M-30 Howitzer (withcrew)

Manufacturer: PST (Kit #72040)

by Julius Ebke

What you get:

• 59 parts for the gun
• 15 parts for the crew
• A sheet with instructions and short history in Russian and English

The first thing people who knowthis gun will notice is that the muzzle-brake is missing in thepicture on the box and in all illustrations on the sides of thebox (see red square). Please note that the muzzle-brake isincluded and that it is of a very good quality just as the restof this kit.

Above you can see the sprue withthe parts for the gun. The parts are molded very detailed andhave nearly Revell quality. The barrel is made of a single partwhile the muzzle-brake is two-parted which is, in my opinion thebest solution to get a filigree muzzle-brake and straight barrel.The only thing I didn't like were the hand-wheels to target thegun (lower right corner). I replaced them with parts of anotherkit seeming more realistic to me.

In the third picture you see thesprue for the gun's crew. There's a lot of flash which is veryhard to remove due to the soft plastic used to make these littlesoldiers. They seem to be copies of some toy figures so in factthey are unusable for a serious diorama, same as the two boxesand the ammunition included.

All in all I would say that thisis a very small but also very nice kit for this standard Russianhowitzer. I can't say anything about it's scale but it doesn'tseem to be too inaccurate and I'm sure it's an enrichment forevery collection of WW2 vehicles.