1:35 OT-810 - Corrected Road Wheels (for AFV Club Kits)

A postwar descendant of the German half-track

The OT-810 was produced by Tatra in Koprivnice from the second half of the 1950s, and it drew on the wartime documentation of the Sd.Kfz. 251. There were plenty of changes, though: the vehicle received an air-cooled Tatra diesel engine, a fully enclosed fighting compartment and a new nose. In the Czechoslovak army it served for a long time, later in the role of a carrier for a recoilless gun, and a number of machines survived into the 1990s. Among modelers it earned a nickname after its enclosed back, and it is a rewarding subject precisely because it differs from its German predecessor in details that only a connoisseur notices.

Where the vehicle parts company with its predecessor

The running gear remained the same in principle, so the interleaved wheels with rubber tires carry the weight of the vehicle just as on the prewar design. The design of the disk and the rendering of the hub, however, correspond to postwar production, and it is just this difference that the set deals with; anyone building an OT-810 from a German kit usually ends up with wheels that do not belong on the vehicle.

Details of the set

• 1:35 scale, castings of fine modeling resin.
• A complement of road wheels for one vehicle.
• The spacing and seating reckon with kits of the AFV Club brand.
• Neither the kit, the tracks nor paints are included.

Building recommendation

After the gates have been cut off it is good to check whether the seating surface sits at a right angle, because with an interleaved running gear a deviation on one wheel shows along the whole row. The painting can be managed either with a brush or with an airbrush; the base deserves degreasing, otherwise the finish holds worse on smooth resin than on plastic.