Hi everyone and welcome to this kit review of the Krupp
L3H163 Kfz.72 radio truck by ICM in 1/35 scale. This kit is pretty new, ICM released a couple of
German cars and trucks in the last few years, for example a Henschel truck and these Krupp trucks. There are a couple of different variants available, this
one here is a radio communication vehicle. It has two large antennas on the back and inside
the shelter were all sorts of radios installed. Those vehicles were mainly used to connect the headquarters with the unit staff. It is a very interesting vehicle, i actually have this picture
of such a truck on the wall of my room.
The truck is parked under the cover of
some trees. It is a beautiful drawing. There is some stowage on the roof and the vehicle
is open. This inspired me to buy the kit, Alright, let´s have a look inside the box. The box is rather small, but is packed with plastic sprues. It is
very heavy, actually it is more heavy than most tank kits. It is so heavy because the kit contains many
big, massive plastic plates which form the shelter. I don´t like the way this kit is wrapped, as you can see
the sprues barely fit into the bag and some got bent. This is not ideal. As far as i can judge it
the parts do not seem to be twisted or bent.
Anyway, it is not a nice view. Let´s start with the instructions. First we have a little
introduction text and technical data of the real vehicle. Its written in English and Russian i assume. Here we have a paint chart refering to Model Master paints only. Down here we find some notes of safety and contact
details, just in case some parts are missing. Here we have a sprue map with all included sprues. The red parts
won´t be used, as you can see there are plenty of them. ICM offeres several variants and maybe they intend to release more in
the future, but they all base on the very same kit. In order to create different variants they just add
aditional new sprues to the same base kit, in this case we have the sprues here for the shelter.
The
red parts are most likely needed for the cargo variant. I like such sprue maps, it helps you to keep track of everything and
you don´t have to wonder later why there are so many left-over parts. Let´s have a look at the assembly stages. It starts
with the engine, typical for car and truck models. A fully detailed engine is always a good thing, it
allows you to open up the engine hood. This step here looks a bit confusing. It is useable
for sure, but a clear arrangement looks much different. As you can see there are plenty of details even on the chassis. It is not easy to assemble it, because it consists of so many parts. It looks quite complex, but i made a couple of ICM
car models and in the end it worked very well. You have to be careful and please take your
time, otherwise you might mess up the model. The whole chassis looks amazing, all those technical features
like the transmission are nicely represented. Beautiful. It is not very good for beginners, the installment of
those tiny parts here is a bit vague.
How good the instructions actually are will be discovered
as soon as i build the model. The cab has some interior details. All doors can be built in opened position, that
way you can make the interior detail visible. Now it starts to look like a truck. The shelter, it consists of those wooden boards. It looks pretty interesting. The interior is missing here, but we have to
admit that it would be quite extensive. All those desks and radios would increase the size of the kit
a lot. I´m sure there are some aftermarket kits available. If you want you can build the doors in opened position, too. As you can see there are a couple
of very filigree parts, like those headlights. The finished model will be outstanding, no question about that. The radio mast, apparently there is only a folded position possible. Thats a bit of a shame, an extended version would
be impressive. Those radio masts were very tall.
The tip of those masts looked a bit like
an inverted umbrella. That would be interesting. Here we have the painting and marking options. Two
versions are suggested, both painted grey over all. The first one shows a vehicle in France, May 1940. The second one served in Ukraine, September 1941.
It belonged to the battlegroup "Kleist". Nice. All in all it is a typical ICM instruction sheet, it
is alright but a bit vague from time to time. Let´s have a look at the sprues, there are plenty of them. The parts are nicely moulded. No flash is visible. This looks weird. I think it is supposed to look like that, it does not belong to the actual
model. It is the canvas cab cover of the cargo version of this truck. The surface structure is nicely represented. The plastic looks a bit streaky on the surface
from time to time, it looks rough, but actually it is just as even as it
should be when touching it with a finger. The windscreen can be assembled in opened position, on one
side the window can swing open. Very nice.
