Latest Diorama Idea: How Abrams are made

[Glamdring]

Funny how we all seem to have the old Tamiya ones, with the odd Academy kit. The last one I bought was the Meng M1A1, hope to get to it in the near future. the first one I bought was the DML MIA2 SEP, but it always was intimidated by that brand.

[Stikpusher]

Yeah, I've got two more Academy Abrams in my stash, the Iraq 2003 kit and their M1A2 TUSK kit. The Iraq 2003 kit still has the undersized turret, so I bought a new turret off eBay from one of those folks who sells kit sprues to correct that. The TUSK kit is all new tooling and looks absolutely gorgeous in the box, with parts for TUSK I, TUSK II, and SEP V.2 variants. I've also got a Trumpeter M1A1 and Italeri basic M1A2 kits, plus the Tamiya M1A1 w/mine plow in my stash. I would like to get the Panda M1 IP, since that is the only kit of that version OOB that doesn't require a conversion or kit bash to make one.

I've also built two of the ESCI M1's, one the basic original M1 which is decent, and their M1A1, which is actually more of an M1E1 and lacks most of the production M1A1 features such as the larger turret stowage boxes, turret bustle rack, different ammo compartment blowout panels... I corrected most of those shortcomings on my build...