| PART 1/35 T-27 Tankette |  | Background  Brought into service in February 1931, the T-27 was a significantly adapted version of the Carden-Loyd Mk IV tankette. The Soviet Union had bought a batch of 26 of the Carden-Loyds from Britain in 1930, along with a license to mass produce the vehicles. Soviet engineers were not fully satisfied with the design and so they made changes to the dimensions of the hull, the running gear and the machine gun mount in order to make the tankette more suited to the Russian environment. Serving in 65 battalions, a total of 2,547 were known to be in service in January 1937. The T-27 was used in Central Asia and was last recorded in combat during the Battle for Moscow in December 1941. It subsequently used for training purposes, or modified to carry out towing duties for 37mm and 45mm field guns. The Kit  The kit contains five sheets of Photo-Etched Brass and five resin mouldings. In total there are 236 parts, of which 23 are resin. All the brass parts a crisply etched and have a minimum of connections to the main sheet. All the resin parts are cleanly moulded with only a small amount of distortion on the larger, flatter parts. In addition to these parts, plastic rod is required to form axles, hinge pins, etc. I used three different sizes to complete the model - 0.9mm, 1.3mm and 1.5mm. The instruction sheets are on four A4 sheets (Parts list and key, two Instruction sheets for the build and a five-view [Front, Rear, Left, Right and Top] drawing). The build instruction sheets have 18 steps (A to S - missing out Q), with some steps requiring two identical parts to be built. Careful attention is required on the steps where rivet impressions need to be made prior to the folding of parts. There are no decals or painting instructions included with the kit so some research is needed for the markings. Construction Step A (10 parts) builds the Main Drive Wheels for the running gear. Three brass parts need to be carefully aligned and glued, a resin spacer glued to the inner side and a plastic axle needs to be fitted through the centre projecting inwards from the spacer to allow mounting to the hull. The wheels are 'handed' and marked 'L' or 'R' on the brass sheet.  Step B (6 parts) builds the Rear Wheels for the running gear. Three brass parts need to be carefully aligned and glued for each wheel. Whilst the instructions do not indicate 'handedness', study of the blueprints showed that the spiral should appear to run anti-clockwise on these wheels. Step C (2 parts) builds the Lower Transmission cover for fitting to hull at a later step. Step D (8 parts) builds the main Running Gear supports. In order to maintain the shape of these supports I used wooden formers (actually, mini lolly sticks) to hold them.  Step E (72 parts) builds the Leaf Springs for the Road Wheels and fits the Road Wheels and axles. As the leaf springs have to be built up from four separate leafs and then gently curved to fit onto the supports I chose to first glue the leafs together and then solder the inner edge. This allowed me to shape the springs without them coming apart. I chose not to fit the road wheels at this stage. I would spray them and fit them just before final assembly. Step F (12 parts) builds the Rear Running Gear Stanchions. This part has an inner and outer face joined together by four washer-like spacers. As the inner and outer faces have to be bent to fit onto the main support I again elected to glue and then solder the parts. Step G (2 parts) builds the Front Running Gear Stanchions. Careful study of the folding is required to get the correct shape, and each part is marked as either L or R on the brass sheet. Step H to N (33 parts and 3 assemblies) Builds various parts that will be fitted to the hull at a later step.  Step O (15 parts) builds the basic hull structure. The resin sides of the hull had to be reshaped as they were slightly warped. This was easily achieved by plunging them into a cup of freshly boiled water and then manipulating them by hand. There is a lot of rivet detail on the brass panels which needs to be 'pressed' before folding and fixing the pieces in place. I used a short length of 0.72mm steel, with the end filed to a hemisphere, fitted into a pin vice as the pressing tool for the rivet detail. Once the sides, bottom and front pieces were secured I shaped, but did not fit, the central (stationary) hatch cover. This central cover has two small lip pieces, on its left and right edges, which will act as stoppers for the 'hinged' left and right hatches. Be warned, the drawing doesn't make it very clear that these parts only folded to conform to the edge profile of the central hatch cover. There is a 'guide' line etched down the centre of these parts which I mistakenly took for a fold line (fortunately, it flattened out again once I'd realised my error!). I sprayed the interior colour at this point, before fitting any of the hatch parts. Step P (29 parts and 7 assemblies) builds the structure for the front and top of the tankette. I omitted the running gear and main drive wheels as I wished to paint them as separate assemblies before final construction. I also chose not to use the kits parts for the production of a simulated machine gun, using a 'modified' gun from a Zvezda 35th scale Soviet Tank Infantry set (Zvezda Part No. 3544) instead.  Step R (40 parts and 2 assemblies) builds the structure for the rear of the tankette. This includes all the hinges for the rear access doors and the two hatches. The kit offers the choice of working or fixed hinges, I decided to make up the working hinges as it made the kit a bit more of a challenge. Besides, if they didn't work, I could always put the fixed ones on instead, couldn't I? The hinges went together well, I glued the upper and lower plates of each hinge half together and then used a heated scalpel blade to fix the plastic rod hinge pin in place. I only broke one hinge in the process and this was not apparent on the completed kit as I managed to fix the broken parts to the chassis in such a way that they appeared to work. There is aslo an error in this step which indicates that part number 12 should be fitted on the front of the right hand hatch cover (part number 15). This small rivet strip should, in fact, be fitted to the central hatch cover as shown in the drawings supplied with the kit. I also noticed at this point that I had two pieces (unaccounted for in the build instructions) left on one of the brass sheets. These parts (numbered 93 on the sheets) are the central nuts for the Main Drive Wheels.  Step S (8 parts) builds the tracks. four parts per track, two outer track and two inner tracks. The inner tracks have to have their 'teeth' bent upward and then they can be fixed to the outer part. Despite this meaning that you have to have two joins on the tracks I found it worked very well. In fact I only used six parts for this in the end as I found that I could get a long enough track from one and a half lengths of the supplied parts. These were painted and 'silvered' before fitting.  The fit of all the parts was extremely accurate. The notable problem points being:
1. Keeping the running gear supports square (essential for the road wheels to sit properly) - use a prop.
2. Creating and shaping the leaf springs - glue then solder to allow for shaping.
3. Creating working hinges - glue the upper and lower plates together, fit the hinge pin and heat the ends to seal in place.
4. Almost all of the plastic rod has to be 'scraped down' to the correct size for each use.
Painting All the paints used were Humbrol enamels. I use an Aztec A470 airbrush and, for this kit, used only the grey (0.40mm) nozzle. All surfaces were prepared using Isopropyl Alcohol before painting.  The Interior was painted Matt White (Humbrol 34). There are no interior details in this kit so this was done to keep the look of the model 'clean'. The exterior was painted Matt Russian Green (Humbrol 114). The division and battalion markings were masked and sprayed in Matt White, and the tankette number was hand painted in Matt Black (Humbrol 33) using a 5/0 brush. Rust (Humbrol HS 216) was drybrushed on to the hull and assemblies before final construction. The tracks were sprayed with Russian green and then had the outer plates drybrushed with Flat Aluminium (Humbrol Metalcote 27001). I didn't attempt any further weathering on the tankette as I wanted it to look like a 'fairly fresh' example. Conclusion With a total of almost 240 parts and a finished length of just 3 inches this is a challenging little model. I hadn't tackled a PE and Resin kit before this (I model mostly aircraft) but I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed getting it finished, and was well pleased with the result. Not a model for the beginner, but one that could offer a real challenge to someone who wished to detail the interior! I noticed that Part also make this kit in 72nd scale - now that's going to be small! References: | 
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