M3 Stuart 'Honey' ~ Academy

[David Madsen]

Just ordered earlier this week. I know this was a US designed tank but considering this specific kit is from a British unit and that they were the first to use this light tank in battle and coined the nickname Stuart, I thought it'd be proper to place this under the British Tank section. Unless there are disagreements I could move it.

[Jamie Tainton]

[Laurent Moitrot]

From the back of my memory it is a good kit, basically. Funnily enough I seem to remember they made a mistake with Bellmann"s code number ...

[Dan Reed]

Have fun with the M3 Dave! It wouldn't take too much to make it into a US tank if you wish.
Dan

[David Madsen]

[David Madsen]

Just got it in the mail today. So I bought some AFV T16 movable tracks for this kit thinking it only supplied the rubber tracks but it appears Academy has supplied both rubber and individual links. However, the AFV instructions say not to cement while Academy says to cement them; and as far as I can tell, they are both the same thing. In any case I have a spare early style track for an m3/4/5. Looks like I'll have to buy a different kit, darn.

[Jamie Tainton]

Whow! that's a lot of pics! Nice effort!

[David Madsen]

[David Madsen]

Ok, so I mentioned in another post were I have been trying to understand the order of steps when it comes to assembly and priming/painting so I'd like this build to be an opportunity for those following this kit to chip in any advice they might have on how I am approaching the build. I'm simply looking for help to better my skills and understand what I am doing and why. Right now I am pretty much just doing these kits by mere observation of what I've seen on this website, so as you can imagine the 'whys' would be useful to me.

So first step in the kit has to do with wheel assembly and thought it'd be best to get a majority of these parts primed and painted before gluing to make the process go smoother. So I used a enamel Panzer Schokoladenbraun by Model Masters. Since I don't do German armor and I had this laying around I figure I could use it as a primer. My plan is to paint them OD and have some of that show through by using the salt chipping technique when I apply the desert yellow.

[David Madsen]

While letting the OD coat of paint dry on the wheel assemblies I started work on the radio. From looking at the cast of the radio and searching pictures online I've identified the radio as a SCR-528.




However, it is quite noticeable from the reference photo that the transmitter (the third photo) is considerable larger than what was in the kit. I haven't been able to find any photos of the interior of a M3 showing the radio so I'm not sure how accurate it is. Perhaps the radio in the M3 is a different model, however I couldn't find anything.

I found more photo's of the receiver and the spare part chest proving this unit was modular and could be configured in different ways, like what the kit has, so it's not all inaccurate.



Here I've removed some detail to add some PE parts.




http://www.icdc.com/~oldradio/web/vehicle/vehicle.htm
http://www.armyradio.com/arsc/customer/ ... =71&page=1