Usually there is not such an option, but here it is different. The radiator has some amazing details and even comes with the Krupp logo. Beautiful. Here and there are some ejection pin marks, inside the car wing is not
an ideal place, but you can hide that later with some mud. Here are plenty of filigree parts. The connections to the sprue are very small, so it should be rather
easy to remove those filigree parts from the sprue without damages. Big and plenty of attachement points to the sprue can cause severe damage. Again there is no flash in sight. The moulding is perfectly. I´m just annoyed a bit by the twisted sprue, this happened
only because of the improper packing of the kit. Not a nice thing. However, this sprue only features small parts,
so the risk of having twisted parts is minimal. This sprue features parts of the chassis, transmission and engine. As you can see this sprue is crammed with
tiny parts, the amount of parts is overwhelming.
Again the parts look very filigree and are nicely detailed. Here you can see the streaky looking surface again, but
again it is perfectly even. It looks weird. I have no idea how this can happen, but it
does not affect the quality of the surface structure. Here we have one part of the chassis. Impressive, maybe a bit intimidating, too. The level of detail will please most of us model builders. This sprue is included twice and features mainly the tires of the vehicle. I like the wheel rims of the early
Wehrmacht vehicles a lot, they are beautiful. The tire profile looks nice, but there is some flash on the bearing surface. This should be very easy to remove with some sandpaper. Here we have all sorts of small parts that
belong to the headlights and towing lugs. Now we take a look at the sprues that specifically belong to this
particular radio truck, the shelter and the drivers cab are different. The moulding is perfect. The detail on those antenna masts are
amazing, there are plenty of handles and rivets on them.
Here we have a door that can´t be built in opened position. There is no real wooden structure on those planks of
the shelter, but i think that is pretty accurate. There are many rivets visible, which connected the planks
to the main frame of the shelter. The parts are extremely filigree and prone do getting damaged, this
part here looks like it already got hit a bit. Extremely filigree, that is a rare sight even today.
I think many of
Dragon´s recent kits are not as filigree as this one here. I have good experiences with ICM and this kit
here confirms my opinion about this brand. It looks good to me, pretty sophisticated all in all. The level of detail is achieved by plenty of filigree parts, of course those are
not easy to assemble, but we need a challenge from time to time.
This sprue is extremely twisted, not nice at all! The parts seem to be not bent or twisted, but i can
imagine some minor fit issues can occure while building the shelter. It won´t be a big problem, some light pressure with tape
or some filler will deal with the issues for sure. This looks like the roof of the shelter. Beautiful, it needs plenty of accentuation with a
wash. It will bring out the detail. Here we have some ejection marks, but there is no
interior included for the shelter so this won´t hurt. I have to figure out how to cover the large
windows, apparently there was a jalousie attached to them. I will try to reproduce that. Of course there are plenty of clear parts included. The vehicle has many windows. The parts are very thin, perfectly clear and no flash is visible. Flawless. Maybe you can see this little frame around the window, it will help a
lot to glue the windows in place without messing them up with glue.
I like this solution, i prefer such injection moulded clear parts. Some Italeri and Tamiya kits feature those stamped transparencies, i don´t like them. I prefer proper moulded clear parts. Finally i show you the decals, they are
the only bad thing about this kit. They are very thin, shiny, gigantic transfer film and the overall print is mediocre. I spotted a spelling mistake on this writing which belongs on the vehicle. They tried to correct it but it is still wrong. I will try to replace them with spare decals. After so many tanks and all their variants it is great to
have finally some new tooled support vehicles in the stores.
Those trucks were common in the first years of the war, and offer plenty of possibilities to incorporate it into dioramas, but
the model on its own is very interesting, too. It is a nice variation from the usual stuff. This kit looks very good to me, the only thing that annoys
me is the way they packed the kit into the box. The spures get twisted a bit because of that, whether this
will be a problem or not will be discovered later. I think it won´t be a big problem. The kit costs about 28-29€, thats alright. You get a big kit
for your money. There is no need to complain about that, Which kits can you buy from Tamiya or Dragon
for 30€? Not that many, that´s for sure. I recommend this kit only for advanced model builders, i think beginners
will have a lot of trouble with all those tiny parts. It is not an easy kit, you have work
carefully, otherwise the model is totally messed up.
Anyway, i recommend this kit, maybe there is an aftermarket
set for the interior available, that would be interesting. Having this truck all opened up with complete interior would be awesome. Alright, i hope you liked this kit review, see
you in the next video, your Hamilkar Barkas..
