the tank itself; 

The M1 Abrams is the United States main battle tank designed by Chrysler defense (later purchased by General Dynamics Land Systems) and manufactured in different factories under the license of the same company. Basically, the variants are divided into 3 as M1 (1979-1986), M1A1 (1986-1992) and M1A2 (1992-Present). The first M1 produced was a grooved 105 mm Royal Ordnance L7 (M68A1) cannon, which was also used by the British army and proved its quality on tanks such as the centurion mk 7, m60 (USA). In later versions (M1A1 and M1A2), a 120 mm M256 smoothbore gun, a variant of the L44 gun of Rheinmetall, was used. Although the current versions are tanks with very high accuracy and firepower, the first version of the Abrams was the tanks that, despite the quality of their guns, were quite troublesome to hit in motion or in a fixed position due to stabilization and distance finding problems. The turret bottoms had very weak armor. Therefore, the development of M1A1 was in order to eliminate the deficiencies in this direction. M1A1's thermal and daylight vision system for the gunner, laser-assisted range finder, ballistic fire control computer, wind sensor, tilt sensor, ammunition data information, ammunition temperature indicator, muzzle sensor in all weather conditions, day and night has combat capability. In addition, with the improvement made in its armor, weakened uranium was started to be used within the Chobham armor tiers in M1A1. There is also a hardware package developed for the residential area called TUSK (Tank Urban Survival Kit). Its biggest disadvantages seem to be that it consumes more fuel than its peers (Leopard 2A5-2A6, T-90 etc.), that it is highly dependent on supply unions and operating costs. In addition, although they had very serious advantages on paper, there were old-generation Soviet tanks that were not technologically equivalent in the gulf war and the Iraq war. The weaknesses of ATGM technology, which is very advanced today, continue to be a matter of discussion by the authorities.

I made a quick introduction to the merge process. If I will list the problems I have encountered so far; Due tothe fact that the shafts on which the wheels sit areassembled and the disproportionality in the grooves of the slots in the wheels, there may be problems in alignment. Also, the mold marks on the wheels aredisturbingly visible, I tried hard with sandpaper toremove them.

I can say that Italeri did a great job in the palletbusiness. The consistency is very good, the fragmentedpalette does not scare, it did not force the assembly.

I started to wash with bright varnish. I do thelines and pinwash with tamiya panel line black. Afterthis process is finished, I will dilute some of thementhor model in the sand panel line and apply it as a filter to the whole model. Let's see what will emerge. On the one hand, I prepare the accessories for painting. but the traces of the mold that Italeri created in absurdplaces haunted me. Putting the tiny parts through thepaste + leveling process made me constricted.

I applied decals. Then I finished the washprocess. As I mentioned in the previous post, I usedmentor sand panel liner to capture different tones. I didtouches on it with tamiya weathering master. Paintinghas ended in detail pieces.

And here is the completed model...

Little update ,24.04.2021 

A modeler friend wrote on Facebook:

Thomas Willoughby said,, thank you Nice job. One point of interest is the Tank commanders hatch stops at the vertical position it does not fold down flat. Nothing wrong with the build just a bit of information. 

Then Onur renovated