1:35 Panther Ausf. A

The worst running gear a modeler can meet

The Panther runs on interleaved running gear, which in German is called Schachtellaufwerk. The wheels sit in three layers behind one another, every second one is shifted inward and the outer row covers almost all of the inner one. It gave the designers a soft ride and an even distribution of pressure on the track, but gave mechanics in the field a nightmare, because changing one inner wheel meant taking several outer ones off. The builder of a model gets into a similar situation the moment he has to outline the rubber tire on every rim.

Where a mask saves the most work

It is exactly here that a masking sheet makes the most sense of all the ground machines. There are a lot of wheels, they are the same and they lie in a depth a brush reaches only blind. A stencil allows a whole row to be sprayed at once and the tire to be kept the same width all the way round, so the overlap of the layers looks like a production article and not like handwork. On the Ausf. A version different production variants of the rim were also combined on the wheels, which accentuates the whole impression still further.

The markings of a late version

Two sheets of insignia masks are included. The Ausf. A was manufactured from the autumn of 1943, was given a new commander's cupola with a ring for an antiaircraft weapon and a machine gun port in the front armor instead of the earlier cover. The cross on its sides tends to be smaller than on later machines and often gets lost in the camouflage blotches, which were sprayed at the factory itself. The modeler should place the insignia only once the blotches are finished, because in the regulation the cross had a fixed position in relation to the weld of the side plate, whereas the camouflage was different on every example and was sprayed without a stencil. That order is spotted on a finished build at once.