Friday, August 1, 2025

A Vintage Classic

My mate Mark P bought me a couple of Airfix kits as Christmas presents. This one has just reached completion:


It's the Tank Mk 1 from the Vintage Classics range. It's a 1967 moulding so nearly as old as I am!


The kit comes with a single decal and a painting guide for a vehicle at Fleurs-Courcelette during the Battle of the Somme in September 1916. However, I decided I'd paint mine in an overall grey scheme representing a vehicle prepared for testing at the Lincoln factory earlier in the year.


It's generally not too difficult a kit to build. A little filling and sanding was necessary to hide some of the joins between the armour plates. The biggest problem is attaching the steering trailer to the complex mechanism of springs at the rear of the hull. I think a permanent display base is going to be needed to prevent future breakage.


4 comments:

Neil Patterson said...

Not long ago made an old Airfix Crusader - I was very impressed at how well it went together. Even the very old tracks, while problematic, were not as bed as I thought they'd be.
Neil

Martin Rapier said...

It is a very venerable kit, and I like the grey paint scheme, that is quite unusual. I have a couple of Airfix MK 1 serving in my 20mm WW1 armies, although minus their wheels, they are pretending to be gun armed MK V. The hulls are almost identical in size to the Emhar MK V.

Counterpane said...

I managed to 3D print a MkV, I think blowing it up from its intended 15mm scale. It worked OK and it's considerably less fragile that this Airfix one.

Counterpane said...

I never owned the 1/76th Crusader kit but I did build the 1/32d MkIII as a kid in the 1970s. I think I've probably still got some "in action" shots I took of it in my parents' garden.