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This is the Maquette 140/1 with the addition of the Aber etch set and 20mm barrel. The kit itself, apart from the running gear and tracks, is a bit of a dog. The details are either soft, or soft and wrong, or they don't fit. However.... it's always fun to improve, and all credit to them for marketing such an unusual and interesting vehicle.
Firstly, the rivet detail was too small, and largely wrong, so they were replaced with small sections of styrene rod. Chris Leeman's excellent article on the 140/1 in AFV Modeller 21 suggests adding a small drop of PVA glue to each rivet to give it a slight dome shape, which I did. The turret was a poor fit, so it was replaced with the Aber etch version, backed with thin styrene sheet to give it the right scale thickness. The hull, especially where the fighting compartments meets the engine deck is a really poor fit, and needed major styrene and putty surgery. The exhaust pipe that ran from the engine to the muffler was also poorly represented [totally wrong] so it was replaced with aluminium tube. The Aber grenade screens were excellent, but fiddly, and lack the rear folding extension arms which were formed from copper wire. The various tools were replaced with some from the spares box of the Tamiya Pz IV set, and placed "correctly" according to my references [they do vary slightly - such as the position and type of jack block used].
The tracks were from the kit, and were OK. Beware though; you will need to seriously thin the drive sprocket to get them to fit, and even then it's a struggle! The kit provides two types of drive sprocket, so again check your references for the vehicle you are modelling.
I wanted to model a Western Front vehicle, and based mine on the famous picture of a 140/1 in a vehicle dump somewhere in Normandy I think. It carried a small cross as its only marking, and had a three colour cam-scheme covered with plenty of dust, muck and filth. The unit is unknown.
I first gave the kit an overall spray of Citadel Chaos black, followed by the three colour scheme in Xtracrylics and Tamiya acrylics. The weathering was firstly with oils as both pin washes and filters, and then with a variety of Mig pigments. An acrylic brown and black mix was used to add spots of dust, dirt and scratches across the vehicle to varying degrees of intensity. The crosses were by Archer.
The references used were the aforementioned AFV Modeller article, the Squadron Signal "Panzer 38t in Action" volume, Ledwochs "Panzer II Luchs and Aufklarungspanzer 38t" (no 109), and MBI's "Marder III and Grille" and "Praga 38t".
I hope you enjoyed my little write-up, and found it of help if you are attempting the Maquette or Alan vehicle yourself. It took a few months on and off, but I like the look of the 140/1, and it's well worth the little bit of extra effort to correct some of the major wrongs of the kit. In fact, unless you are really lucky, you'll have to correct the thing somehow to get it to fit together and look like a tank and not a half-collapsed garden shed. Any questions, feel free to email me, especially if you are at that point of throwing the half-completed kit out of the window in frustration as I was.... it does get better!
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