MERKAVA Main Battle Tank

By Ludovic Bertrand -

LEE (ref #09007)

The kit comes in a largebox divided in two compartments. One contains the kit itself withthe instruction sheet, the other contains a display base made ofblack plastic, the decals and some glue.

The kit comprises 19 partsmoulded in a sand colored plastic. The kit box says that acommander figure and nylon mesh for the stowage bines areincluded which is false. None were present in my sample.

Hull

The hull is made of twomain parts, upper and lower hull. The side skirts are mouldedwith the upper shell. The side of the hull and of the skirts bearthe distinctive armour pattern with rivets and recesses as on thereal beast (see picture below).

The tracks and wheels aremoulded as a single part.

The wheel design seemscorrect, the first road wheel being of the spider type. The wheelspacing is wrong, the second road wheel being too close to thefirst one. It also appears that the whole track assembly islocated 1.5 mm too much to the front. The track pattern istotally wrong because of the moulding technique. It consists onlyof transverse bars. The track width is too small being 8 mminstaed of 9.15mm (660 at 1:1 scale). The suspension seemscorrect having one spring per wheel. The front drive on the hullis missing and needs to be scratchbuilt.

The hull top grills areall missing but one near the driver's hatch. There is no guntravel lock provided but its emplacement is moulded on the hull.

No anti-skid isrepresented on the hull or the turret.

The driver's hatch is aseparate part but the driver's station will need a lot of work.

The rear stowage basketsare missing and need to be scratchbuilt. The rear escape door isgiven as an undetailed single part. This area too needs somework.

Turret

Like the hull, the turretis made of two main parts (upper and lower) with additionaldetails (hatches, smoke grenade launchers, machine guns).

The upper turret partexhibits some recesses which need putty.

The gun is simple with themuzzle being drilled. The canvas part of it needs to be reworkedas the kit part is too smooth in appearance.

When the turret is put onthe chassis, it looks like it is tilted to the rear and too high,the space between the hull and the turret bustle being too smallwhen compared to my references. This will need some work to fitthe turret properly and have the correct silhouette of the tank.

Dimensions

The following table givesthe kit dimensions and the comparison to the real vehicle.

I think this kit is a 1/2reduced 1/35 MERKAVA 3 kit as the deduced kit scale is close to1/70.

Conclusions

This kit is the first oneof MERKAVA 3 in plastic. I feel this is a good starting point fora skilled modeler to obtain a good scale model of the MERKAVA 3but this will need a lot of work. I think that using this withsome ESCI MERKAVA parts (tracks, machine guns, idler wheel,sprocket, etc ...) will help in that task.

I recommend this also forwargamers as the kit has a very limited number of parts.