Thanks very much to Model Rectifier Corporation (MRC) for providing IPMS USA this kit. Up front, I determined to send this item as part of an effort to provide some of the “New kits” to our deployed personnel in harms way, through our POC at IPMS USA, and full credit definitely goes to our long-time supporters at MRC. That means this will be an “In-box” review of this kit.

I was at Edwards AFB, CA about two months ago and observed (mostly heard) firsthand the test birds flying. Extremely interesting to watch and noisy, as they are claimed to be louder than the F-22 if that is possible! Nonetheless, a great opportunity and I was pleased to actually see them fly.

Raupen Modell is a new firm whose first releases center on providing workable track sets for the 1/35th scale Tamiya JGSDF Type 90 Main Battle Tank. The accessory kit under review in this article covers the set that includes rubber pads for the metal tracks. A second, lower priced set covers tracks without the rubber pads.

The kit’s contents come in a stout plain white cardboard box with a simple adhesive sticker label, and consist of approximately 45 small injection molded plastic sprues of a steel gray color. Each sprue consists of four track links worth of parts, each track link having four parts to it. There are enough sprues to provide for the 76 links per side required for a Tamiya Type 90 kit, with some left over for spares or to cover any parts breakage during assembly.

Background

The Leopard 2A6/A6M is the newest of all currently fielded German Leopard tanks. This kit is one of three current Revell 35th scale Leopard tanks on the market. The other two kits available from Revell the Leopard 2A4/A4NL and the Swedish Leopard 2 (Strv 122A/122B).

Kit

The Leopard 2A6/A6M comes in the standard Revell end-opening box. Quite frankly, the box is a little too small for all of the plastic inside; more on this later. The 222 parts come in three separate bags on seven sprues molded in the standard Revell green plastic and black vinyl tracks. In addition, there is a piece of fine wire taped to the front of the instruction booklet. The 19 page instruction booklet is easy to follow but be forewarned that in the early steps the instructions already show some parts in place. These parts are labeled, but could be easy to overlook.