Panzerhaubitze 2000

Ron Garcia
A very nice kit with an impressive gun! Very straightforward build with no real issues - except one (for me, anyway). Study the instructions carefully, though, because the Dutch army version requires lots of modifications. I went with the German one, but I still almost made a few mistakes here and there.

The only thing that was a MAJOR pain was the tracks. Awful! Inside the kit is a small box that holds all the track pieces. I thought, great, Meng cut out all the pieces already. How wrong I was! The tracks come in three pieces and are designed to be workable. They took FOREVER to cut out and clean up. Seriously, what a waste of time. Luckily, I was taking an online course that featured a lot of audio. That helped me pass the time while cutting out and cleaning up all those pieces. Then you have to put them together...

A piece with two rods on either end needs to be trapped between the upper and lower parts of the track. Very tedious! There is a jig, but since it's made of styrene, you'll end up with a sticky mess if you use it. Since I could care less about working tracks, I glued mine together - one at a time. I laid the rod section on two bottom tracks, sandwiched one side with one top one, laid the next rod piece with the next bottom section, sandwiched that one, and on and on it went. Thank God there are side skirts on the kit. That meant I could get away with going just far enough so that either end of the tracks covered the first return roller on its respective end. That saved some time. I know some of you hardcore armor model enthusiasts will consider this heresy, but considering the tracks are taut anyway, vinyl tracks would have been a way better alternative. Sure, maybe some detail would have been lost, but really, unless you're entering it into a contest, would it really be that noticeable?

I ran into two other slight issues. First, I found PE part X6 interfered with the turret. I placed the part right, but the turret will hit it when rotated. I always pose my turrets with the gun pointing off center and the barrel going over the right front fender, so it wasn't an issue for me. But if you pose yours straight ahead, it will hit it and pop it off. The other issue is the instructions about the length of the towing cable. The directions are written poorly (the English version anyway). It says to CUT OFF 125 mm (or 140 mm for the Dutch version). Usually, the instructions say what the length should be. Of course, I cut mine short, but since I still had the other piece, I was able to make it work.

Other than the nightmare that was the tracks, I really liked this kit. The sorta turtle shell looking turret combined with that awesome gun looks very impressive on my shelf. I'd like to say I recommend this kit, but the tracks just ruined it for me. I'm glad I have this kit in my collection, but if I would have know what a pain the tracks were going to be, I'd have never purchased it. Your opinion, of course, will vary.