This kit is molded in dark green plastic on one sprue, plus another sprue of clear plastic for the windows. A small decal sheet is included. The images are matte, in register and the carrier film is quite thin.
As per my usual, the kit was built pretty much straight out of the box not modifying the kit much other than to drill out the openings in the front bumper, the exhaust outlet in the muffler and add an antenna cut from guitar wire.
This kit builds up nicely. Fit is excellent though it is a bit tight in places. Pay particular attention to the mine blast shield under the body. I found this to interfere with the chassis frame which made the frame twist and skew a bit resulting in a major body slant. I rectified this with some sanding and scraping to relieve the contact point causing the problem.
I was not impressed with the molding of the side windows. They all come with small tabs, which I suppose are there to help position the window into its opening, but in my mind they detract from the overall look of the windows. They also had a habit of breaking off when the window was pushed into its opening leaving a small white mar in the clear plastic. I suppose these tabs could be removed beforehand and the mars touched up with some sanding and polished, but that seemed like more work than I willing to do. I suppose one way to reduce their presence would be to dirty up the windows a bit to try and hide them.
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The decals are excellent. I chose the Task Force Fox option for markings. The decals are not quite correct as presented on the decal sheet.
The green TFF rectangles lack the narrow white border which I added by placing a slightly larger rectangle of white decal underneath the kit decal.
Pictures of sister TFF Dingoes located at http://www.panzerbaer.de/archiv/bw_tf_fox-001a.htm show that there should also be German flag markings for the front bumper and on the rear right body panel. I made these from scratch, cobbling together other decal pieces to make the flags. This was quite easy to do since the flag consists of just three horizontal bars of black, red and yellow moving from top to bottom. I also made one additional flag which was attached to a piece of guitar wire used for an antenna and then attached to the antenna mount at the rear of the vehicle.
On the whole, this kit is quite easy to build. For me it took quite a bit longer to finish than my other armour builds, not because it was difficult, but because I wasn't thinking too clearly when I first bought the kit. Arriving at the point where I had to mask the windows I came to realize why I had returned to armour modelling. I was suffering from a form of “masking phobia” brought about by my latest aircraft projects. A return to armour modelling looked like it might be the cure, where masking for the most part is limited. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite cured of my phobia so this kit sat for a few weeks until I finally forced myself to get on with the masking and finish the build.
Kit 03142 - ATF Dingo 1
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Model built by Al Magnus
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E-mail to Henk Timmerman / HenkofHolland