Building the Plastic Soldier Company Stug III g late and 105mm Haubitze 1/100 15mm

 OK, OK, I promise to stop after this one.........

     This is the final installment of the series on the Stug model by PSC, I will cover the late G model as well as the 105mm howitzer version. The Early G model can be found here and the F/8 version can be found here. Again I have to say that this is a very good model, both from the technical aspects of molding such a tiny kit cleanly and crisply and from capturing of the feel of the actual vehicle. This kit complements the other kits from PSC and bodes well for the much anticipated Panther release (coming soon!). I again will pass on the track assembly as it has been covered in the section on the Stug F/8.

the side-skirts can't be assembled wrong without a lot of effort

as I pointed out in the build of the Panzer IV 

the schurtzen are sooooo much easier to build than the ones from Battlefront

and done

spare bogies mounted, I have seen pictures of F/8s with

extra bogies there as well, need more research

the front glacis installed

the superstructure rear ready to go

and installed

the gunner's hatch, this caused some trouble for me, see below

perhaps I am the only man in the world that does ask for directions,

but this time the directions were the problem, note the arrangement of the parts on the sprue and remember that the instructions show the sprue and the parts are color-coded to "ease assembly"

here we find the instruction sheet showing which parts to use from the sprue,

I found myself glancing back and forth between the sprue and the instructions and thinking,

 "Perhaps the smell of the glue is getting to me"

after a while I went back to the computer and Google images.........

..........and I found that the hatch the runs perpendicular

 to the axis of the main gun was the one to use,

 so I grabbed it, I then cut free the LMG and the tiny shield,

note the fine detail of the MG and remember that it fits nicely on my thumbnail

the shield mounts on a tiny nub just forward of the gunner's hatch

only the tiniest dab of glue was needed to attach the MG

next was the main gun with the saukopf gun mantle

another very tight fit

on the later G models a deflector was installed to protect the commander's cupola,

it is the tiny part at the tip of the X-Acto knife, this attaches just in front of the cupola

like that, I also added the cupola ring and open hatch

and then the commander

next came the side-skirts

these fit nicely, gluing to the superstructure and the fender, easy and sturdy

general views

 

   

      The howitzer version was built to give the Stug more punch against dug-in targets and for general bombardment purposes, it is essentially an early G model with a much larger gun so I will refer you to the report on the early G for build details. The main gun uses the same components except for the 75mm barrel is replaced by the shorter, thicker 105mm barrel.

as this was the fourth model I had built I decided to have a little fun and add crewmen,

it would be nice if PSC would do a different pose with each model

gun mounted and ready for tracks

general views of the completed model



     I long ago ran out of superlatives to heap on these kits so just take this from me; there are no better kits that I have found in this scale, particularly at this price-point (about $6.00US each).  As far as the instructions go all I will say is this; Hey, PSC, I will do your instruction-sheets for free to keep you from ruining other people's impressions of your kits!!! Really. I will. You folks put way too much work into the mold-making and casting of these beauties to drop the ball on something as simple as the instruction sheet.

     These get a Very Highly Recommended (despite the horrid instructions),  John