Building Academy's 1/35 M2 Bradley By Luke Shock

When I opened the box to this kit my reaction was "Oh I can get this done in no time". Well I was wrong. Most model kits take time and this one definitely did. There was hardly any flash present, and no multimedia materials were included. Also, there were hardly any options on the decal sheet. This was my first armor kit, though, and it looked like a good one, too.

I gotta tell ya, the interior of this model is very, very detailed. There is a piece that is basically the whole floor, but it didn't cover quite the whole base. This "second layer" had a bunch of holes in it. That was where the eight seats went, which, by the way, came in three pieces each. The kit also went into detail with the walls. Inside the tank there was ammo, drawers, boxes, control panels, weapon pouches, capsules, and even more. There is even a separate section for the turret guy to stand in.

The construction of this kit was neither simple nor complex. Each of the bogeys (or wheels) comes in two pieces. There are 16 total. The tracks come as straight rubber things. In other words, they don't come"round" if you will. So you have to take the two ends and put them together so they can go around the bogeys.

The hull (or body) seems simple, but is complex. It comes in four big pieces. The top, and bottom are two big pieces. Then you have the sides, which basically just cover the tracks. Then there are tons, and tons of little pieces that go all over the top of the tank. The turret comes in exactly 47 pieces. The main parts are the four sections that make the body of the turret, and then of course the three pieces that make the gun.

The decal sheet is about as big as one of a 1/72-scale model. I didn't really use any of it. This kit hardly gave you any directions on how to paint it, so I had to assume a lot of things. I painted it desert sand on the outside because that's what the directions said. I didn't say they had no painting instructions, just very little. The markings I put on are just Vs because that's the only thing that it really has.

I only had a week to do this model. Why? I was staying over at my grandparents across the state. My uncle is the publisher of this site and my grandpa talks to him by E-mail a lot. I didn't have an e-mail address at the time, so I had that one week to finish the model and write the review.

My grandpa gave me lots and lots of tips to help me out on this kit. This was my first time using an airbrush and my grandpa showed me how to do that. He also gave me some tips on gluing with liquid glue. He showed me how to melt the tracks together with a hot screwdriver, and that you should not just break the parts off the tree, and that you should clip them off instead. He also showed me how to put on decals. It was hard to do this in a week's time. I was working an average of about 4 hours a day. Despite the stress of the deadline I had a good time learning all that cool stuff about modeling.

I really had fun with this kit, and guess what, I enjoyed it too. I highly recommend this kit to any model builder. Whether you specialize in armor, aviation, or ships, I guarantee you will have fun, and a bit of trouble with this kit. I would like to thank Academy for making this kit.