Russian Object 279 Scale 1/35th
Panda Kit No.PH35005
This is an interesting subject. The Russian's convinced that they would be fighting in a small nuclear battle somewhere in Europe, designed and built a few prototypes of a tank that would survive a nuclear wind(Object 279). This boat shaped hull and lowering suspension would prevent it from being blown over by a nuclear blast. Of course it could not survive if it was to close to the epicenter but if it was away from the central blast it would survive to move around the battlefield. Not sure if the occupants would be protected from the radiation, the Russian government at the time was probably more concerned about winning the battle than they were about losing some men, this is just my opinion.
The kit is pretty straight forward, but beware of the tracks, there are 4 sets and they are individual link. If you follow the directions you might want have a root canal instead of proceeding with the tracks. I studied the directions and soon realised that the inner tracks would be almost impossible to mount correctly if the 2 track sponsons were glued in place as the directions showed. So I made the track sponsons removeable by putting wooden blocks inside them so they could be screwed into place. Also I added a way to mount my wood stand to the bottom of the tank.
There is another company that sells an Object 279 kit,Takom. In the Takom kit comes an awesome figure of a soldier in a rubber suit with a gas mask and an AK-47. Unfortunately I did not know this when I purchased the Panda kit. Found pictures of the figure on the internet so I decided to to sculpt my own. Took an old Tamiya German figure from the old 88mm gun kit#35017 and sculpted the cool dude in a rubber suit. It came out pretty decent. There is an old Tamiya kit, US Infantry Weapons Set no.3621, that has a complete gas mask and breather bag which I used for this figure.
The kit is pretty straight forward, but beware of the tracks, there are 4 sets and they are individual link. If you follow the directions you might want have a root canal instead of proceeding with the tracks. I studied the directions and soon realised that the inner tracks would be almost impossible to mount correctly if the 2 track sponsons were glued in place as the directions showed. So I made the track sponsons removeable by putting wooden blocks inside them so they could be screwed into place. Also I added a way to mount my wood stand to the bottom of the tank.
There is another company that sells an Object 279 kit,Takom. In the Takom kit comes an awesome figure of a soldier in a rubber suit with a gas mask and an AK-47. Unfortunately I did not know this when I purchased the Panda kit. Found pictures of the figure on the internet so I decided to to sculpt my own. Took an old Tamiya German figure from the old 88mm gun kit#35017 and sculpted the cool dude in a rubber suit. It came out pretty decent. There is an old Tamiya kit, US Infantry Weapons Set no.3621, that has a complete gas mask and breather bag which I used for this figure.
